University of Groningen

Faculty Member, History

The Groningen Research Institute for the Study of Culture

Thesis Title: City and Sanctuary in Hellenistic Asia Minor. Constructing civic identity in sacred landscapes

About

My PhD dissertation, now in completion, is entitled 'City and sanctuary in Hellenistic Minor. Civic identity in the sacred landscapes of Mylasa and Stratonikeia in Karia'.

Abstract: During the Hellenistic period, Asia Minor underwent an explosion in urbanism as never before or afterwards until the industrial period. The city had become the common denominator in a globalizing world which found itself confronted with new and colliding superpowers, an influx of Hellenic impulses, and older traditional communities. Several of these communities were restructured along the political and spatial format of the Greek polis (e.g. Mylasa), while other cities were created as regional administrative centers or military colonies (e.g. Stratonikeia), or even as new centers of regional power (e.g. Pergamon). That many of these poleis continue as major cities in modern Turkey today is testimony to the success of this transition.

Politics and religion were tightly interwoven in antiquity, and a critical factor to the success of these new or expanding poleis was the incorporation of the local or regional gods, which were already embedded in the community. These gods typically came to function as the tutelary deities that protected and symbolized the city, and in return their sanctuaries were expanded and monumentalized. Yet their sanctuaries were often located far from the urban center. The aim of this research is to understand this particular relationship by identifying ways in which these sanctuaries were bound to the city, and applying various theoretical models in order to interpret how this symbiotic relationship between city, sanctuary and landscape worked and what it meant.

This research project uses an interdisciplinary approach based on archaeological and epigraphical data, spatial analyses using GIS, and literary sources where applicable to research the wider cultic network, the influence of cities and rulers, reception by the public, and periods of change in which rural sanctuaries played a pivotal role to the development of civic identity.

This is a fully funded PhD research project at the University of Groningen, from 2007-2011.

For more information please visit my website:
http://citysanctuary.nl/

I have also been active in archaeological field projects in Turkey, the Crimea, Greece, and central and southern Italy. See the website...

My general academic interests include landscape archaeology, civic and social identity, architectural and ritual space, visual space (viewsheds/isovist fields), and the topographies of networks, as well as the general desktop and field use of GIS for archaeological and historical research.

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