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A short popular article summarizing research on my 2009 book on miniature votive offerings. Published in Ara: The Bulletin of The Association for Roman Archaeology. Issue 19 (April 2009)
A blog post (https://thevotivesproject.org/2017/11/03/motives/) for the Votives project (https://thevotivesproject.org).
Ordinary, inexpensive and often mass-produced offerings are found in abundance in votive deposits throughout the Greek world. They have the potential not only to illuminate the type of cult and the nature and character of the recipients, but also to help us ascertain popular tastes and cult practices of the average worshipper. The main intention of this paper is to raise the issue of small offerings acquired and dedicated in groups or sets, and presumably also displayed together. In some cases, sanctuary deposits exhibiting similarities in the profile of type of offerings may indicate that objects were dedicated in groups of two or more items during a single visit to the sanctuary. Sets of offerings would have expressed complementary notions about the cult and the recipient, and could have increased the efficacy of the gift-giving ritual. In other cases, generic offerings that were appropriate for several cults could have been dedicated and displayed together in a sanctuary in order to produce more specific images.
Many of the votive offerings which survive from antiquity were purpose-made for dedication. These include things like anatomical votives, figurines, temple models, and sculpted reliefs bearing scenes of sacrifice or healing. Other types of votive offering were not purpose-made for dedication but had served other functions before being brought to the sanctuary, such as jewellery, tools, mirrors, cups, clothes and children’s toys. Such ‘recycled’ (or, perhaps more accurately, ‘non-purpose-made’) votives arguably give us our most direct glimpses of individual agency in a religious context, since they not only bypass the intermediary figure of the craftsman but also relate closely to the worshipper’s own body and biography. This article considers the archaeological and literary evidence for such ‘non-purpose-made’ offerings, particu- larly those related to illness or healing – the theme of this special issue. I consider how these boundary-crossing objects differed conceptually from purpose-made votives like the anatomicals, for instance by entangling the different spaces (the house, workshop, sanctuary) in which ancient religion was experienced. Ultimately, I argue that the appropriation and re-use of household objects or medical parapher- nalia as votives enabled the individual to respond quickly and creatively to illness and other crises, creating deeply personal narratives of healing and transformation from the layered associations and memories that these objects embodied. Keywords: votives, souvenirs, memory, illness, healing, Asclepius, Greek, Roman, ritual
2009 •
"Can an object be defined as votive solely based upon the presence of an inscription? Does relying upon such a definition restrict a more multivalent analyses of objects thus identified as votive? In this thesis, I examine the most prevalent practice used by scholars to identify votive offerings in the Middle Byzantine period – relying upon an object’s accompanying inscription. This study focuses on those objects inscribed with a particular invocation – one that uses the word boethei. I demonstrate that we cannot rely on this inscription alone to identify an object as votive. It is rather the combination of many elements, including medium, iconography, patron and function that contribute to this identification and which enable us to more clearly understand the multivalent messages conveyed by these objects. In Chapter One, I turn to the context with which votive is most often associated – sacred. With each object I consider whether it is or is not votive and how the inscription contributes to that identification. In Chapter Two I examine objects inscribed with boethei that were intended for use or display in a secular context. While the objects discussed in Chapter One can be identified as votive, those discussed in this chapter cannot be so labeled. What then does the inscription mean in a secular context? In Chapter Three I present one object as a case study. I examine aspects of its production including inscriptions, patronage, iconography and function to argue that identifying a votive object requires a multivalent analysis of all its components. I show that, in this case, the patrons created a unified program of text, iconography and relics to convey their hope for salvation through perpetual prayer. I demonstrate that when all of these components are considered, we find a more precise message than what is explicitly stated in the inscription itself."
Derived from Latin ex voto suscepto “in pursuance of a vow,” an ex voto embodies the hopes, dreams, and anxieties of the person who deposits it. Almost anything, regardless of size, weight, form, or original function, can become a votive object. Ultimately, the category refers to a subset of the material world in which a thing is not necessarily made to be a votive, but instead becomes charged with votive meaning once dedicated to a deity or deities. This volume, one of the first collections devoted exclusively to the subject, builds on the assumption that a shared conceptual framework underpins votive objects, and that by merit of their consecration they have become a category representing a special stage in the life of a material. The contributors to this comparative study examine ex votos across a range of locations and time periods, including the classical Mediterranean world, medieval Europe, the period of the Catholic Reform, and on to Mexico, Shinto and Buddhist Japan, and Muslim Iran. Voluminous and diverse, Ex Voto will appeal in a wide range of fields, including history, religion, and anthropology.
[First 2 paragraphs of article follow] For historians interested in the religious beliefs and practices of classical antiquity, votive offerings constitute a resource of almost immeasurable richness. Gifts to the gods—anathemata in Greek, dona in Latin—have been found at sites all over the ancient world, from the peak sanctuaries of Minoan Crete to the chilly streams of Roman Britain. Over the last few decades, scholars have become increasingly attentive to this form of material religion, and have adopted a wide range of approaches for studying it. Votives have been used, among other things, as documents for the study of social and gender history, as evidence for the develop- ment and transmission of religious beliefs, as sources for art historical analyses of ancient craft industries, and for the retrospective diagnosis of ancient illnesses. Although these studies differ widely in their aims and methods, they nevertheless share a common feature: they all con- sider the votives collectively, either in broader categories of form and/ or medium (e.g., votive heads from terra-cotta, marble votive reliefs), or in the context of larger votive assemblages from particular sanctuaries or geographical areas. This chapter will adopt a different approach to the ancient votive offer- ing by tracing the “biography” of a single votive through time and across space. Object biographies and life cycles have become very popular in material culture studies recently and have been applied to a wide range of artifacts including Neolithic ceramics, Roman sarcophagi, and Japanese netsuke. The object biography is a promising mode of analysis for vo- tives, given that these are often small and inherently mobile items, which inevitably—at least in the case of ancient Greco-Roman offerings—move over time from a sacred to a secular context. The biographical approach also encourages us to shift our attention away from the moment of ritual dedication (which has tended to dominate most scholarly analyses of vo- tives) and onto later, equally interesting stages of the offering’s history. For the function and meaning of a votive are not fixed at the moment of dedication; rather, these properties change as the object moves through time and space and as it becomes entangled in new associations with things and people. The process of compiling a votive’s biography also has the potential to enhance that object’s value and meaning for modern audiences, not only because it allows us to attach engaging stories to the material offering, but also because it enables us to measure change in beliefs and attitudes in later historical periods, including our own.
This article engages with some methods and theories of disciplines outside the traditional sphere of Classics to open up new perspectives on the interrelationship between material culture, religion and society. It focuses on dedicatory practices and, in particular, on modest offerings and the multiple ways these were valued in Greek society. It concludes that, even though small inexpensive offerings were affordable by poorer people, their dedicators likely came from various socio-economic backgrounds. Dedications of low economic value and modest appearance may have had high symbolic value because they embodied social and religious ideas or the desires and identities of the dedicator; or they could derive their value from the function they performed in ritual. If the messages carried by such offerings were of primary concern and their value symbolic and emotional rather than material, the choice of a small or inexpensive offering would not necessarily reflect lower socio-economic status. Moreover, if the main concern of gift giving were communication and reciprocity, the act of giving would have been more important than the offering’s monetary value.
P. Pakkanen – S. Bocher (eds.), Cult material. From archaeological deposits to interpretation of early Greek Religion, Papers and Monographs of the Finnish Institute at Athens XXI (Helsinki 2015)
The interpretation of votive offerings from Early Archaic deposits in the Artemision of EphesosV. Gasparini, M. Patzelt, R. Raja, A-K. Rieger, J. Rüpke, E. Urciuoli (eds). Lived Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World: Approaching Religious Transformations from Archaeology, History and Classics. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 209-235.
Graham, E-J. 2020. Hand in hand: Rethinking anatomical votives as material things2020 •
Religious experience in ancient Italy was intimately connected with the production, manipulation, veneration, and discarding of material objects. This chapter argues that for a fuller understanding of lived religion it is necessary to approach these objects as more than the mere material or visual expression of otherwise intangible concepts. It consequently explores the affective relations between things, particularly how objects and human bodies assemble in order to produce lived religious experience and religious knowledge. Taking votive terracotta models of hands from mid-Republican Italy as a case study, this chapter adopts a broadly new materialist approach to the examination of anatomical vo-tives, focusing on the tripartite affectivity of these offerings as objects manipulated in the moment of ritual, as material things, and as bodily proxies.
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Philip Kiernan