Forsaken Relics: Practices and Rituals of Appropriating Abandoned Artifacts from Antiquity to Modern Times

Uses case studies to examine the social context and cultural and political management of appropriating abandoned objects and assets.Forsaken Relics is the result of an interdisciplinary dialogue between history, archaeology, and ethnography on the topic of the appropriation of disputed goods and places. Scholars with diverse backgrounds convened to address this common challenge: how different societies in time and space managed to claim and re-appropriate alleged ‘abandoned’ or ‘ownerless’ goods or things ‘in ruin’.The volume includes a diverse range of case studies – from Neolithic sites in Eastern Europe to ancient Egypt and the Mediterranean, encompassing early modern and present-day Europe – reflecting on the ways in which actions can be used to legitimise appropriation, with a particular focus on ritual actions and practices.The objective of this book is to stimulate comparative analysis of this topic in both ancient and modern societies, by identifying the actors of appropriation, examining the definition of abandonment, and exploring the ritual aspects intrinsic in actions such as inventorying, dedication and communication to ancestors, and prayers to gods. Ritual actions, in the last instance, were designed to legitimise the reappropriation and resignification of places and goods classified as abandoned or in a state of ruin, and to recreate locality, kinship, and communities.

About the Author

Alessandro Buono is associate professor of early modern history at the University of Pisa. He completed his PhD at the University of Florence and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship at the EHESS in Paris. His research focuses on the relationships between personal identity and ownership regimes in early modern Europe and the Spanish Empire. Gianluca Miniaci is Associate Professor in Egyptology at the University of Pisa, Honorary Researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL – London, and Chercheur associé at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris. He is currently co-director of the archaeological mission at Zawyet Sultan (Menya, Egypt) and principal investigator for four large national projects. His main research interests focus on the social history of ancient Egypt, the dynamics of material culture in the Eastern Mediterranean between Egypt, the Levant, Aegean, and Nubia in the Middle Bronze Age, and the global and comparative history and archaeology. Anna Anguissola is associate professor of Classical Archaeology and the director of the Plaster Casts and Antiquities Collection at the University of Pisa. Her research focuses on urban development, the history and techniques of ancient sculpture, and the relationship between Greek and Roman art. As a field archaeologist, she coordinates projects in Pompeii and in Hierapolis of Phrygia (Turkey).