Temples in antis first appear in the Early Bronze Age in modern day Syria and gradually spread southwards through the rest of the Levant from the Middle Bronze Age onwards. In Syria, some temples in antis are still found in the Iron Age but they seem to be declining in popularity in this period. This research aims to provide a new definition of temples in antis across the Levant based not only on the architecture as in previous research, but also on the finds within the temples. Looking at the finds as well as the architecture allows a consideration of the nature of activities associated with these buildings, and a comparison between these temples and other types of temples will show whether they represent a new style of cult or simply a new style of architecture to house existing cults. Before considering the temples in antis specifically, this research first presents a summary of research into religion and ritual in archaeology, an area that has been sadly neglected in the past, allowing a definition of what we may be encountering in the case of these temples. It is hoped that this research will add to the recent wave of research on religion in archaeology, acting as a case study that shows how the archaeological remains of religion should be considered as an important piece of evidence allowing us to better understand ancient societies, rather than simply being ignored or treated as something of a joke. In the main part of this research, the entire corpus of temples in antis is collected, and then all the available data on finds from these temples are brought together for analysis. Because of the lack of data for many sites, four case study sites (Ebla, Tel Haror, Tell el-Hayyat and Hazor) were chosen which act as a base to which other, more poorly published sites may be compared. Conclusions based on this research are threefold considering: firstly, what can be determined about religion and ritual in the temple in antis; secondly, how these temples compare to other types of temples; and finally, how these temples, whatever they represent, may have spread.

This thesis enters a territory infrequently visited by English archaeologists – the early modern period. I have chosen a research area encompassing fifty neighbouring parish churches along the border of East Hampshire and West Sussex and studied what survives of their post-medieval material culture. Though these medieval churches have generally been altered in the 19th century many of them still retain material, architectural, landscape and documentary clues which reveal important aspects of their early modern condition and the religious experiences of their parishioners in life and death. A major aim has been to show that far from being stripped of imagery and cultural artefacts, other materials were introduced, designed to communicate new forms of Protestant ritual to parishioners who may frequently have been bewildered by the rapid religious changes of the 16th and 17th centuries. Having described the area and visited its historical biography in Part One and in order to capture a sense of what it was like to participate in parish religion, I concentrate on four themes emanating from my studies of these churches: space, sensory experience, the performance of memory and gender. Thus Part Two deals with the spatial qualities of new architectural innovations and the effects of the reorganisation of church furniture and is followed by an account of the sensory experiences which religious participation evoked. These discussions centre on the lives of parishioners. Part Three turns to parishioners’ encounters with death and their understandings of the ways in which the church and churchyard framed and enabled the performance of social memory. The final discussion chapter is a series of case studies centred on tombs commissioned by individual gentlewomen for their families and themselves and their nuanced interpretations of mortuary imagery. A major element of this study lies in the way it develops contemporary methodological frameworks within early modern social archaeology. This allows a wider synthesis to be achieved using thematic regional approaches which run alongside the contextual exploration of the sample’s locales over this long transitional period. My approach is also informed by theoretical issues emanating from a number of associated disciplines such as history, art history and anthropology. This is an unusual standpoint which aims to provide a particularly multilayered exploration of an area and time rich in archaeological material which builds on and develops current scholarly thinking in this particular realm of social archaeology.

This thesis draws on Freud to understand the innate human need to create boundaries and argues that ambivalence is an inescapable dilemma in their creation. It argues that a re-reading of Freud’s major thesis in Totem and Taboo via an engagement with the Dionysos myth and cult scholarship allows for a new understanding of dominant forms of hegemonic psychic and social formations that attempt to keep in place a false opposition of polis and phusis, self and Other, resulting in the perpetuation of oppressive structures and processes. The primary methodological claim of the thesis is that prior psychoanalytic engagements with cultus scholarship have suffered from being either insufficiently thorough or diffused in attempts to be comparative. A more holistic and detailed approach allows us to ground a psychoanalytic interpretation in the realities of said culture, allowing us to critique Freud’s misreading of Dionysos regarding the Primal Father and the psychic transmission of the Primal Crime. This thesis posits that Dionysos needs to acknowledged as a projection of the Primal Father fantasy linked to a basic ambivalence about the necessity of boundaries in psychosocial life. Using research from the classics and psychoanalysis alongside Queer and post-colonial theory, as well as extensive fieldwork and primary source analysis, this thesis provides a grounded materialist critique of psychoanalysis’ complicity in reproducing a false dichotomy between polis and phusis, a dichotomy that furthers the projection onto marginalised groups whose othering is linked to a fear and desire of a return to phusis and denial of its constant presence in the psyche and polis. This re-reading of Dionysos challenges the defensive structures, which are organised around ideas of subjectification that posit that phusis must be severed from polis/ego and projected onto Dionysos and all groups that threaten the precariousness of these boundaries.