Crafting for the Gods: Cult, Production, and Technological Identities

The contributors investigate the entangled nature of craft production and cult in the 2nd-1st millennia BCE eastern Mediterranean, Levant and Egypt. They reveal the ways ritual practices and technological knowledge shaped one another, illuminating the dynamic interplay between cultic ideologies, the production of goods, and materiality.

Cult and craft production are two central and deeply intertwined dimensions of ancient societies. Although often examined in isolation, their interaction offers crucial insight into how communities articulated social identities and constructed cultural meaning. Approaching cult and craft in tandem reveals the ways ritual practices and technological knowledge shaped one another, illuminating how objects were produced, circulated, and appropriated meaning within their broader social worlds. Studying this relationship, however, poses significant challenges. Both ritual activity and craft practice can be archaeologically elusive, leaving their intersections understudied or relegated to passing comment. The contributors to this volume address these gaps by examining cult and craft production as mutually influential spheres across the eastern Mediterranean, the Levant, Egypt, and beyond during the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE. By integrating archaeological and textual scholarship with theoretical perspectives, they reconsider how ritual and production were embedded within wider economic, social, and ideological systems. Moving beyond the restrictive paradigm of “sacred economies,” the contributors highlight the deeply integrated nature of the production of goods and ritual practice, connections often obscured by time and disciplinary boundaries.

Part I: Ideologies in the Craft Production Sphere: Theory, Materiality, and Practice
Heide Wrobel Nørgaard: From Theory to Reality: A Review of Craft Theory and a New Approach to the Investigation of Individuals in Prehistoric Crafts - Rüdiger Schmitt: Ritual Practices Associated to Production in Workshops and Domestic Spaces in the Bronze and Iron Ages - William D. Snyder & Patrick Cuthbertson: Before There Were Gods: Reasoning about Paleolithic Behavior and Cognition through Materials - Nicole Callaway: Morphology Matters: A Case Study of the Multifunctionality of the Southwest Canaan Clay Figurines during the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age - Daniel Sánchez Muñoz: Fashioning a Kettle for an Ancient Mesopotamian Cultic Drum - James D. Moore: A Farm to Table Approach: A Case Study Using Documentary Textual Evidence to Reconstruct the Chain of Production and Processing of Cucumbers/Melons/Gourds (Aramaic QṬYN)
Part II: Archaeological Encounters of Craft Production and Cult: Case Studies in the Southern Levant, Egypt, and the Eastern Mediterranean
Gabriele Albers: "Crafting for the God(s)" in the Middle and Late Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean: Evidence, Interpretations, Case Studies in the Southern Levant, Cyprus, Aegean - Jon Ross, Kent D. Fowler, Itzhaq Shai: Profiling Canaanite Potters Using Fingerprints from a Cultic Enclosure at Tel Burna - Johannes Auenmüller: In Great Demand: The Production and Deposition of Bronze Osiris Figures in 1st Millennium BCE Egypt and Beyond - Shoshana R. Guterman, Shira Albaz, Aren M. Maeir: Tuning into the Past: The Evidence of Music in Philistine Cult - Erin Hall: Ritual, Ritualization, and the Craft Economy of the Northern Kingdom of Israel - Laura Wörner and Jakob Kempendorf: Planting for the God(s)? Studies on Agriculture and Grain Production during the Iron Age in the Southern Levant - Abra Spiciarich: Intersection of Craft and Sacrifice in Late Hellenistic Jerusalem

• Edited by Shira Albaz
• Edited by Laura Gonnermann
• Edited by Vanessa Workman