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Why are some things valuable while others are not? How much effort
does it take to produce valuable objects? How can one explain the
different appraisal of certain things in different temporal
horizons and in different cultures? Cultural processes on how value
is attached to things, and how value is re-established, are still
little understood. The case studies in this volume, originating
from anthropology and archaeology, provide innovative and
differentiated answers to these questions. However, for all
contributions there are some common basic assumptions. One of these
concerns the understanding that it is rarely the value of the
material itself that matters for high valuation, but rather the
appreciation of the (assumed or constructed) origin of certain
objects or their connection with certain social structures. A
second of these shared insights addresses the ubiquity of phenomena
of 'value in things'. There is no society without valued objects.
As a rule, valuation is something negotiated or even disputed.
Value arises through social action, whereby it is always necessary
to ask anew which actors are interested in the value of certain
objects (or in their appreciation). This also works the other way
round: Who are those actors who question corresponding objective
values and why?
Cultural records such as dedications, honorific statues and decrees
are keys to understanding the manifold and diverse social roles and
religious functions of priesthoods in the cities of Asia Minor and
the Aegean islands from the classical period to late antiquity.
These texts and images indicate how the priests and priestesses saw
themselves and were viewed by others. The approaches in this volume
are historical, religious, and archaeological, and they elucidate
the religious functions that the cult personnel fulfilled for the
city, and the perception of priests and priestesses as citizens of
the polis. The volume focuses on developments from the Hellenistic
period into Imperial times. Subjects include: gendered priesthoods
and family traditions, the topography of honorary statues and the
presentation of funerary monuments, federal and civic priesthoods
as well as priests of private cult-foundations, benefactions and
social pressure, and the religious, social and political functions
of priests and priestesses within cities.
Images and inscriptions on monuments can show us how priests and
cult personnel saw themselves and were viewed by others,
illuminating the social and political identity of these figures
within their polis. Dedications and donations by cult personnel,
and the honours that they earned, demonstrate their claim on the
city's attention and their financial power. The cityscape itself
came to be shaped, in varying intensities and forms, by statues in
honour of cult personnel, set up by relatives, fellow citizens and
other groups. This set of cultural records, analysed in the studies
presented here, is central to understanding how the roles of
priests and priestesses were constructed in social and political
terms in post-classical Athens. The approaches are both historical
and archaeological, and elucidate the religious functions that the
cult personnel fulfilled for the city, and their perception, by
themselves and by others, as citizens of the polis.
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