Shedding Light on the Matter: Evaluating Changing Patterns of Object Dedication in Ionian Sanctuaries (7th/6th – 5th/4th centuries BC) with Lexicometrical Analysis

Abstract

Reconstructing moments in ancient history is done most effectively when we draw together different types of evidence. Particularly given the fragmentary and random shape of our datasets, many scholars would agree that it is important to combine material – and sometimes patterns only become visible when we do so in new and experimental ways. As scholarship on ancient Greek religion has become increasingly interdisciplinary in recent years, many scholars have brought together datasets long studied separately – the material evidence by archaeologists and anthropologists, and the texts by philologists and philosophers – now is a prime-time to crosspollenate different types of evidence on a much broader scale. This paper proposes that by bringing together types of evidence that might usually be kept apart and by applying new methodologies, we can shed further light on certain ancient socio-cultural phenomena.

Spartan dependence on Laurion lead

“…1541 and 2157; IG V,1 255), the first in a series of widely popular individual monuments from the sanctuary (Lloyd, in press). More broadly, the dedicatory changes that occurred at Sparta should also be viewed alongside wider changes to dedicatory practices at other Archaic Greek sanctuaries (Loy & Slawisch, 2021). The decline and cessation of a locally important polis craft tradition is certainly not without wider precedent at the turn of the 6th–5th centuries.…”

Coinage networks in fifth-century BCE Ionia

“…As new material evidence becomes available, Cook's model of economic inertia in Ionia is becoming less and less convincing, with the scholarly conversation having now pivoted towards revisionist histories of fifth-century Ionia. At the level of the site (Ehrardt 2003;Herda 2019) and across the wider region (Loy, Slawisch 2021), a new wave of scholarship synthesising Ionia's Classical history aims to take greater account of the abundance of archaeological data that has come to light since Cook's time (much of it still unpublished or relatively under-deployed in secondary scholarship). That different cities had different strategies for recovery and reorganisation not directly instep with one another, and that local histories were significant, are important emerging views (Slawisch, forthcoming).…”