The Connected Past: Religious Networks in Antiquity

(Image credit: Hover Collective / UBC Markeing)

Network approaches are used by archaeologists and historians as tools to model relational ties between individuals and groups in the past. The growing uptake of these approaches comes in an era recently dubbed the “Third Science Revolution” (Kristiansen 2014). Indeed, the advancement of Big Data and computational techniques have revolutionized the types and amounts of information at our fingertips and our means of analyzing and visualizing its patterns. This workshop and conference aim to build bridges between divergent disciplinary skillsets: the quantitative and computational side of network analysis and the qualitative questions and explanations that undergird historical and archaeological work.

A special area of focus for the conference will be the application of network perspectives to the emergence and spread of religious beliefs and practices, positioning these phenomena as deeply intertwined with the human and material connections that comprised the ancient world. Religion has often been regarded as both an intensely local and intensely transcultural force for ancient communities. Now, at the digital frontiers of the twenty-first century, the resurgent interests in large-scale questions on human development have opened up new opportunities to study religion from relational and quantitative perspectives combined with deep qualitative and historical approaches developed in the humanities.

Our conference will commence with a keynote lecture by Dr. Anna Collar of Southampton on the evening of October 3rd, with reception to follow. Paper sessions will commence on the morning of October 4th and continue through until early afternoon on October 6th.

This conference is located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. The land it is situated on what has always been a place of learning for the Musqueam, who for millennia have passed on their culture, history, and traditions from one generation to the next on this site.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The University of British Columbia, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada