Approaching the Sacred
Ute Luig (ed.)
BERLIN STUDIES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD extremely popular in times of postmodernity. Technological innovations, processes of social dynamism and the blurring boundaries to tourism have changed the conditions under which they take place. In order to understand these transformations but also to discover ongoing continuities, the volume analyzes pilgrimages and processions in di erent historical epochs and cultural traditions. The great variety of cultural traditions allows insight into the social and physical organizations of non- European pilgrimages and their expansion by diaspora communities to di erent continents. The various meanings and construction of sacred places, under stood as landscapes of imaginations, refl ect the creative pro- cesses of which pilgrims are part. In establishing such sacred topographies, questions of identity in relation to state power become important in many studies. Written by an interdisciplinary group of authors the texts display a wide range of methods and con troversial issues of theories adding to our understanding of pilgrimages as cultural archives. 49 · 49