Modelling the Dynamics of the Spread of Earliest Christianity: The Search for Suitable Proxies
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The absence of direct archaeological evidence is a major obstacle to the study of the spread of early Christianity in its formative phases (30-150 AD). Analyses of the surviving written sources – however insightful – always provide only a fragmentary picture that allows only deductive reconstructions of more general processes. Geospatial modelling and network analysis methods may offer some solution to this tension. These quantitative approaches conceptualize the spread of early Christianity as a transmission on a global network of Mediterranean cities shared by all ancient populations, including Christian ones. With respect to the limited explanatory value of written sources, the project examines appropriate proxies that reflect analogous processes that may have accompanied the spread of Christianity. These are primarily contemporary Jewish networks and the distribution of eastern sigillata pottery. On their basis, different models of the diffusivity of ancient cities are constructed and evaluated against the preserved evidence of earliest Christianity. |
| Related projects: |