Books by Caroline J . Tully
This volume came about based on the recognition that the rise and spread of Covid-19 has led cont... more This volume came about based on the recognition that the rise and spread of Covid-19 has led contemporary scholarship to consider the possibility that there will be an increasing acceleration of new and highly transmissible plagues, viruses and other diseases linked to the mass travel and trade that characterizes hyper-globalisation. As historians and archaeologists studying the civilisations of the most distant past, we felt that we had something to contribute to this conversation through providing a historical perspective, with the twin goals of relieving the social anxiety caused by pandemics and taking advantage of our present experiences to see how we might view our own research in a fresh, new light. Archaeologists and scholars of ancient history know that epidemic plagues and other environmental catastrophes are nothing new: disease and illness are clearly represented in the archaeological and historical record. The chapters in this volume focus on plague in antiquity, centred primarily on the ancient Near East. Chronologically, they span the Bronze Age to Late Antiquity, and regionally they cover Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Levant, Cyprus, Anatolia and the Indus valley. The contributors discuss a range of topics related to plague—its causes and transmission, environmental factors, responses and treatments, disruptions and social effects—drawing on ancient texts, modern sociology, archaeological evidence and cultural material remains. The variety of contributions demonstrates that rather than being anomalous, various forms of illness were normal, recurring and prevalent within the ancient world. The authors refer to the current Covid-19 pandemic, which was also inspiration in producing this work. This volume contributes to the contextualisation of plague, pestilence, disease and disability within wider and deeper human history.
A Century of James Frazer’s The Golden Bough Shaking the Tree, Breaking the Bough, 2025
This multidisciplinary volume examines the ongoing effects of James G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough ... more This multidisciplinary volume examines the ongoing effects of James G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough in modern Humanities and its wide-ranging influence across studies of ancient religions, literature, historiography, and reception studies.
The book begins by exploring the life and times of Frazer himself and the writing of The Golden Bough in its cultural milieu. It then goes on to cover a wide range of topics, including: ancient Near Eastern religion and culture; Minoan religion and in particular the origins of notions of Minoan matriarchy; Frazer’s influence on the study of Graeco-Roman religion and magic; Frazer’s influence on modern Pagan religions; and the effects of Frazer’s works in modern culture and scholarship generally. Chapters examine how modern academia and beyond continues to be influenced by the otherwise discredited theories in The Golden Bough, ideas such as Sacred Marriage and the incessant Fertility of Everything. The book demonstrates how scholarship within the Humanities as well as practitioners of alternative religions and the common public remain under the thrall of Frazer over one hundred years since the publication of the abridged edition of The Golden Bough, and what we must do to shake off that influence.
A Century of James Frazer’s The Golden Bough is of interest to scholars and students from a wide range of disciplines, including Ancient History, History of Religion, Comparative Religion, Classical Studies, Archaeology, Historiography, Anthropology, Folklore, and Reception Studies.
This research examines 44 images of Minoan tree cult as depicted in sphragistic jewellery, portab... more This research examines 44 images of Minoan tree cult as depicted in sphragistic jewellery, portable objects and wall paintings from Late Bronze Age Crete, mainland Greece and the Cyclades. The study also compares the Aegean images with evidence for sacred trees in the Middle and Late Bronze Age Levant, Egypt and Cyprus. The purpose of this investigation is the production of new interpretations of Minoan images of tree cult. Each of the chapters of the book looks at both archaeological and iconographic evidence for tree cult. The Aegean material is, in addition, examined more deeply through the lenses of modified Lacanian psychoanalytic modelling, “new” animism, ethnographic analogy, and a Neo-Marxist hermeneutics of suspicion. It is determined that Minoan images of tree cult depict elite figures performing their intimate association with the numinous landscape through the communicative method of envisioned and enacted epiphanic ritual. The tree in such images is a physiomorphic representation of a goddess type known in the wider eastern Mediterranean associated with effective rulership and with the additional qualities of fertility, nurturance, protection, regeneration, order and stability. The representation of this deity by elite human females in ritual performance functioned to enhance their selfrepresentation as divinities and thus legitimise and concretise the position of elites within the hegemonic structure of Neopalatial Crete. These ideological visual messages were circulated to a wider audience through the reproduction and dispersal characteristic of the sphragistic process, resulting in Minoan elites literally stamping their authority on to the Cretan landscape and hence society. See: http://www.peeters-leuven.be/boekoverz.asp?nr=10733
PhD Thesis by Caroline J . Tully
This thesis examines 43 images of Minoan tree cult as depicted in sphragistic jewellery, portable... more This thesis examines 43 images of Minoan tree cult as depicted in sphragistic jewellery, portable objects and wall paintings from Late Bronze Age Crete, mainland Greece and the Cyclades. The study also compares the Aegean images with evidence for sacred trees in the Middle and Late Bronze Age Levant, Egypt and Cyprus. The purpose of this research is the production of new interpretations of Minoan images of tree cult. Each of the chapters of the thesis looks at both archaeological and iconographic evidence for tree cult. The Aegean material is, in addition, examined more deeply through the lenses of modified Lacanian psychoanalytic modelling, “new” animism, ethnographic analogy, and a Neo-Marxist hermeneutics of suspicion. It is determined that Minoan images of tree cult depict elite figures performing their intimate association with the numinous landscape through the communicative method of envisioned and enacted epiphanic ritual. The tree in such images is a physiomorphic representation of a goddess type known in the wider eastern Mediterranean associated with effective rulership and with the additional qualities of fertility, nurturance, protection, regeneration, order and stability. The representation of this deity by elite human females in ritual performance functioned to enhance their self-representation as divinities and thus legitimise and concretise the position of elites within the hegemonic structure of Neopalatial Crete. These ideological visual messages were circulated to a wider audience through the reproduction and dispersal characteristic of the sphragistic process, resulting in Minoan elites literally stamping their authority on to the Cretan landscape and hence society.
Postgraduate Diploma Thesis by Caroline J . Tully
This thesis investigates the reception and appropriation of aspects of ancient Egyptian religion ... more This thesis investigates the reception and appropriation of aspects of ancient Egyptian religion by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an exclusive late-nineteenth century British alternative spirituality movement. Initially contextualising the Golden Dawn as standing outside the development of scholarly Egyptology, its direct relationship with the modern Pagan movement is subsequently explained and the implications thereof for contemporary archaeology are outlined. Specific case studies of four Golden Dawn members highlight the order’s imaginative method of obtaining knowledge about ancient Egypt and the erroneous conclusions arrived at thereby. The historically inaccurate, self-serving and misleading picture of ancient Egyptian religion promoted by the Golden Dawn, as well as its unscientific method of obtaining information about the past through revelation rather than reason, is shown to have been adopted by contemporary Pagans who subsequently attempt to impose their erroneous interpretations of the past on to archaeologists, museum curators and heritage workers, to the detriment of archaeology.
Journal Articles by Caroline J . Tully
Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 2023
'. The seven articles, three in the first of the two issues and four in the second, are revised a... more '. The seven articles, three in the first of the two issues and four in the second, are revised and expanded versions of the papers presented during those two conference sessions. We also include several book reviews that complement, expand on, and further enrich the discussion.
Feraferia, 'a love culture for wilderness', is a contemporary Pagan religion that celebrates huma... more Feraferia, 'a love culture for wilderness', is a contemporary Pagan religion that celebrates humans' erotic union with Nature. It was the brainchild of artist, Frederick Adams (1928-2008), who in 1956 had a vision of a universal goddess and subsequently devoted himself to the divine feminine as a 'Maiden Goddess of the Wilderness' called Korê. Formally incorporated in 1967, Feraferia became the second Pagan church in US history, and it is still active today. Herein I examine Feraferia through an ecocritical lens, with a particular focus on the role of trees, the anthropomorphisation of nature envisioned as a young female body, ecosexuality, and the construction of henges; circular structures aligned with local topography, used as seasonal and astronomical calendars wherein ritual magic and 'faerie enchantment' are employed in order to heal and revitalise the natural world. I demonstrate that Feraferia's enchanted approach to the world resonates with contemporary ecological activist thought, particularly ecofeminism and ecosexuality. I conclude that many of Feraferia's ecospiritual concepts have value today because they can heighten conscious awareness of human situatedness within the real physical world, both on our own planet as well as within the wider surrounding space of our part of the universe.
ToC of the special double issue on Contemporary Pagan Ecospiritualities
The Griffin Warrior Ring No. 2 is a gold Minoan-style engraved signet ring from Pylos dating to t... more The Griffin Warrior Ring No. 2 is a gold Minoan-style engraved signet ring from Pylos dating to the Late Helladic IIA (1580–1490 BCE). The ring’s bezel depicts a seascape with a columnar tree shrine flanked by palm trees situated on a rocky outcrop. Five elaborately dressed female figures stand on either side of the shrine. The tree shrine features a net pattern in the space between its stone or brick piers. It is proposed that this represents a fishing net and that the structure is a sea altar dedicated to an unnamed Minoan tree goddess. The ring’s hoop is decorated with cockle shells, further emphasising its marine theme. It will be argued that the iconography alludes to marine food resources, practical and luxury textile fibres, sea trade, transculturality and cult, and is testament to the importance of the sea in the Aegean Bronze Age.
The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies, 2019
See whole issue here, open access https://journals.equinoxpub.com/POM/issue/current
Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture
During the Aegean Bronze Age, the island of Crete was home to Minoan civilisation (3100–1300 BCE)... more During the Aegean Bronze Age, the island of Crete was home to Minoan civilisation (3100–1300 BCE). The Cretan landscape is characterised by prominent mountain ranges. During the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000 BCE) cult sites began to proliferate on mountain peaks as a response to climate change. Peak sanctuaries were locations of popular religious expression focussed on human, animal and environmental health and fertility. In the Neopalatial Period (1750–1490 BCE) peak sanctuary cult was appropriated by palatial elites and the Minoan cosmological framework, oriented towards mountains, was institutionalised. Analysis of the Minoan landscape, palatial art, architecture and ritual performance demonstrates a close association between elite figures and real and symbolic mountains. The metaphysical terrain of Crete was politicised as mountain symbolism was used to naturalise Neopalatial elite status and identity. The mountain form signified and symbolised power relations functioning as an instrument of elite ideology.
International Journal for the Study of New Religions, 2017
This paper examines the representation of Minoan Crete within the feminist Goddess Movement, sepa... more This paper examines the representation of Minoan Crete within the feminist Goddess Movement, separatist, feminist, Dianic Witchcraft, and the male only Minoan Brotherhood. Analysis and critique of the matriarchalist understanding of Minoan material culture by these groups demonstrates that it is interpreted in a highly ideological manner that has little to do with actual Minoan religion.
For the first half of the twentieth century and even up until quite recently Minoan religion has ... more For the first half of the twentieth century and even up until quite recently Minoan religion has been interpreted through an evolutionist lens. Glyptic iconography depicting ritual activity in conjunction with trees and stones has been considered evidence for the evolutionary trajectory of Minoan religion from an earlier “primitive” phase, characterised by aniconism, to a more sophisticated stage signified by anthropomorphism. In contrast, this article proposes that Minoan religion was simultaneously physiomorphic, theriomorphic and anthropomorphic. Through examination of the Minoan imagery of epiphany set within natural landscapes, in conjunction with comparative ethnographic analysis of cult activity and religious symbolism from the Levant and Egypt, it is determined that Minoan religion was a “nature” religion that was experienced through the mediation of elite human performance.
Cult scenes illustrated in miniature on administrative stone seals and metal signet rings from La... more Cult scenes illustrated in miniature on administrative stone seals and metal signet rings from Late Bronze Age Minoan Crete are commonly interpreted as “Epiphany Scenes” and have been called “shamanic.” “Universal shamanism” is a catch-all anthropological term coined to describe certain inferred ritual behaviours across widely dispersed cultures and through time. This study re-examines evidence for Minoan cultic practices in light of key tropes of “universal shamanism,” including consumption of psychoactive drugs, adoption of special body postures, trance, spirit possession, communication with supernatural beings, metamorphosis and the journey to other-worlds. It is argued that while existing characterisations of Minoan cult as “shamanic” are based on partial, reductionist and primitivist assumptions informed by neo-evolutionary comparative ethnologies, shamanism provides a dynamic framework for expanding understandings of Minoan cult. It is of course understood that while this study is a careful, informed analysis of the evidence, it is but one interpretation among others.
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Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture.
Modern Paganism is a new religious movement with a strong attachment to the past. Looking back th... more Modern Paganism is a new religious movement with a strong attachment to the past. Looking back through time to an often idealised ancient world, Pagans seek inspiration, validation and authorisation for present beliefs and activities as espoused in the familiar catch-cries of “tradition”, “lineage” and “historical authenticity”. A movement that consciously looks to the past and claims to revive the ancient religious practices of pre-Christian Europe, modern Paganism has always been dependent upon academic scholarship—particularly history, archaeology and anthropology—in its project of self-fashioning. Dependant primarily upon late nineteenth and early twentieth century scholarship, Pagans often vociferously reject more recent research, especially when it contradicts earlier findings, perceiving it as threatening to their structure of beliefs and sense of identity. Not only do the results of such scholarship traumatise Pagans—however unwittingly on the scholars’ part—in some cases it rebounds upon the researchers themselves when Pagans seek to traumatise the scholars, the “bearers of bad news”, in return.
This paper will present case studies which display the contested nature of the past by highlighting the combative interaction between Pagans and academic researchers at three types of site-as-stage: the text, the archaeological site and the museum, and explain how the performers fail to communicate as a result of speaking different “languages”. The paper will initially focus upon the frequently negative reception, by Witches, of recent historical research on modern Pagan Witchcraft. It will also look at Goddess Worshippers at Catalhoyuk in Turkey, as well as the “new indigene” prevalent in British Druidry and their involvement in the dispute regarding access to and interpretation of archaeological sites and museum objects. The paper will then discuss the infusion into Paganism of hybrid vigour through the activities of the Pagan Studies scholar, a researcher often in the role of participant-observer, who can function as a “go-between”, easing the sense of resentment by Pagans toward the perceived colonisation of their religion by “hackademics”.
This article investigates the story of Aleister Crowley’s reception of The Book of the Law in Cai... more This article investigates the story of Aleister Crowley’s reception of The Book of the Law in Cairo, Egypt, in 1904, focusing on the question of why it occurred in Egypt. The article contends that Crowley created this foundation narrative, which involved specifically incorporating an Egyptian antiquity from a museum, the “Stèle of Revealing,’” in Egypt because he was working within a conceptual structure that privileged Egypt as a source of Hermetic authority. The article explores Crowley’s synthesis of the romantic and scholarly constructions of Egypt, inherited from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as well as the uses that two prominent members of the Order made of Egyptological collections within museums. The article concludes that these provided Crowley with both a conceptual structure within which to legitimise his reformation of Golden Dawn ritual and cosmology, and a model of how to do so.
Read article here:
http://necropolisnow.blogspot.com.au/2016/10/erichtho-wicked-witch-of-west.html
Book Chapters by Caroline J . Tully
Chapter for The Blackwell Companion to Aegean Art and Architecture, edited by Louise Hitchcock an... more Chapter for The Blackwell Companion to Aegean Art and Architecture, edited by Louise Hitchcock and Brent Davis. (Forthcoming).
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Books by Caroline J . Tully
The book begins by exploring the life and times of Frazer himself and the writing of The Golden Bough in its cultural milieu. It then goes on to cover a wide range of topics, including: ancient Near Eastern religion and culture; Minoan religion and in particular the origins of notions of Minoan matriarchy; Frazer’s influence on the study of Graeco-Roman religion and magic; Frazer’s influence on modern Pagan religions; and the effects of Frazer’s works in modern culture and scholarship generally. Chapters examine how modern academia and beyond continues to be influenced by the otherwise discredited theories in The Golden Bough, ideas such as Sacred Marriage and the incessant Fertility of Everything. The book demonstrates how scholarship within the Humanities as well as practitioners of alternative religions and the common public remain under the thrall of Frazer over one hundred years since the publication of the abridged edition of The Golden Bough, and what we must do to shake off that influence.
A Century of James Frazer’s The Golden Bough is of interest to scholars and students from a wide range of disciplines, including Ancient History, History of Religion, Comparative Religion, Classical Studies, Archaeology, Historiography, Anthropology, Folklore, and Reception Studies.
PhD Thesis by Caroline J . Tully
Postgraduate Diploma Thesis by Caroline J . Tully
Journal Articles by Caroline J . Tully
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Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture.
This paper will present case studies which display the contested nature of the past by highlighting the combative interaction between Pagans and academic researchers at three types of site-as-stage: the text, the archaeological site and the museum, and explain how the performers fail to communicate as a result of speaking different “languages”. The paper will initially focus upon the frequently negative reception, by Witches, of recent historical research on modern Pagan Witchcraft. It will also look at Goddess Worshippers at Catalhoyuk in Turkey, as well as the “new indigene” prevalent in British Druidry and their involvement in the dispute regarding access to and interpretation of archaeological sites and museum objects. The paper will then discuss the infusion into Paganism of hybrid vigour through the activities of the Pagan Studies scholar, a researcher often in the role of participant-observer, who can function as a “go-between”, easing the sense of resentment by Pagans toward the perceived colonisation of their religion by “hackademics”.
Book Chapters by Caroline J . Tully
The book begins by exploring the life and times of Frazer himself and the writing of The Golden Bough in its cultural milieu. It then goes on to cover a wide range of topics, including: ancient Near Eastern religion and culture; Minoan religion and in particular the origins of notions of Minoan matriarchy; Frazer’s influence on the study of Graeco-Roman religion and magic; Frazer’s influence on modern Pagan religions; and the effects of Frazer’s works in modern culture and scholarship generally. Chapters examine how modern academia and beyond continues to be influenced by the otherwise discredited theories in The Golden Bough, ideas such as Sacred Marriage and the incessant Fertility of Everything. The book demonstrates how scholarship within the Humanities as well as practitioners of alternative religions and the common public remain under the thrall of Frazer over one hundred years since the publication of the abridged edition of The Golden Bough, and what we must do to shake off that influence.
A Century of James Frazer’s The Golden Bough is of interest to scholars and students from a wide range of disciplines, including Ancient History, History of Religion, Comparative Religion, Classical Studies, Archaeology, Historiography, Anthropology, Folklore, and Reception Studies.
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Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture.
This paper will present case studies which display the contested nature of the past by highlighting the combative interaction between Pagans and academic researchers at three types of site-as-stage: the text, the archaeological site and the museum, and explain how the performers fail to communicate as a result of speaking different “languages”. The paper will initially focus upon the frequently negative reception, by Witches, of recent historical research on modern Pagan Witchcraft. It will also look at Goddess Worshippers at Catalhoyuk in Turkey, as well as the “new indigene” prevalent in British Druidry and their involvement in the dispute regarding access to and interpretation of archaeological sites and museum objects. The paper will then discuss the infusion into Paganism of hybrid vigour through the activities of the Pagan Studies scholar, a researcher often in the role of participant-observer, who can function as a “go-between”, easing the sense of resentment by Pagans toward the perceived colonisation of their religion by “hackademics”.
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In The Throne in Art and Archaeology: From the Dawn of the Ancient Near East Until the Late Medieval Period. Liat Naeh and Dana Brostowsky Gilboa (eds.). International Series (OREA) published by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2020).
It is argued here that while both the Parisian mysteries of Isis and the Fellowship of Isis are historically-inaccurate syncretic constructions, they exemplify the enduring popularity of the Egyptian goddess Isis who since antiquity has been appropriated and re-fashioned in order to serve as a symbol of the zeitgeist. Already in Pharaonic and Roman Egypt, Isis was a universal goddess within whom other goddesses were subsumed. In subsequent centuries, so flexible was the figure of Isis that she was even claimed to have been a goddess of the Druids.
The tradition of an Egyptian origin of the peoples of Scotland and Ireland, as espoused in the medieval myth of the Egyptian princess Scota, legitimised the Mathers’s and the Durdin-Robertson’s claims of their ancient Egyptian priesthood. In addition to asserting that the Isis cult was brought by Scota, Pharaonic Egyptian, Graeco-Roman, Medieval, Hermetic, and Romantic literary and archaeological sources were utilised in order to construct their understanding of Isis. That Isis was recreated according to the abilities and concerns of the founders of the Parisian mysteries and the Fellowship of Isis is evident from examination of eye-witness reports of ritual performances, occult theatre, personal interviews, missives, and explanatory texts. It is determined that both groups favoured an ahistorical construction of the goddess as an eternal, mysterious, magical figure representative of universal harmony, unity and nature, which appealed to late-nineteenth and twentieth century Pagan sensibilities.
Neither the Parisian mysteries of Isis nor the Fellowship of Isis has been the focus of much critical scholarship to date, and the use of the medieval myth of Scota by these figures has never been analysed. This paper builds upon previous research on the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and contemporary Pagan religions, particularly the author’s examination of its prime movers; Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, Florence Farr, and Aleister Crowley; the Order’s utilisation of ancient Egyptian religion; and its influence on the emergence of the modern Pagan movement in the mid-twentieth century.
Keywords: Isis, Scota, Celts, occult theatre
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Conference paper for New Antiquities: Transformations of the Past in the New Age and Beyond. Published by Equinox, London (Forthcoming 2019).
Stepped cult structures such as shrines and openwork platforms, which may be sat upon by women or surmounted by trees, may have symbolised mountains and facilitated the replication of peak sanctuary ritual in an architecturally elaborated, possibly urban, setting. Interaction with baetyls may appropriate qualities of solidity and permanence, while also enhancing claims to status and authority through evoking ancestor veneration. Evidence of feasting in association with baetyls may suggest their function within programs of social cohesion and the naturalisation of hierarchy in which elites expressed status and generated ritual indebtedness through conspicuous generosity and display.
These elements of the Minoan sacred landscape will here be analysed through the lens of animism. In contrast with the influential primitivist evolutionary epistemology expounded by the Victorian comparative ethnologists, animism drawn from cultural anthropology posits a relational epistemology, in which a reflexive relatedness exists between people and the natural environment, which is perceived as being sentient. Rather than providing inert backdrops to ritual performance, the landscape is here reconfigured as sentient and numinous, functioning as a politicised, active agent in the enactment of power.
Close archaeological analysis of Minoan terrain, architecture, iconography and ritual practice demonstrates that the Minoans perceived a tripartite cosmological ontology founded in the natural world, and above all, oriented towards mountains. It will be argued that during the Cretan Neopalatial period (1750–1490 BCE) Minoan urban elites appropriated peak sanctuary cult and institutionalised this tripartite ontology. Manipulation of mountain symbolism became instrumental in the naturalisation of elite status and identity as Minoan elites positioned themselves as intermediaries between the populace and the (super)natural, and as the progenitors and arbiters of fertility and subsistence. Adopting the Peircean concept of replication, in which objects, places, and both built and natural forms are viewed as instantiations of social and cosmological ideals, the Minoan palaces themselves will be interpreted as sacred landscapes, instantiating the cosmological axis mundi in which Minoan elites occupied a mountainous seat of power within a sacred urban and natural meta-scape. The (meta)physical terrain of Minoan Crete became a politicised, active agent in the enactment of power.
The images on the ring bezels depict human figures in association with epiphanic figures situated in settings characterised by the presence of trees and stones, columnar shrines, stepped altars, openwork platforms, tripartite shrines and sanctuary walls, perhaps involving occasional rites and the erection and dismantling of temporary cult structures which can themselves be viewed as architectonic replications of rural cult sites and natural forms.
Just as the fabric of these rings and the artistry and technical skill of their production were of restricted accessibility and controlled distribution, we may infer that so, too, the rites, places and activities recorded on these rings were socially restricted. Possession of these distinctive and desirable objects of economic, cultural and symbolic value may have signified access to, involvement in and mastery over such rituals, the special status of the owner delineated and broadcast through the circulating media of clay sealings, advertising their special relationship with forces and places within nature.
Over time the personal and cultural memory, knowledge and associations accumulated within these rings may form histories or biographies of the rings themselves, implicating the identities of their past and present owners, and of the wider community. In this way, they can be understood as inalienable possessions, objects invested with authority and authenticity that in turn authenticate the status of their owners. These enduring symbols draw the past into the present, instantiating cultural and cosmological ideals which classify and objectify social relations through referencing the past.
Thus these rings function as mnemonic devices, palimpsests of memory, association and affect which store and transmit information about spatially and temporally disbursed places, people and events, memorialising and broadcasting elite association with the (super)natural world and forming part of the material affordances of the world of things which recursively produce, reiterate and transform identities through ecologies of practice: the past mediated in the present through memory materialised in objects.
[Kindly read at the conference by Louise A. Hitchcock
Now available here: https://12iccs.proceedings.gr/el/proceedings/category/38/32/381
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Conference paper for the panel “Greek Shamanism Reconsidered,” organised by Vayos Liapis (Open University of Crete) and Yulia Ustinova (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), at the Joint Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Archaeology and the Society for Classical Studies in New Orleans, 8‒11 January 2015.
24 Jul 2023 — 26 Apr 2024
Location: Old Quad, University of Melbourne
This exhibition provides a glimpse into life in the Greek and Roman worlds, through everyday, ritual and luxury objects from the University of Melbourne's Classics and Archaeology Collection. Guest curators Dr Tamara Lewit and Dr Caroline Tully, both Honorary Fellows in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, have chosen items that tell a fascinating story of the often-hidden lives of women, men, children, athletes and artisans, rich and poor, in the ancient world-including wine drinking, mourning the dead, and beauty routines. The Classics and Archaeology Collection is one of the cornerstones of object-based learning at the University of Melbourne. From the origins of the Collection in 1901 with the donation of five Egyptian papyri, it has played an important role in teaching and research. Now managed by the Museums and Collections department, it has continued to grow through donations and purchases to encompass over 300 objects, with significant holdings of Classical, Cypriot and Near Eastern material. The Classics and Archaeology teaching program at the University of Melbourne offers a multidisciplinary perspective on Egyptian, Near Eastern, Aegean, Greek and Roman civilisations and their interactions with each other and the wider Eurasian region from prehistory to late antiquity. It includes the study of archaeology, ancient society, politics, literature, myth and art, and Greek, Latin and Egyptian languages.
Reprint of the article in The Conversation on themes in the Mummymania exhibition at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne (until April 17 2016). Curated by Dr Andrew Jamieson, with curatorial assistant and researcher, Caroline Tully. https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/a-chance-to-unwrap-the-mystery-around-mummies
http://necropolisnow.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/feminist-archaeology-versus-goddess_20.html
http://necropolisnow.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/mola-salsa-sacred-flour-from-hearth-of.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQytym8Zx2o&ab_channel=DrawingDownTheStars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yMrOEzz3QU&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR0yCQIRtCxbqoBEu_4g6c88fZ1xFbybkK_UFv8OjUQIYWguw-uF8fOgu00
https://wildhunt.org/2018/07/pagan-scholarly-journal-to-focus-on-art-fashion.html
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildhunt/2012/03/the-wild-hunt-podcast-episode-1-paganicon-and-pagan-scholarship.html
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PhD Completion Seminar - Ancient World Seminar Series, University of Melbourne, Australia. 28 April 2015.