CONTENTS

List of Contributors

Preface

1.  Introduction: Investigating archaeological approaches to the study of religious practices and beliefs

Nicola Laneri

PART I
SACRED NATURE

2.  Animal burials and their cults in Margiana

Nadezhda Dubova

3.  Identifying sacrifice in Bronze Age Near Eastern iconography

Laerke Recht

4.  Cult and the rise of desert pastoralism: a case study from the Negev

Steve A. Rosen

5.  Thoughts on material expressions of cultic practice. Standing stone monuments of the Early Bronze Age in the southern Levant

Ann Andersson

6.  Late Chalcolithic Mesopotamia: towards a definition of sacred space and its evolution

Pascal Butterlin

PART II
HOUSING THE GOD

7.  A sanctuary, or so fair a house? In defense of an archaeology of cult at Pre-Pottery Neolithic Göbekli Tepe

Olivier Dietrich and Jens Notroff

8.  Where to worship? Religion in Iron II Israel and Judah

Beth Alpert Nakhai

9.  Communal places of worship: Ritual activities and ritualised ideology during the Early Bronze Age Jezirah

Stefano Valentini

10.  Open spaces around the temples and their ritual use: archaeological evidence from the Bronze and Iron Age Levant

Stefania Mazzoni

11.  Ritual circumambulations in the Syro-Mesopotamian cuneiform texts

Amalia Catagnoti

12.  A temple lifecycle: rituals of construction, restoration, and destruction of some ED Mesopotamian and Syrian sacred buildings

Licia Romano

PART III
THE MATERIALISATION OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND PRACTICES

13.  Religion as practice in Neolithic societies

Trevor Watkins

14.  Casting the sacred: Chalcolithic metallurgy and ritual in the southern Levant

Milena Gosic and Isaac Gilead

15.  How better understanding of ritual practices can help the comprehension of religious feelings

Laura Battini

16.  Archaeological correlates of pious societies

Daniel Snell