The AMNE department is pleased to announce the publication of Data Science, Human Science, and Ancient Gods: Conversations in Theory & Method, co-edited by UBC assistant professor of ancient Greek material culture, Dr. Megan Daniels, and Dr. Sandra Blakely of Emory University. Warm congratulations to Dr. Daniels and all the contributors!
According to Lockwood Press, the book’s publisher,
The studies in this volume share a focus on religion in the ancient Mediterranean world: How ritual, myth, spectatorship, and travel reflect the continual interaction of human beings with the richly fictive beings who defined the boundaries of groups, access to the past, and mobility across land and seascapes. They share as well the methodological exploration of the intersection between human sciences—the integration of numerous disciplines around the study of all aspects of human life from the biological to the cultural—and the study of the past. In so doing, they continue a long dialogue that engages with critical models derived from specializations within history, philology, archaeology, sociology, and anthropology, and addresses, increasingly, the potentialities and pitfalls of quantitative and digital analyses. Many of the threads in this long conversation inform these chapters: the comparative project, human social evolution, disciplinary reflexivity, religion as an embedded, functional, and structural system, and the role for agency, networks, and materiality.
To purchase a copy of the book or learn more about its contributors, visit Lockwood Press’ website.
The featured image for this post is an Archaic Greek, Chalcedony scaraboid that can be found here, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection.
