Mr Alex Heath

(he/him)

BA and MA (Cardiff)

This project will examine how forms of communal commensality at sanctuary sites in late-eighth – fifth centuries BCE (c.735-401 BCE) Boiotia allowed for the negotiation of local, collective, and regional levels of belonging and expression. Through doing so, the role commensality played in the political and social negotiations of communities will be illuminated, providing greater clarity surrounding the actors involved, how practices changed, and why. This project will re-analyse material using an interdisciplinary approach, placing archaeological, epigraphic, and literary material within a dynamic social and cultural context. Through employing such an integrated analysis, this project will depart from the one-dimensional emphasis directed toward the study of Boiotian cultic practice. Through the re-analysis of votive assemblages, epigraphic material and by re-investigating archaeological material/sites using modern processes, a full and extensive body of material for practical study will be generated. These analyses will ultimately result in a comprehensive and modern approach of crucial periods, dynamics and processes experienced by votive communities in late-eighth – fifth centuries BCE Boiotia. This research will aim to display how communities at local, regional, and collective levels employed votive and commensality practices as tools for social, political, and cultural negotiation in a time of social complexity and political tension.