Religion and Material Culture - Studying Religion and Religious Elements on the Basis of Objects, Architecture, and Space

The book gathers specialists from a variety of fields to explore the possibilities of the material perspective in the study of religion. Within a diachronic perspective, archaeologists, scholars of religion, theologians, and ancient historians focus on how the gradual invention of various forms of material culture - graves, images, objects - has made it possible for certain religious expressions to be constructed, arise, and enfold. Also, the volume investigates what types of material culture characterizes religion and what these "mean". The volume represents a joint, cross-disciplinary effort to investigate religion and its various aspects with a point of departure in material culture. This means rethinking basic assumptions about religion and how to study it. Integrating material culture approaches with textual approaches, the contributions discuss the foundations for a history of religion which is not limited to a textual perspective but which is both broader and wider, both reaching back in prehistory and out to other spheres.