Borders: Terminologies, Ideologies, and Performances

What are the relevant conceptualities and terminologies marking political, cultural, cultic, or religious borders and border zones? What terms represent border or border zones and what did they signify in antiquity? In this volume, an international group of archaeologists, classicists, historians, and biblical scholars investigates various terms, performances, and qualities of borders, and ideologies of boundaries in antiquity. Their primary focus is on physical borders and border zones of political organizations as well as of sanctuaries and houses, and on borderlines which can be experienced in demarcations and their relevance for religious life. The contributions also discuss instances where definitions of external borders are renounced altogether and states are organized from the center toward the outer margins, for example, with the sub-divisions of a given territory remaining undefined. And they look into trans-boundary social relationships, investigated on the basis of archaeological finds and textual sources, and their significance for the transfer of knowledge.