The archaeological exploration of ancient Greek ritual must be one of the more successful aspects of Classical archaeology. Since at least the 1980s a series of books and collections of articles have been published which have explored such important aspects as the issues of recognition of cult (Renfrew 1985), and sacred landscapes and the significance of location of cult (de Polignac 1984/1995; Alcock and Osborne 1994). Major issues that have emerged from the ever-burgeoning literature are not only the interrelation between religious and other types of social behaviour, but also the idea of 'boundedness' -- according to which physical boundaries are taken as conceptual boundaries between the sacred and the profane. This concept has influenced scholars' assessment of the significance, for example, of the growth of separate demarcated sanctuary spaces in 'Greece' in the eighth century BC.

This set of essays adds to and further refines elements of this important body of material and theoretical discussion. The volume contains a series of papers which illustrate well the varieties of approaches now current in the study of ancient cult -- from the almost entirely descriptive treatment of individual sites to the theoretically-informed discussion of ritual behaviour in entire regions.