Religious Transformations in Late-Antique Dalmatia

As part of the pinpoint-program "Roman Reichsreligion and provincial Religion", the project in hand focuses upon a specific example: The social role and characteristics of late antique religiosity are examined within the space of roman Dalmatia. The concept of the geography of religions is essential for our proceedings, understood as the perception of the religious landscape and the shapes of cultic representation that takes place within the province. "Transformation" expresses the shift of religious loyalties and the change of cultic practice inside of social groups. In the space of late antiquity Christianization represents the farest-reaching example of such a shift. The project tries to seize this process as a transformation of religious representation. The constants within the changes, for example cultic spaces and participants, are examined as well as the struggle for balance between standardization and adaptation inside the theological discourses of late antique Christianity. For the roman province of Dalmatia the project in hand therefore analyses the different dimensions of religious transformation: the diverse representations of power in civitas and countryside, the formation of regional religious characteristics and the Christianization of the province as reorganisation of the religious landscape. For the purpose of that analysis archaeological, particularly epigraphical sources are interpreted as well as literary testimonies in relation to the history of religions and of Christianity regarding the treated region.