This is the third edited volume resulting from a major collaborative research project on sacred travel in the ancient Mediterranean directed by Kristensen. The authors are from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, including Classics, archaeology, theology and sociology.

Part 1, consisting of three chapters, deals directly with methodological approaches. The editors advocate for ‘methodological comparativism’ and set out their new agenda that ‘sees pilgrimage as a method or unifying theory of religious movement, specifically to bring together different scales of analysis that are typically not discussed alongside each other, such as “place” and “motion”, “site” and “landscape”, “sanctuary” and “household”’ (p. 17). They argue eloquently for the interrelationship of movement and space, drawing on the ‘New Mobilities paradigm’ from sociology, and they illustrate this effectively in a brief case study of movement through the Propylon at the Asklepieion of Epidaurus.

In Part 1 D. Frankfurter argues strongly for the wholesale abandonment of the term ‘pilgrimage’ for antiquity, preferring instead ‘shrine visitation’. This position was also advocated by S. Scullion in Elsner and Rutherford's foundational work on classical pilgrimage (I. Rutherford and J. Elsner [edd.], Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman & Early Christian Antiquity: Seeing the Gods [2005]), and it is notable that discomfort with the term persists. One of Frankfurter's main objections, in common with Scullion, is that the term is typically understood to imply the spiritual importance of the journey as well as of the destination and that such an emphasis is not borne out by the evidence from antiquity. He also puts forward an objection that is very much of the moment: the use of a model of pilgrimage as a romanticised, transformational journey is ethically dubious today when it is refugees in extremis who undertake liminal, dangerous journeys. While many readers will disagree (in line with the editors, p. 30), Frankfurter's thesis is a salutary reminder of the importance of using the term and concept critically. The second half of the chapter takes a different turn, which aligns with the comparative aims of the volume: Frankfurter presents evidence for syncretism in three late antique regional shrines, including through the mechanism of movement. Rutherford then deftly sketches out the intellectual background of the volume's comparative approach and makes a strong case for its usefulness. He argues that using the theoretical models developed by scholars of other cultures and periods allows us to recognise and understand practices of pilgrimage in the ancient Mediterranean. He also shows that comparisons with the ancient Near East can point to influences, such as the Abydos pilgrimage in Egypt on the Eleusinian Mysteries, and to significant differences rooted in social and political structures, such as the prominence of royal pilgrimage in the Near East. Healing pilgrimage and the system of theoroi emerge as distinctive Greek phenomena through comparative approaches.

Part 2, the main body of the volume, offers ten case studies of pilgrimage, arranged broadly in chronological order. Collar's and P. Christoforou's chapters have in common a wide use of the concept of pilgrimage and engagement with subaltern perspectives. Collar interprets Roman soldiers posted to different parts of the empire as undergoing ‘unchosen mobility’; drawing on studies in sociology on the use of religion by contemporary migrants to negotiate new spaces, she argues that the localised acts of worship by soldiers on the borders (e.g. by Hadrian's Wall) recalled deities from their homelands and should be seen as ‘virtual pilgrimage’. Christoforou applies the concept of pilgrimage to the figure of the Roman emperor as a person and in the form of his image. Quite disparate activities, including embassies to the emperor to solve disputes and spontaneous recourse to the image of an emperor by an individual to claim asylum, are treated as forms of pilgrimage on the basis that ‘travel concerning the emperor had a sacred component to it’ (p. 124). This approach will not convince all readers; but in their broad definition of what counts as pilgrimage both Collar and Christoforou challenge readers to think hard about the limits of the usefulness of the concept. Their focus on lower-status individuals and enslaved people productively develops research on marginalised groups.

The chapters of M. Dillon and I. Köster deal with transgression by pilgrims. Dillon discusses a decree (dated c. 100 bce–100 ce) intended to regulate behaviours at the oracular sanctuary of Apollo Koronaios in Magnesia. Orderly behaviour was to be maintained by rabdouchoi authorised to thrash those who infringed clothing regulations, cut down trees or grazed their animals within the sanctuary precinct. Köster deals with transgression in the form of thefts of relics and contested cult transfers in the late antique period. She draws comparisons between these phenomena and earlier Greek and Roman precedents (the bones of Orestes, and the cult transfers of Cybele and Sarapis). The motivation of the pilgrim emerges as a key factor in the outcome of the transfer attempt: greed is thwarted while reverence and the desire to promote the saint are rewarded. Köster demonstrates that what is at stake in these thefts or transfers is the relationship of the pilgrim to the divinity and divine agency. The transfer of cults and commonality with pre-Christian rituals also features in A.R. Brown's chapter on sailors in late antiquity. She explores the relocation of the relics of saints associated with salvation at sea (e.g. St Isidore, St Phocas, St Nicholas), and she identifies religious practices shared by pre-Christian and Christian sailors such as the use of incense, libations and prayers from the sterns of their ships on departure, on arrival and when in danger. Evidence from the recently discovered seventh-century Yassiada shipwreck bears this out in fascinating detail.

The chapters of M.R. Anderson and R. Sweetman explicitly discuss definitions of pilgrimage, while the material they deal with crosses different religious traditions. Anderson offers a helpful schema of body / terrain / mobility / narrative (p. 164). His case study is the journey of Paul to Jerusalem (c. 50–60 ce) at festival time (likely at Shavu'ot). In line with the Jewish tradition he carried with him funds collected for the city's poor in the hope of receiving blessings, but he was also accompanied by gentiles. Anderson explores the ambivalent features of this ‘failed’ and ‘contested’ pilgrimage, identifying it as operating within both the Jewish tradition and the Jesus movement. Sweetman's chapter encompasses both sanctuaries of the Greek gods and Christian churches in the Cyclades in late antiquity. She asks whether differences emerge between them when examined through the lens of pilgrimage, and focuses on their locations and the intentionality of pilgrims. She shows that sanctuaries were generally located on notable sailing routes and visible from the sea, while, conversely, churches were often located at the edges of ports. This suggests a change in priorities from visibility to physical accessibility. She also considers the catchment area of these sanctuaries and churches, and, to the extent that the epigraphic evidence allows, it is identified as local. Sweetman convincingly advocates for a broad understanding of who should be considered a pilgrim, including traders stopping off on their way and even people sailing past sanctuaries whose contact was confined to the visual.

The chapters of N. Koltun-Fromm, S. Midford and Y. Tchekhanovets engage with ideas of layering (physical, cultural, religious, linguistic) at pilgrimage sites and even back home. Koltun-Fromm discusses the intertwined religious traditions in Medieval Jerusalem (Jewish, Christian, Muslim), through the lens of Naser-e Khosraw, a mid-eleventh-century Persian traveller and writer who had converted from Sunni Islam to Isma'ili Islam. While he maintained that Mecca and Medina were superior to Jerusalem in their holiness, he emphasised the atoning powers of this city. Naser encouraged readers to seek personal atonement at the Dome of the Rock by following the model of Muhammad's visit, but the Jewish tradition of the Rock being a vestige of creation and its importance as the place that David and Solomon had interacted with God are still emphasised. In this way Naser linked Islamic spaces and traditions to pre-existing Jewish beliefs. Midford explores the idea of ‘stratified memories’ in pilgrims’ experiences of Troy in antiquity and of nearby Gallipoli in modernity. She surveys the visits of Xerxes, Alexander the Great, several Roman emperors (with their particular interest in the Aeneas legend), Mehmet II and Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), and finally of the families and compatriots of the soldiers from Australia and New Zealand who died at Gallipoli in WWI and were buried there. She argues for people's sense of connection to previous pilgrims as much as to the Homeric heroes and Anzac soldiers. The self-identification of young backpacking Australians and New Zealanders as tourists who temporarily become pilgrims on this site connects with Sweetman's idea of traders becoming, and ceasing to be, pilgrims en passant. The theme of layering occurs in two ways in Tchekhanovets’ chapter on Armenian and Georgian pilgrims in Jerusalem and Palestine (with examples from the fifth to the seventeenth centuries). The first is graffiti left by these pilgrims, usually hardly more than the name but sometimes with interesting details referencing the experience of pilgrimage, for example a prayer for mercy ‘for the camel and the guide’ (p. 235). Although some of these graffiti are no longer in situ in Jerusalem, Nazareth and Sinai, they were originally carved into the fabric of established pilgrim locations, in a process of layering. The second element of layering was the practice of creating ‘new Jerusalems’ on the return of pilgrims to the Caucasus, which imitated the image of celestial / terrestrial Jerusalem, including architectural features such as the Tomb of Christ, and was connected to the celebration of the Jerusalem liturgy.

Part 3 consists of responses by S. Coleman and E. Uusimäki, which expertly highlight themes within broader sociological and theological perspectives respectively.

The volume makes a significant contribution to ancient pilgrimage studies, in particular through the development of the concept of mobility. It demonstrates the entanglement of place and motion, and it connects pilgrimage to other forms of mobility, many related to empire. The series of rich case studies could, if anything, have utilised the methodological framework of place and mobility more explicitly. The volume extends the methodology of comparativism, established 20 years ago by Elsner and Rutherford. Unlike the emphasis of a lot of earlier scholarship on the discourses of pilgrimage, this book is concerned more directly with pilgrim experiences, gathered from a variety of types of evidence, much of it archaeological. It rightly insists on the complexity of pilgrimage, the significance of the communal component and the importance of local and regional forms of pilgrimage. It will stimulate further and deeper considerations of ancient pilgrimage, broadly defined, including, it is to be hoped, more work on subaltern perspectives.