Throughout antiquity, the Mediterranean and its shores were an intensely lively theatre of human transit, commercial and cultural exchanges, military and political conflicts. Religious cults were part and parcel of this activity. They were not, in most cases, at the heart of the power stakes but neither were they without. The traces found by archaeology or in written sources point to many and manifold ways religious references or practices were created, adapted and repurposed. Beyond any teleological perspective, HEMED academics have sought to consider this specific moment in religious history along three lines of thought: sacred grounds; religious mutations; interactions between religions and power.
