10/5/21, 5:17 PM Beyond the polis: rituals, rites and cults in early and archaic Greece (12th-6th centuries BC) – Bryn Mawr Classical Review https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2021/2021.09.36/ 1/6 BMCR Bryn Mawr Classical Review BMCR 2021.09.36 Beyond the polis: rituals, rites and cults in early and archaic Greece (12th-6th centuries BC) Irene Lemos, Athéna Tsingarida, Beyond the polis: rituals, rites and cults in early and archaic Greece (12th-6th centuries BC). Études d'archéologie, 15. Bruxelles: CReA- Patrimoine, 2019. Pp. 302. ISBN 9782960202922 €80,00. Review by Megan Daniels, University of British Columbia. fortunar@mail.ubc.ca [Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.] Much scholarship on the study of ancient Greek religion in the last 10 to 15 years has been devoted to understanding how religion was practiced and understood beyond the physical and conceptual boundaries of the polis, which until recently had tended to dominate and delineate our understanding of Greek religion. [1] New approaches include the use of network analyses to characterize the fluid shape of religious beliefs and practices across the ancient Mediterranean [2] and the concept of lived ancient religion. [3] Yet, as one of the contributors to this volume notes, there remains a division between “classical Greek religion,” with its relatively robust dataset, and “Aegean prehistory hamstrung by a rapidly growing but very partially understood dataset,” (53) whose earlier practitioners crystallized problematic models and assumptions about religious practice in these periods without the necessary theoretical toolkits. Beyond the polis is, therefore, an important step towards alleviating this imbalance between “classical Greek religion” and earlier periods, as well as between theoretical approaches and a blossoming Early Iron Age dataset, which includes not only traditional archaeological remains, but new studies into zooarchaeology, palaeoethnobotany, and other organic vestiges that were hitherto understudied. This volume resulted from an international conference in Brussels in 2015 as part of a joint project between the University of Oxford and the Université libre de Bruxelles entitled “Beyond the polis. Ritual practices and the construction of social identities in Early and Archaic Greece (12 -6 centuries BC).” It follows a shorter volume, published in 2017, that featured the work of three former post-doctoral students working under this joint project. The aim of the conference and current volume, as the editors describe, is “to offer complementary approaches, both thematic and geographic, to the study of early Greek ritual practices and to expand into other areas, contexts, and materials the research undertaken in the [first volume].” (9) th th