Gwynn David M., Bangert Susanne (eds.). Religious diversity in Late Antiquity

Brill, 2010. — 592 p. — (Late Antique Archaeology 6).This new volume in the well-established Late Antique Archaeology series draws together recent research by archaeologists and historians to shed new light on the religious world of Late Antiquity. A detailed bibliographic essay provides an overview of relevant literature, while individual articles explore the diversity of late antique religion. Rabbinic and non-rabbinic Judaism is traced in Beth Shearim, Dura Europus and Sepphoris, and the Samaritan community in Israel, while Christian concepts of orthodoxy and heresy are examined with a particular focus on the 'Arian' Controversy. Popular piety receives close attention, through the archaeology of pilgrimage and the stylite 'pillar saints', and so too does the complex relationship between religion and magic and between sacred and secular in Late Antiquity.David M. Gwynn, Ph.D. Oxford (2003), is Lecturer in Ancient and Late Antique History at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Susanne Bangert, Ph.D. Copenhagen (2005), is Museum Inspector, Naestved Museum, Denmark.