Matthew M McCarty
Biographic Data
| ID | 5633510 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthew M McCarty |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthew M |
| FAMILY NAME | McCarty |
| SIGNATURE | MCCARTY M M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of British Columbia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0297-3362 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Working at worship, worshipping at work
This article analyzes the intersections between work and worship in the ancient Mediterranean from an archaeological perspective and provides an introduction to this special section. The goal is to challenge and move beyond two conceptual frames that have been deeply persistent in scholarship on the ancient world: (1) the imposition of two distinct category-containers “religion” and “work,” which we contend have been constructed and held separate…
Situating a rock-born god
Contemporary accounts of Mithraism emphasize particular, shared modes of anthropogenic place-making: spaces laid out in distinctive, bench-lined arrangements, which may have been freighted with a surplus of cosmic symbolism that was actualized through the performance of ritual. Focusing on the site of Močići (Croatia), we argue that Mithraic place-making must instead be situated in a host of far more localized and material relationships that affo…
Beyond Culture-Historical Models
This paper examines the dynamics of religious transformation in North Africa during the second and third centuries AD, challenging traditional narratives rooted in culture-historical models and simplistic cultural labels, such as the purported ‘Africanisation’ of cults under the Severan dynasty. While past scholarship has often framed these changes in terms of cultural permanence, resistance, or renaissance, this study shows that they are instead…
Cultic cookery
Despite increased interest in dining as part of worship practices, accounts of cult meals often focus primarily on benefaction and consumption, ignoring or downplaying the practices of food preparation in and around sanctuaries. Synthesizing and analyzing kitchen spaces and their assemblages in sanctuaries dedicated to Mithras for the first time, we argue that the labor of food-making was also central to group-making in ancient cult. The display …
Religion and the Making of Roman Africa
This book fundamentally rewrites the cultural and religious history of North Africa under the Roman Empire, focalized through rituals related to child sacrifice and the carved-stone monuments associated with such offerings. Earlier colonial archaeologies have stressed the failure of the empire to 'Romanize' Indigenous and Punic settler populations, mobilizing inscriptions and sculpture to mirror and explain modern European colonial failures as th…
Numidia Romana? Die Auswirkungen der römischen Präsenz in Numidien (2. Jh. v. Chr.–1. Jh. n. Chr.)
Provincializing Roman Dacia
The Apulum Roman Villa Project (ARVP) examines the “provincialization” and “de-provincialization” of Roman Dacia through the archaeological micro-history of a villa site at Oarda-Bulza, just outside one of the provincial capitals at Apulum. As one of the first villas in Dacia to be excavated scientifically and from multidisciplinary perspectives, the site promises to shed new light on the interplays among forms of production, cultural consumption…
Reforesting Roman Africa
Despite a range of literary and archaeological evidence for the importance of forests in Roman Africa, these marginal lands and their marginalised populations have been almost entirely ignored or downplayed by modern scholarship, leading to tortured interpretations of a range of material. This article asks two questions, one historical, the other historiographic: what role did the forests of Africa Proconsularis play in the economies and producti…
Pre-Roman Libyan Religion
Since its inception, the study of Iron Age North African (“Libyan”) religion has been bound up with European ethnographic accounts of modern Berber practices and mentalities. Analyses are based around notions of “survival” and “permanence” observed in later (Roman, post-antique) material and retrojected as belonging to an earlier stage. This approach is itself drawn from 19th century anthropology, and remains current. To move the study of Iron Ag…
The Archaeology of Mithraism
The archaeology of ancient cult
In the past two decades, the “archaeology of religion” has moved from the margins of scholarship to the center, led by the growth of postprocessual archaeological hermeneutics. 1 Such theoretical frames – whether the materiality of religion, objects as agents, the entanglement of humans and objects, or “thing theory” – demonstrate the centrality of the physical world and its archaeological correlates to religion. They offer new ways of posing que…
The Tophet and Infant Sacrifice
This chapter introduces the major debates surrounding a type of archaeological site conventionally called a “tophet.” While study of these sites has continued almost unabated for the last hundred years, two major developments—apart from postcolonialism spurring efforts to reject child sacrifice as an Orientalist fantasy—necessitate a comprehensive analysis. The first is the availability of new archaeological data that has been carefully collected…
Africa Punica? Child Sacrifice and Other Invented Traditions in Early Roman Africa
Africa Punica? Child Sacrifice and Other Invented Traditions in Early Roman Africa
Connected Communities in Roman Mithraism
New data from Mithraeum III at Apulum (Dacia)—the first scientifically excavated mithraeum in the province—challenges the conception that Mithraic communities were isolated social cells, and points at a province-wide social network. Such social dynamics help to explain processes of maintenance and diversification of cult “content” within Roman Mithraism
Sahara
The Sahara stretches across Africa from the Atlas Mountains to the Sudan and Niger Delta.
Trajan's column
Trajan's column, dedicated in May 113 CE , consists of a pedestal decorated with images of captured arms and a column with spiral freeze commemorating Trajan's (r. 98–117) successful campaigns in Dacia (modern Romania).
Berbers and Moors
Berbers and Moors are two names given to the inhabitants of North Africa, by those who colonized or conquered the region.
Numidia
Numidia, originally named for the Numidian tribes that inhabited the region, is an area covering much of modern northeastern Algeria.
Africa Punica? Child Sacrifice and Other Invented Traditions in Early Roman Africa
Africa Punica? Child Sacrifice and Other Invented Traditions in Early Roman Africa
Cultic cookery
Despite increased interest in dining as part of worship practices, accounts of cult meals often focus primarily on benefaction and consumption, ignoring or downplaying the practices of food preparation in and around sanctuaries. Synthesizing and analyzing kitchen spaces and their assemblages in sanctuaries dedicated to Mithras for the first time, we argue that the labor of food-making was also central to group-making in ancient cult. The display …
Reforesting Roman Africa
Despite a range of literary and archaeological evidence for the importance of forests in Roman Africa, these marginal lands and their marginalised populations have been almost entirely ignored or downplayed by modern scholarship, leading to tortured interpretations of a range of material. This article asks two questions, one historical, the other historiographic: what role did the forests of Africa Proconsularis play in the economies and producti…
The archaeology of ancient cult
In the past two decades, the “archaeology of religion” has moved from the margins of scholarship to the center, led by the growth of postprocessual archaeological hermeneutics. 1 Such theoretical frames – whether the materiality of religion, objects as agents, the entanglement of humans and objects, or “thing theory” – demonstrate the centrality of the physical world and its archaeological correlates to religion. They offer new ways of posing que…
The Tophet and Infant Sacrifice
This chapter introduces the major debates surrounding a type of archaeological site conventionally called a “tophet.” While study of these sites has continued almost unabated for the last hundred years, two major developments—apart from postcolonialism spurring efforts to reject child sacrifice as an Orientalist fantasy—necessitate a comprehensive analysis. The first is the availability of new archaeological data that has been carefully collected…
Sahara
The Sahara stretches across Africa from the Atlas Mountains to the Sudan and Niger Delta.
Trajan's column
Trajan's column, dedicated in May 113 CE , consists of a pedestal decorated with images of captured arms and a column with spiral freeze commemorating Trajan's (r. 98–117) successful campaigns in Dacia (modern Romania).
Berbers and Moors
Berbers and Moors are two names given to the inhabitants of North Africa, by those who colonized or conquered the region.
Numidia
Numidia, originally named for the Numidian tribes that inhabited the region, is an area covering much of modern northeastern Algeria.
Africa Punica? Child Sacrifice and Other Invented Traditions in Early Roman Africa
Africa Punica? Child Sacrifice and Other Invented Traditions in Early Roman Africa
Connected Communities in Roman Mithraism
New data from Mithraeum III at Apulum (Dacia)—the first scientifically excavated mithraeum in the province—challenges the conception that Mithraic communities were isolated social cells, and points at a province-wide social network. Such social dynamics help to explain processes of maintenance and diversification of cult “content” within Roman Mithraism
The archaeology of ancient cult
In the past two decades, the “archaeology of religion” has moved from the margins of scholarship to the center, led by the growth of postprocessual archaeological hermeneutics. 1 Such theoretical frames – whether the materiality of religion, objects as agents, the entanglement of humans and objects, or “thing theory” – demonstrate the centrality of the physical world and its archaeological correlates to religion. They offer new ways of posing que…
The Tophet and Infant Sacrifice
This chapter introduces the major debates surrounding a type of archaeological site conventionally called a “tophet.” While study of these sites has continued almost unabated for the last hundred years, two major developments—apart from postcolonialism spurring efforts to reject child sacrifice as an Orientalist fantasy—necessitate a comprehensive analysis. The first is the availability of new archaeological data that has been carefully collected…
The Archaeology of Mithraism
Pre-Roman Libyan Religion
Since its inception, the study of Iron Age North African (“Libyan”) religion has been bound up with European ethnographic accounts of modern Berber practices and mentalities. Analyses are based around notions of “survival” and “permanence” observed in later (Roman, post-antique) material and retrojected as belonging to an earlier stage. This approach is itself drawn from 19th century anthropology, and remains current. To move the study of Iron Ag…
Provincializing Roman Dacia
The Apulum Roman Villa Project (ARVP) examines the “provincialization” and “de-provincialization” of Roman Dacia through the archaeological micro-history of a villa site at Oarda-Bulza, just outside one of the provincial capitals at Apulum. As one of the first villas in Dacia to be excavated scientifically and from multidisciplinary perspectives, the site promises to shed new light on the interplays among forms of production, cultural consumption…
Reforesting Roman Africa
Despite a range of literary and archaeological evidence for the importance of forests in Roman Africa, these marginal lands and their marginalised populations have been almost entirely ignored or downplayed by modern scholarship, leading to tortured interpretations of a range of material. This article asks two questions, one historical, the other historiographic: what role did the forests of Africa Proconsularis play in the economies and producti…
Numidia Romana? Die Auswirkungen der römischen Präsenz in Numidien (2. Jh. v. Chr.–1. Jh. n. Chr.)
Religion and the Making of Roman Africa
This book fundamentally rewrites the cultural and religious history of North Africa under the Roman Empire, focalized through rituals related to child sacrifice and the carved-stone monuments associated with such offerings. Earlier colonial archaeologies have stressed the failure of the empire to 'Romanize' Indigenous and Punic settler populations, mobilizing inscriptions and sculpture to mirror and explain modern European colonial failures as th…
Cultic cookery
Despite increased interest in dining as part of worship practices, accounts of cult meals often focus primarily on benefaction and consumption, ignoring or downplaying the practices of food preparation in and around sanctuaries. Synthesizing and analyzing kitchen spaces and their assemblages in sanctuaries dedicated to Mithras for the first time, we argue that the labor of food-making was also central to group-making in ancient cult. The display …
Working at worship, worshipping at work
This article analyzes the intersections between work and worship in the ancient Mediterranean from an archaeological perspective and provides an introduction to this special section. The goal is to challenge and move beyond two conceptual frames that have been deeply persistent in scholarship on the ancient world: (1) the imposition of two distinct category-containers “religion” and “work,” which we contend have been constructed and held separate…
Situating a rock-born god
Contemporary accounts of Mithraism emphasize particular, shared modes of anthropogenic place-making: spaces laid out in distinctive, bench-lined arrangements, which may have been freighted with a surplus of cosmic symbolism that was actualized through the performance of ritual. Focusing on the site of Močići (Croatia), we argue that Mithraic place-making must instead be situated in a host of far more localized and material relationships that affo…
Beyond Culture-Historical Models
This paper examines the dynamics of religious transformation in North Africa during the second and third centuries AD, challenging traditional narratives rooted in culture-historical models and simplistic cultural labels, such as the purported ‘Africanisation’ of cults under the Severan dynasty. While past scholarship has often framed these changes in terms of cultural permanence, resistance, or renaissance, this study shows that they are instead…
Classical Antiquity Studies (11 works) · History (11 works) · Archaeology (10 works) · Ancient history (9 works) · Geography (9 works) · Archaeology and Historical Studies (8 works) · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History (7 works) · Cult (6 works) · History (6 works) · Art (5 works)