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The next Café Scientifique event is taking place on Wednesday 19 April and islanders are invited to join in on Zoom.
Entitled 'The Religious Landscapes of the Ancient Cyclades: the ecologies, archaeology, art and history of the sacred cultic places', the talk will be given by Dr Erica Angliker from the British School of Athens at 18:30.
The Cyclades have historically played a central role in the communication networks linking the eastern Mediterranean with the mainland. The chain of islands connects the east and west, forming a kind of natural set of steppingstones that facilitated navigation and the movement of people and goods. The strategic position of the Cyclades is reflected in the repeated efforts of larger surrounding powers (e.g., Athens, Persia, and Ptolemaic Egypt) to control access to their strategic locations and resources. The islands were not only the stage for the dispute of hegemonic powers, however, but also present a rich variety of landscapes on which various religious spaces were established. These sacred landscapes, natural, enhanced, and built, have facilitated and intensified the religious experiences of worshippers for millennia. The aim of this presentation is to provide an overview of the Cycladic sanctuaries by tracing their history and exploring how the movements of people and the topography of the places they inhabited shaped the foundation of cult sites and their development and functions over time. In the process, it will be considered the variety of religious spaces across various natural landscapes, ancient cities, and the centres of power in the Cyclades. This study takes into account both easily accessible coastal sanctuaries and secluded rural ones and reflect on the interrelated cultural terrains for communication and interaction in the regional and superregional contexts of networking.
Dr Angliker has BA and MA in Classics from Unicamp (Brazil), an MA in Archaeology from Columbia University in New York and PhD in Classical Archaeology from University of Zurich. Erica was Research Fellow at the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London from 2019 until 2021. Currently she is Research Associates, British School at Athens and Researcher collaborator at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Unicamp (Brazil). Erica has worked as scientific member at the excavations on the island of Despotiko since 2011 and together with the director of the excavation Yannos Kourayos she has been publishing several artefacts retrieved from the excavations; currently they are working on the study of the dancing floor recently discovered at the island of Tsimintiry. Dr Angliker is the author of a range of articles on the religion and archaeology of the Archaic and Classical Cyclades.
You can join the talk by clicking this Zoom link.
