The Master’s in Applied Classical Archaeology, Research and Transfer (URV-ICAC-UAB) is organizing a seminar open to the public on January 16 (16 p.m. CET). A unique opportunity to delve into the archeology of rituals and find out how the ICAC’s new master’s program works. See you there!
The activity is coordinated by: Maria Carme Belarte (ICREA-ICAC), academic manager of the MACA master’s at ICAC, Jesús Carruesco (URV-ICAC) and Diana Gorostidi (URV-ICAC).
You can follow the seminar online, at this link (Teams platform).
Efrosyni Boutsikas, MSCA researcher in GIAP (ICAC), will present:
“Considering the value of the skyscape in ancient religious experience”
Reconstructions of ancient religious performances at a specific time and place have the potential to inform us on ways in which natural light or the night-sky may have been used to enhance religious experience. Such an approach facilitates a better understanding on ancient spatial movement, emotionality and cognitive experience.
Through digital reconstructions of ancient skyscapes and Virtual Reconstructions of religious structures, we will explore specific examples of such occurrences, in an attempt to better understand the importance of time, space, and place in ancient Greek religious experience, which was responsible for shaping the emotions and spatial memory of the participants.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101026674 (STAR-AGESS; H2020-MSCA-IF-2020)
Simona Perna, associated postdoctoral researcher at ICAC (ArPA), will present (in Spanish):
“Death and burial in the Roman world. Funerary containers, rituals and methods of deposition (1st century BC – 2nd century AD)”
The talk illustrates the various aspects of death and funerary practices in early imperial Roman society using vase urns in ornamental rocks – calcite alabaster, porphyry and granite – as a case study. These containers are found in Roman elite burials since the middle of the 1st century BC until the beginning of the 2nd century AD, with a peak in the Julio-Claudian period, when cremation had become the main funeral rite in most of the Roman Empire.
These cinerary urns, along with their contexts of discovery, are very informative, since they shed a lot of light on the various steps of the Roman funeral and on the people buried in them. The idea is to provide an overview of Roman funeral rituals through the analysis of these artifacts to better contextualize the relationship between the world of the living and the world of the dead in Roman society and its sociocultural importance.
Original abstract (Spanish):
“Muerte y entierro en el mundo romano. Contenedores funerarios, rituales y modos de deposición (s. I a. C. – s. II d. C.)”
La conferencia ilustra los diversos aspectos de la muerte y las prácticas funerarias en la sociedad romana imperial temprana utilizando urnas cinerarias a vaso en rocas ornamentales – el alabastro de calcita, pórfido y granito – como caso de estudio. Estos contenedores se encuentran en entierros de élite romana desde mediados del siglo 1 a.C. hasta principios del siglo 2 d.C., con un pico en el período Julio-Claudiano, momento en el cual la cremación se había convertido en el principal rito funerario en la mayor parte del imperio romano.
Estas urnas cinerarias, junto con sus contextos de descubrimiento, son muy informativas, ya que arrojan mucha luz sobre los diversos pasos del funeral romano y sobre las personas enterradas en ellos. La idea es proporcionar una visión general de los rituales funerarios romanos a través del análisis de estos artefactos para contextualizar mejor la relación entre el mundo de los vivos y el de los muertos en la sociedad romana y su importancia sociocultural.
