Session organisers / Chairpersons:
Nadežda Gavrilović Vitas, Senior Research Associate, Institute of Archaeology (E-mail: n.gavrilovic
Martin Henig, Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Classics, Oxford.
Inscriptions, reliefs, cults both in civilian settlements and forts. Burial rites, cemeteries, death and afterlife.
Epigraphic and archaeological material represent the main sources for insight into religious life and beliefs of Roman army, situated in numerous localities along the Limes frontiers. This session proposes to analyse and interpret different aspects of various spheres of religious and spiritual life of Roman soldiers – official dedications made to Roman emperor and beliefs in connection to the imperial cult, more private dedications to gods in whom soldiers individually believed and considered as their protectors, the degree of the acceptance or resistance to Roman deities, the degree of conservatism and syncretism of indigenous deities with similar Roman ones, cult practices, different cultural influences (from other cultures, provinces etc.), the degree of influence of official ideology to beliefs of Roman soldiers, the role of soldiers in distribution of certain cults etc. In connection to religious beliefs of Roman soldiers is closely connected the sphere of life after death, burial rites and beliefs that can be perceived in different ways of burials of the dead ones, the various grave goods found in tombs and personal beliefs of dedicants for the dead ones, which can be observed in the texts and iconography of funerary monuments. Therefore, all the papers dealing with the various aspects of religion and religious beliefs in Roman army, sanctuaries or sacred places, burials and different beliefs in life after death, mystery religions and the appearance of Christianity as well, new results from excavations, finds and research, are more than welcome to be presented and fully discussed in all its variety.
Confirmed participants for this session:
- Nadežda Gavrilović Vitas: The Cult of God Mithras on Roman Danube Limes in Lower Pannonia and Upper Moesia
- Ozren Domiter: Understanding the Cult of the Danube Horseman: New Approaches
- Ljubica Perinić: What are we missing? On the invisibility of Silvanus Orientalis
- Ivan Radman-Livaja: New evidence for the worship of Epona on the Danubian limes
- Ljubiša Vasiljević: Archaeological monuments of Silvanus and his cult community (Mars, Diana, “woodland deities”) in part of Danube limes in Serbia
- Tatiana Ivleva: Embodied religion: Norico-Pannonian gestural language on funerary monuments
- Nicolay Sharankov: Local cults for Roman use: The sanctuary of Dominus Plester and Diana Plestrensis
- Tomasz Dziurdzik: Expressing regional and professional religious identities in Roman army: the case of female cavalry “sports” helmets
- Carsten Wenzel: Votum solvit! – Sanctifications of military personal and a new sacred area in Roman Nida (Frankfurt am Main-Heddernheim)
- Csaba Szabó: Religion in the making in Roman Dacia: space sacralisation and religious appropriation on the frontiers of the Empire
- Catherine Leisser: Ritual Artefacts: Right or Wrong?
Posters related to this session:
- Dan Augustin Deac: The Materiality of Religion in the Civilian Settlement of Porolissum (Roman Dacia)
- Lajos Juhász, István Vida: Perforated coins from the Aquincum-Graphisoft cemetery