In this paper I present a preliminary study of the role of objects in the funus as active elements through which ritual is articulated. To do so, I first argue in the introduction for the idea of funus as object-centred practice. I then briefly review the most common theoretical positions on grave goods in the archaeological discipline in general and in the Roman world in particular. I next introduce the paradigm of model-tomb goods and describe a selection of funerary landmarks in which it appears, as well as the material and personnel requirements that must have been present during the development of the funus. Finally, I suggest the hypothesis of grave goods as both everyday objects and as bodily objects and conclude with some brief notes on future directions of my research.
Kategorie: Papers at the Max-Weber-Kolleg
Steffen Andrae presents a working paper on ‚Realism, Subjectivity, and Experience in Kracauer’s novel Ginster‘
This essay documents my interpretation and analysis of Kracauer’s first novel Ginster. The book, I argue, can be read as a model case for Kracauer’s variety of realism and contains many of the philosophical ideas, issues, and sensibilities common to Kracauer’s oeuvre. This goes especially for the entanglement of aesthetic and theoretical elements, for Kracauer not only discusses social and historical issues but establishes his reflections via processing documentary elements, experiential realities, and philosophical cartography. Moreover, Kracauer makes extensive use of figurative, linguistic, and representational strategies, which correspond intimately to the various experiences of negativity laid out in the novel. [My essay is, however, not a cohesive chapter but will be disassembled and allocated to the various thematic areas of my thesis. It is thus pertinent to keep in mind the structure of the overall work.]
Liza von Grafenstein presents a working paper on ‚Urbanization – Opportunity or Challenge for Child Health in India‘
While a country is undergoing the transformative process of urbanization, undernutrition, overweight, and micronutrient deficiencies are often present at the same time. Due to limited data the literature hardly examines whether urbanization is an opportunity or a challenge for child health. This study contributes to the literature by investigating the ambiguous effects of urbanization on child nutrition treating urbanization not as a dichotomy and focusing on India where the triple burden of malnutrition is prevalent. Using NFHS-4 survey data and the urbanisation classification of Global Human Settlement Layer project, I describe the opportunities and challenges urbanization brings about for children between 2 and 5 years of age. As this study sheds light onto the ambivalent role of urbanization, policy makers will be able to target public health interventions more effectively.
Here you can find more information about Liza von Grafenstein.
Francesca Fulminante presents a working paper ‚From heterarchies to hierarchies: the role of religion at the birth of first cities and state organization in central Italy (1100-500 bc)‘
Between the 10th and the 5th century BC Italian populations underwent radical changes in the social, political and ethnic organization which led from the mainly „egalitarian“ communities of the dispersed villages of the Bronze Age, to the „hierarchical“ and „centralised“ societies of the Archaic cities. Many scholars have contributed to delineate this trajectory by looking at various aspects of the social structure, production, economy but probably the religious aspect has been less intensively investigated, apart the emphasis posed by Alessandro Guidi on early urban cult places, preceding the monumental realization of the temples of the Archaic Period, especially in Latium vetus. Connecting to Polignac, Lefevre and Bourdie and by taking Rupke’s concept of religion as active agent of urbanity, the project seeks to explore the specific role of religion in the creation of the first cities in Western Europe. Transition from more heterarchical so. At the core of the project is the following questions: 1) is it the city which contributes to the rise of the sanctuary, or the sanctuary, which contributes to the rise of local cities? 2) Which is the role of religion in the shift from more heterarchical to hierarchical organizations? The project will answer these question by analyzing cult places in the wider network of central Italian transportation communication system and by comparing their reciprocal position and role within the system as compared to other types of settlements (domestic, functional, funerary etc.). This will allow to elaborate on the role and significance of the various spaces of ritual performance within the societies involved and eventually verify of Polignac’s model is applicable to central Italy as well.
Elisabeth Begemann presents a working paper on ‚The Dancing Deity: Diminishing the Goddess Libertas on the Palatine‘
In the Speech for His House (de domo sua), Cicero needs to persuade his audience that the shrine erected by his adversary, Clodius, was not a public cult site or any cult site at all, in order for it to be removed and his house returned to him. One of the means in which he attempts to do this is by suggesting that no cult beyond a personal Clodian cult ever took place here. As focus of this cult, he suggests the image of courtesan stolen from a gravesite in Tanagra. The allusion is suggestive: Tanagra became famous in the 19th century when small clay figurines of women and goddesses were unearthed from Hellenistic graves. These figures showed richly dressed and painted women in a variety of poses, their dress clinging to their bodies, seated or dancing. As Maik Patzelt demonstrated, Clodius dedicated the shrine to Libertas by employing a three-step dancing figure, known from other cultic contexts. By connecting Clodius’ dancing dedication with the figure of a dancing deity, he connects the two in the minds of his listeners. Moreover, by suggesting that Clodius’ Libertas was not only “just” a personal deity, but her statue stolen from the grave of a prostitute, he diminishes the supposed deity in the mind of his listeners by making her unacceptable on multiple levels: social (as a prostitute), legal (as a stolen item) and religious (as coming from a grave, thus tainted with death).
Rafael Barroso-Romero presents a working paper on ‚Reconsidering unusual burials‘
In this paper I present the starting premises of my project. I try to justify the relevance of my research and why I consider that my approach is suitable. To this end, first I describe the different theoretical approaches from which the recognition of funerary diversity in the Archaeology of Death has been addressed and how from there the popular notion of „deviant burial“ along with every assumption it implies, as well as the arguments that have been considered when applying it in the Roman funerary world (1). Next, I briefly describe how the use of the concept of deviant in Religious Studies suggests that it is not the most appropriate one to call this type of burial (mainly necrophobia and paleopathologies) (2). In the following section I put the Roman funerary world into a cultural context by explaining the main ideas that exist about the fate of the deceased after death (both those that arise from ritual action and from the texts) (3). In the final section, I suggest that the direct recognition of funerary diversity is the most appropriate way to understand the Roman funerary world in all its complexity, and I suggest an approach focused on the study of religious materiality of grave goods and how the material culture transforms the way in which the self relates to the world (4).
Richard Lim presents a working paper on ‚Public Spectacles and Christianizing Urban Cultures in Late Antiquity‘
This Kolloquium text is part of an ongoing study of the transformations in public life in Roman metropolitan cities during Late Antiquity. The culture of public spectacles long continued to play a constitutive role in the cultural self-identities of the Roman urban populace despite Christianization and ecclesiastical condemnations. I show in this paper how the plebs urbana assumed participatory roles in making themselves ‘belongers’ in urban spaces by engaging with the culture of spectacles throughout the city notwithstanding their typical characterization as passive spectators in ancient and modern accounts. I examine, in particular, the phenomenon of urban talk and related forms of sociability that came into being around the culture of Roman public spectacles even beyond the dedicated entertainment structures of the hippodrome, theatre and amphitheatre and explore how these persistent cultural forms shaped even the lives of urban Christians, a prime case in the reciprocal formation of religion and urbanity. How ordinary Late Antique Christians came to regard themselves as at once sophisticated urban inhabitants, proud members of a Roman metropolis and, at least by their own lights, upstanding followers of Christ in the context of their interactions with this urban culture of public spectacles has important implications for the way we conceptualize the processes of Christianization, secularization, de-paganization and de/re-sacralization in Late Antiquity.
Petra Gümplová presents a working paper on ‚Normative View of Natural Resources – Global Redistribution or Human Rights-based Approach?‘
This paper contrasts conceptions of global distributive justice focused on natural resources with a human rights-based approach. To highlight the shortcomings of the former and to emphasize the advantages of the latter, the paper looks first at the methodology of moral theorizing, showing that it misconstrues the claims individuals and groups made to natural resources and offers impracticable solutions. Second, I argue that distributive conceptions assume a narrow view of natural resources as economically beneficial goods. Human rights, I propose, are better suited to make sense of the variety of needs natural resources fulfill for humans. In virtue of their legal institutionalization, human rights enable agents to effectively pursue their legitimate claims to resources. Third, I look at the system of sovereignty over natural resources and argue that rather than dismissing it as unjustifiable, it should be reformed in line with the principles which underlie its structure – human rights.
Katharina Mersch presents a working paper on ‚Urban Communities and religiously motivated violent Crowds‘
The paper represents a shortened version of an article to be published in a volume on religious violence in the Middle Ages; the articles should reflect upon how ‘religious’ violence really was.
The article deals with two examples of violent crowds gathering to pursue religious goals and wandering through the lands, a phenomenon not uncommon from the late 11th century onward: 1. The so called Rintfleisch-pogroms that caused many deaths among the jewish population in the cities of Swabia and Franconia in the year 1298, and 2. the shepherds’ crusade of 1251 whose participants never reached the Holy Land but attacked clerics, monks, and sometimes Jews in several cities in France. If we want to find out to what extend religious ideas and non-religious motives stimulated the violent acts, it is crucial to take a look not only on the crowd itself, but on the cities and their citizens opening their gates to the crowd, too, on their reactions and the subsequent communication with authorities. It is a difficult task to reconstruct their motives as narrative sources give the best account of the events, while their authors were focused on interpreting these events with regard to religious narratives. Nevertheless, within these narratives the cities served as a stage for negotiating the legitimacy of violence. Not everyone agreed to kill Jews, while it seems that quite a lot of citizens did not worry about injuring and killing clerics, monks and scholars when not threatened by officials. All groups have in common that they were distinguished from the urban legal cosmos in one way or another, a fact that needs to be considered to the same degree as religious affiliations or the victims’ special position in the hierarchy of the church.
Simone Wagner presents a working paper on ‚A common History? About the Relation between Collegiate Churches and Cities‘
Superiors of collegiate churches often refered to origin stories in order to gain more authority in conflicts. Aside from arguing with highly symbolical charters of origin they often fashioned themselves as representatives of saints having founded the religious communities. Often such speech acts were embedded in a broader hagiohistorigraphical tradition. While collegiate churches and cities were often constructed as seperate entities their history was depicted as a shared one. A shared history was constructed by creating saints as integrative figures between city and collegiate church as well as linking the foundation of the cities to religious superiors. Historiography of the canons/the canonesses and the citizens could heavily influence each other without necessarily creating a collective identity. It seems that especially imperial cities contested the canon*esses‘ view of the past. However, saints worked less well as integration figures in cities with a more complex infrasctructure of parishes and their relics.