Forsaken Relics: Practices and Rituals of Appropriating Abandoned Artifacts from Antiquity to Modern Times
We are pleased to announce a new volume for the series Multidisciplinary Approaches to Ancient Societies (MAtAS), which deals with comparative historical analysis, edited by Gianluca Miniaci (Università di Pisa) and Juan Carlos Moreno García (CNRS–Paris), and published by Oxbow Books:
“Forsaken Relics: Practices and Rituals of Appropriating Abandoned Artifacts from Antiquity to Modern Times“, edited by Alessandro Buono, Gianluca Miniaci and Anna Anguissola.
Forsaken Relics examines the intricate mechanisms of ritualistic appropriation of ruined and/or abandoned assets and artifacts. It explores how this process occurs in situations where there is legislation to regulate the appropriation of ownerless property, as well as in cases where such rules are either absent or contested, leading to disputes and conflicts.
Every society has developed its unique ways of managing the re-appropriation of ‘ownerless things’, such as places and houses abandoned after conflicts, crises, or natural disasters, forsaken cemeteries, tombs, and forgotten goods. These practices often involve the use of ritualistic methods to mask the intent to appropriate abandoned artifacts. The book aims to stimulate comparative analysis of this topic in both ancient and modern societies, profiling the identity of the ‘actors’ of appropriation, examining the definition of abandonment, and exploring the ritual aspects such as inventorying material, dedication to ancestors, and prayers to gods that legitimize the re-appropriation of places and goods classified as abandoned.
CONTENTS
Editors’ Preface
Appropriating places
1. The biographies of Neolithic burnt houses: insights from the Trypillia megasites of Ukraine
Bisserka Gaydarska, Brian Buchanan and John Chapman
2. Roman Euocatio, or How To Get Possession of a Deserted City
Chiara Ombretta Tommasi
3. Reclaiming the funerary space: The protection and reuse of tombs in the burial grounds of Hierapolis in Phrygia
Anna Anguissola
Redefining abandonment
4. Relic(t) ecologies. Exploring abandonment in the Apuan Alps
F. Anichini, S. Basile, G. Gattiglia, and C. Sciuto
5. Depopulating Landscapes: Methodology and the Materiality of Archives in Calabria
Joseph J. Viscomi
6. Rehabi(li)tating Abandonment. Urban Occupations and their Regenerative Practices
Antonio Stopani
Claiming Things
7. After Death: The Rituality as a Legitimating Appropriation of Abandoned Goods in Ancient Egypt
Gianluca Miniaci
8. How to preserve an oikos? The case of Isaeus’ VIII Oration
Angelica Tortorella
9. How to Claim Things with Rites. Care for the Dead and Inheritance Rights in Early Modern Europe (and beyond)
Alessandro Buono
Afterword
10. Biographies of place and the significance of place-value
John Chapman and Bisserka Gaydarska
