The remains of an exceptionally well-preserved Hellenistic wine press were uncovered during a rescue excavation at Knossos in 1977. The architecture, stratigraphy and faunal remains from this campaign were published in BSA 89 (1994) by J. Carington Smith (the excavator) and S. Wall. The artefact assemblages from this excavation, however, have remained unstudied and unpublished until now. The current article presents the artefact assemblages from the wine press excavation and considers them within their urban context at Knossos. The key findings from this excavation relate to the Late Hellenistic wine press and its associated material, which enables us to consider both the ancient winemaking process at Knossos and the economic topography of the city in the decades around the Roman conquest of the island in 67 bc. In addition to the Late Hellenistic phase, material of Minoan, Early Iron Age–Early Archaic, earlier Hellenistic and Early Roman dates is also presented and discussed.

Drawing on the sermon collections of Caesarius and the Eusebius Gallicanus preachers, she outlines what the clergy wanted lay people to know. This included biblical stories, Psalms, prayers and fundamental doctrines such as the incarnation, the nature of Christ and the afterlife. Dialogue, the exploration of doubt and theories of reciprocity between human and divine all served as mechanisms through which lay instruction was undertaken and demonstrated, even if the results did not always meet clerical expectations. The brief survey of epitaphs with which the chapter ends offers a glimpse into lay attitudes towards the afterlife, perhaps less difficult to document than other theological beliefs, but still an elusive element of religious experience. Although it is not itself a study of lived Christianity in late Roman and Merovingian Gaul, the written and material evidence that B. analyses here offers many of the elements that such a study would include, with lay experience at its centre rather than its periphery. Her book can be recommended to any reader with an interest in the rich religious culture that flourished in the last phases and long aftermath of Roman imperial rule in Gaul.

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