Godscapes: towards a model of material religion in the second millennium BCE Levant via Semantic Web ontologies

Nicola Laneri, Chiara Pappalardo, Marianna Nicolosi-Asmundo, Daniele Francesco Santamaria

«Archeologia e Calcolatori» 2024, 35.2, 363-370; doi: 10.19282/ac.35.2.2024.38

Abstract

‘Godscapes’ proposes to combine a material approach with the Semantic Web to investigate cultural transformation and, specifically, how external elements trigger the transformation of religiosity, resulting in new hybrid elements. Focusing on a case-study on the Levant during the second millennium BCE, the project investigates the interplay between indigenous and exogenous elements (Egyptian, Syrian, Mesopotamian, Aegean, Anatolian) in shaping polytheistic beliefs and practices through the analysis of four types of data – funerary, architectural, iconographic and textual. Thus, the project addresses a new scientific perspective emphasizing the use of material culture to understand the connection between humans and the divine. The focus is on the unravelling of past religious hybridization to grasp how the second millennium cultural and religious intermingling persisted in the syncretic experience leading to the construction of the Israelite monolatry in the first millennium BCE.

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