CULT AND CRISIS. THE SACRED LANDSCAPE OF ATTICA AND ITS CORRELATION TO POLITICAL TOPOGRAPHY
The veneration of Greek gods is inseparably connected to the location of cult places in the territory of a Greek city state. The resulting sacred landscape is used for rituals linking different cult places, for example by means of processions or races. The inhabitants of the city state participate in these rituals and become members of the cult community, and, vice versa, the communally practiced cult becomes part of each participant's personal religion. Rituals further function as a performative act that shapes a related, collective identity of a polis. It is obvious that cult topography is strongly dependent on the territorial situation of the city state. Accessibility to the polis territory can be restricted, for instance by natural catastrophes or military occupation, and can have an immediate effect on the usability of the sacred landscape.
In the case of the Athenian polis, literary sources report multiple limitations of the political topography caused by military occupation of parts of the Athenian countryside, which also restricted cult activity at sanctuaries located in the occupied areas. During the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), certain aspects of the religious life in the Polis of Athens were constrained by the fact that the Spartan army occupied parts of the hinterland of Attica. In the 4th century BC, when the Macedonians subdued Greece, partial occupation of the Attic land lasted for almost a period of nearly 100 years.
The project focuses on this second period and aims to analyse with a holistic approach the influence of the military occupation on the sacred landscape asking for alterations, shifts, decline or other coping strategies concerning the most likely hindered cult activity.
Research carried out by Dr Constanze Graml (Institut für Klassische Archäologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München).
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