• January 10, 2026 | 8:00 AM - 11:00 AM
• Imperial B, Ballroom Level

7J: Lived Religious Experiences in the Ancient Greek World (Joint AIA/SCS Colloquium)

Join Zoom here: 

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85802170625?pwd=chwep4apu1vMj0bZ5frNRCRIJyUwfw.1 

Organizers:
Sarah Norvell, Princeton University, and Hannah Smagh, Pennsylvania State University

Discussants:
Katie Rask, Ohio State University

Overview Statement:
In recent years, the application of new theoretical approaches has reinvigorated the field of ancient Greek religion. Drawing from developments in fields such as cognitive science, psychology, and anthropology and first applied in the study of Roman religion (cf. Rüpke et al. 2020), these approaches privilege the recovery of material, sensory, and embodied religious experiences in the ancient world and have enabled the reorientation of research agendas from the role of religion in society to the ways in which religion may have been experienced by an individual. While still acknowledging that major aspects of religious life in ancient Greece were structured by civic institutions, sanctuaries, and festivals, adopting a “lived religion” framework refocuses attention on the ways that individuals navigated religious experiences and beliefs in their everyday lives. This approach makes it possible to consider how religious experiences factored into the lives of individuals in periods, regions, and social strata for which robust textual or historical evidence may be lacking.

This AIA-SCS colloquium brings together a diverse group of scholars at various career stages to draw attention to the ways in which these developments are currently being applied to studies of Greek religion. The seven papers collected in this session explore a wide range of lived religious experiences in the Greek world across a broad geographical and chronological range. The papers employ diverse methodological approaches and have been selected to present a balance between material and textual evidence.

The first paper, “Touch Me, See Me, Speak to Me: A sensory Approach to God-Mortal Relationships at Epidaurus,” considers the construction of divine-human relationships through iamata inscriptions from Epidauros, privileging the individual and collective experiences of those seeking to be healed by the god through dreams.

In the second paper, “Material Microtheologies: Crafting Elysium in Athens and Abydos,” funerary inscriptions from Athens and Abydos are leveraged through the methodology of “microtheology” to reconstruct lived experiences of individuals and individual beliefs about the afterlife held by those living in urban environments.

The third paper, “Between Subjugation and Salvation: Religious Experiences of the Enslaved in Classical and Hellenistic Greece,” draws together votive inscriptions, curse tablets, and manumission records to explore how enslaved people navigated personal religious practices beyond elite control. The paper probes the role of the unfree in sacred spaces, focusing on their experiences as laborers in sanctuary construction projects.

The built sacred environment serves as the focus of the fourth paper, “Talking with Gods: Kinesthetics, Divergent Thinking, and Oracular Consultation at Delphi.” This paper reconstructs the kinesthetic, embodied experience of moving through the oracular sanctuary at Delphi.

The fifth paper, “From Territorial Claims to Affective Encounters: Rethinking Tomb Cult in Early Iron Age Crete,” also treats questions of embodiment and the built environment. This paper presents a new reading of engagements with ancient tombs by exploring how aspects of the sensorial assemblage such as light and built architecture contributed to the experience of encountering ancient tombs in central and eastern Crete.

The sixth paper, “Between the Sacred and Everyday: Lived Religion and Object Agency in Greek Domestic Religion,” also considers the agency of objects used in the practice of domestic religion. Integrating literary and archaeological evidence, this paper demonstrates how reciprocal human-object relationships shaped the lived experiences of private ritual practitioners.

The final paper, “Embodied Curses Ritual Binding in Ancient Greece,” considers the agency of objects in ritual practice as well by examining the intersection of materiality and ritual performance inherent in curse objects such as tablets and figurines.

Altogether, these papers explore religious activities beyond the strictures of “polis religion” and work toward reconstructing lived religious experiences of individuals. The panel will close with remarks by an invited respondent, an assistant professor who recently authored a book on Greek personal religion, and a general discussion moderated by the organizers.