About this ebook
In certain circumstances, parts of selected humans can become an ideal proxy for connecting with the supernatural, as demonstrated by the cult of human skulls in Near Eastern Neolithic communities, as well as the cult of relics of Christian saints from the early Christian era.
To go deeper into this topic, this volume aims to undertake a cross-cultural investigation of the role played by both humans and human remains in creating forms of relationality with the divine in antiquity. Such an approach will highlight how the human body can be envisioned as part of a broader materialization of religious beliefs that is based on connecting different realms of materiality in the perception of the supernatural by communities of the living.
About the author
Nicola Laneri teaches Archaeology and Art History of the Ancient Near East at University of Catania. Since 2003, he is the director of the Hirbemerdon Tepe Archaeological Project. In 2000, he was nominated Fulbright Research Scholar at the Dept. of Anthropology of the University of Columbia. In 2005, he acted as a Research Fellow at Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. During his career, he published more than 80 scientific articles and books among which stand Archeologia della morte (Carocci 2011), Biografia di un vaso (Pandemos 2009), I costumi funerari della media vallata dell'Eufrate durante il III millennio a.C. (L'Orientale 2004), and the edited volumes Performing Death: The Social Analysis of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean (Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago 2007), Looking north: The socioeconomic dynamics of northern Mesopotamian and Anatolian regions during the late third and early second millennium BC (Harrassowitz 2012)
