Dr. Shannon Dunn
Bryn Mawr College
"Cairns to Caryatids: Sanctuaries at Territorial Borders in the Ancient Greek Peloponnese"
Dr. Shannon Dunn"Cairns to Caryatids: Sanctuaries at Territorial Borders in the Ancient Greek Peloponnese"
Dr. Dunn will be joining our Stanford AIA Chapter on Friday, February 27 at 7:00pm, Archaeology Center, Stanford University
Reception to follow.
Lecture is free and open to the public.
The boundary zones between ancient Greek city-states were landscapes where many “marginal” or fraught activities could potentially occur — from adolescent initiation rites to military conflict — but also where daily life mostly happened as usual for shepherds, beekeepers, and many settlements situated close to the borders. Sanctuaries located in border zones have long been considered in scholarship as assertions of central polis ownership over distant territory, where they were sometimes used as boundary landmarks. The first half of this talk considers the immediate landscapes of border sanctuaries across the Peloponnese, and the communities which they served — whether as cult locales for local populations, meeting places for communities across borders, or as pilgrimage sites for visitors from poleis near and far, even if in mountainous or seemingly remote locations. Different expressions of border zone religious life will be presented from across the Archaic to Roman eras, considering the physical environment and topography, associated myths, political histories, and material evidence for cult practices. The second half of the talk will focus on one border town at the edge of Lakonia and Arkadia, and how the ancient landmarks, cult practices, and myths associated with this religious border zone have affected modern life and identity in the area.
Dr. Dunn is currently the Editorial Assistant for the American Journal of Archaeology. Her research focuses on the relationships between religious spaces, cult practices, and the natural landscape (and seascapes), especially in the pre-Roman Peloponnese. She received her PhD (2024) from the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr, with a dissertation on border sanctuaries throughout the archaic and classical Peloponnese. She has excavated and surveyed throughout the eastern Mediterranean, and is currently a member of the Bays of East Attica Regional Survey (BEARS) and the Lab Manager for the Southern Mani Archaeological Project.
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