We are pleased to announce a Call for Papers for the session « Women, Sacred Landscapes, and Ritual Mobility in the Ancient Mediterranean. » The session will be part of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in 2026 in Athens in Greece, August 26-29. Thank you for sharing and for consideration! The deadline to submit your paper proposal for our session is Thursday, 5 February 2026.

The session explores the intersections of gender, movement and sacred space in the ancient Mediterranean by foregrounding women’s active engagement with religious space and cult. Across diverse cultural and ethnic contexts, women carried out acts of devotion that transcended domestic boundaries and reshaped religious environments. For this session, we seek papers examining the impact of female agency on the formation of votive and cult practices beyond household and town settings, from peri-urban sanctuaries and cave shrines to sacred centers and distant dedication sites.

We welcome papers that explore women’s religious identities, practices and offerings and the social roles through which women negotiated agency and community membership. While the ancient Greek world is central, papers addressing other Mediterranean contexts or cross-cultural interactions are also encouraged. Of particular interest are expressions of women’s ritual agency along routes of colonization, maritime trade, warfare, migration and refugee movement, and enslavement — contexts where ritual ex-votos circulated across cultural spheres and in which devotion may have intersected with obligation, secrecy or despair. Contributions should consider the material, textual, and iconographic evidence with special emphasis on the embodied ritual practice.

Interdisciplinary approaches drawing on anthropology, art history, religious studies, and ancient history are welcome to illuminate how women’s activity intersected with dedication journeys and cross-cultural exchange. Ultimately, this session seeks to reassess the gendered dimensions of ancient cult and move beyond traditional male-centered or binary interpretive frameworks. It seeks to highlight women both independently and in conjunction with men sustaining cult traditions. By tracing the relationship between female devotion, space and mobility, we gain insight into networks of gendered power and memory that shaped a connected religious world through women’s ritual presence and movement.

Session Organizers: Alex Nagel (New York City, USA); Stella Katsarou (Athens, Greece), Agathi Karadima (Athens, Greece)

Source : H-Soz-Kult