The Spread and Adaptations of the Late Antique Cult of Mary : A GIS Approach to its Evidence
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| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | One of the things that geographical analysis can help us with is the study of the spread of individual cults and their interrelationships within the context of a premodern literary society. Inscriptions, depictions, or passages from literary sources can be conceptualized as geographical data whose analysis can be used to identify broader trends in cult activity. This paper presents a spatial proximity analysis of datasets representing the cults of Graeco-Roman gods, the cults of Late Antique Christian saints, and various aspects of the Late Antique cult of Mary during different phases of its spread. This approach can reveal many regional specifics of the cult of Mary, a gradual and divergent spread of its various characteristics, and especially its diverse geographical proximity to some other cults, both pagan and Christian. Special attention is paid to its proximity to the cult of Isis, a Graeco-Roman goddess of Egyptian origin, testing the traditional art-historical hypothesis about the continuity of functions between these two cults. |
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