The field of (early) Christian archaeology has a long tradition, stretching back all the way to Giovanni Battista de Rossi and his foundational work on the catacombs of Rome. The organisation of the field appears from the international conferences held at irregular intervals since 1894, the last one at Utrecht/Nijmegen, The Netherlands, in 2018. And yet, this discipline has undergone significant changes in the last couple of decades, with the rise of New Archaeology, and several further developments in its wake such as landscape archaeology, and the paradigm shift in late antique studies, resulting in the new subdiscipline of late antique archaeology, shaking up traditionally held concepts, approaches and methods, not least the text-based approach that was so characteristic of earlier scholarship. This Oxford handbook takes the opportunity to provide an updated state of the field.
The book opens with an introductory chapter by two of the editors (Caraher and Pettegrew) giving a (very brief) overview of the discipline, which is here taken to cover the first eight centuries of our era, and some of the recent trends in the field, discussed in a slightly artificial way in five time frames (30–150, 150–300, 300–75, 375–575 and 575–800 ce; note that Peter Brown is emphatically associated with the last time range, which does not do justice to the much wider scope of this scholar's work which covers the whole of late antiquity). It is followed by thirty-three chapters, divided into four parts, ‘The Archaeology of Ancient Christianity’, ‘Sacred Space and Mortuary Contexts’, ‘Art and Artifacts in Context’ and ‘Christian Archaeology in Regional Perspective’.
The first part consists of only two chapters. They deal with a traditional branch of Christian (and Biblical) archaeology, New Testament archaeology. Chapter ii (J. F. Strange) focuses on the world of the Gospels and chapter iii (T. W. Davis) on the one beyond the Gospels, especially Greece and Asia Minor.
With the second part starts a series of useful overviews of Christian structures and buildings, chapter iv (V. Fiocchi Nicolai) on the catacombs, which besides the famous ones in Rome also covers those in other places such as Naples and Syracuse, chapter v (D. L. Eastman) on martyria, chapter vi (S. C. Fox and P. Tritsaroli) on Christian burial, presenting data from Greece, Cyprus, Palestine and Asia Minor, chapter vii (C. A. Stewart) on churches, where the description at p. 137 of ‘pagan practices’ at temple sites is somewhat fanciful, chapter viii (D. Brooks Hedstrom) on monastic archaeology, highlighting recent research in this area from Anatolia, Gaza, Egypt and Ireland/Scotland, chapter ix on baptisteries (H. R. Rutherford) and chapter x (D. Forrest) on baths in late antiquity, for which – as remarked on p. 190 – a comprehensive study is still lacking.
In the third part we move on to a series of presentations of Christian art and artifacts, and artwork in Christian contexts. Chapter xi (F. Bisconti), on art in the Christian catacombs, pairs well with the earlier chapter iv of Fiocchi Nicolai. In chapter xii (G. Noga-Banai), on reliquaries, though providing an interesting overview of the material, the division in depictions of martyrs and holy sites seems a bit forced (cf. also the author's own remark on the division at p. 222) and to try to fit into a dual mould a much larger variety of representations (e.g. various biblical scenes discussed at pp. 227–8). Chapter xiii (G. Peers) is a bit of an outlier compared with the rest, as it does not provide a straightforward survey of icons, but rather presents some, in themselves no doubt stimulating, thoughts arising from a single object, a sixth/seventh-century icon with a warrior saint from Egypt in the Menil Collection, Houston. Chapter xiv (J. M. Frey) rightly argues that spolia, the reuse of architectural elements in Christian buildings, should no longer be regarded as signs of the ‘triumph of Christianity’ but should rather be seen, just as with the related topic of ‘temple conversion’ (well described at pp. 262–4), in terms of a ‘diversity of reuse practices’ (pp. 259, 264). Given that scholarship has long moved past outdated notions of ‘Christian triumph’, one wonders why it is still included in the chapter's title, even if between quotes. There follow useful chapters (chs xv–xvii) on mosaics (K. C. Britt), pottery (R. S. Moore) and lamps (M. Parani). Chapter xviii (T. M. Kristensen) addresses a similar shift in scholarship to the one described in chapter xiv away from an interpretation defined by the rhetoric of the Christian sources towards a more nuanced understanding of how statues were perceived in late antiquity, highlighting a diversity of responses to them. The last chapter in this part, chapter xix (R. H. Cline), gives an idea of the variety of Christian elements on late antique amulets.
In the fourth part, the book diversifies considerably by providing overviews of Christian archaeology in different areas: Palestine (ch. xx; J. E. Taylor), Jordan (ch. xxi; R. Schick), Syria (ch. xxii; E. Loosley), including some sobering reflections on the future of archaeological work in the area at pp. 427–8, the Church of the East (ch. xxiii; S. R. Hauser), Armenia (ch. xxiv; C. Maranci), Cyprus (ch. xxv; J. M. Gordon and W. R. Caraher), Asia Minor (ch. xxvi; P. Talloen), Greece (ch. xxvii; R. Sweetman), the Balkans (ch. xxviii; W. Bowden), Italy and the Iberian Peninsula (chs xxix, xxxii; both A. C. Arnau), Gaul (ch. xxx; B. Lefebvre), Britain and Ireland (ch. xxxi; D. Petts), North Africa (ch. xxxiii; S. T. Stevens) and Egypt (ch. xxxiv; D. Brooks Hedstrom).
All in all, this handbook provides an extensive overview of Christian material culture, especially in late antiquity (fourth-seventh centuries), and how to approach it. The decision to include overviews of different geographical areas is especially commendable and in line with recent trends in late antique archaeology focusing on regional case studies. Throughout the book, a main theme is also the problematic nature of the (Christian) literary sources, which have been so influential in past generations of scholarship, especially in connection with the field of Christian archaeology. Since we now have a well-established (sub)discipline of late antique archaeology, which tends to have a wider scope in looking at the entire archaeological record of this period, one may well wonder whether ‘Christian archaeology’ has a future, and if so, in what form; some more reflections on this issue beyond the fleeting ones in the introduction would have been in order. Throughout the book, one also notes a certain looseness in the terminology used, such as ‘pagan’/‘paganism’, which is employed throughout without qualification or even quotation marks. None the less, due to its vast coverage this book will be a useful reference work for scholars and students of various backgrounds.
