Abstract
Votive offerings are the durable remains of the largely lost dialogue between worshipper and deity. Due to the scarceness of cult-specific literary evidence, they are the main source for gaining information about the reasons why they were dedicated, and they may provide insight into cult and socio-economical aspects of the ancient world.
Spanning from the eastern to the western pre-Roman Mediterranean, bronze offerings or scraps thereof appear to have been one of the most suitable ways to approach the divine.Votive bronzes have been traditionally catalogued and studied with the purpose to gain insight into the social economical social status of their dedicant and the possible deities to whom they were dedicated. However, in the past decade new studies have challenged previous interpretation of the votives and put forth new ways to approach the study of bronzes.
They have focused on the contextual analysis of votive assemblages and considered the presence of bronze objects, metal scraps, and fragmented objects to address broader issues of community identity, individual agency, and trade.The proposed panel brings together scholars working on bronze offerings in different parts of the ancient Mediterranean during the first millennium BCE. Papers in this panel will explore not only new findings, but also new attitudes and approaches tothe study of votive bronzes as evidence for religious practices and social dynamics, their continuity from earlier periods, and their changes through time and space.