Introduction

Abstract

Much of our knowledge of festivals from the ancient world comes from material culture, especially inscriptions, which detail the running of festivals, or the victories achieved by individual performers. Civic coinage and architectural decoration also sometimes advertised festivals and religious traditions, while festival activities were framed by the spaces and periods in which they took place. This introduction sets out the ways in which such material has been studied in recent years, drawing attention to scholarship on the epigraphic habit, the materiality of art and text, and the spatial turn. It sets out the wider frameworks within which the individual chapters are set, asserting the importance of considering individual pieces of material evidence as the result of deliberate choices of what to record, and where and how to record it. It also indicates the social frameworks within which civic festivals proceeded, outlining the important roles played by emperors, elites, and cities.