An empirical analysis of polytheism
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| Název: | An empirical analysis of polytheism |
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| Autoři: | Gauthier, Laurent |
| Přispěvatelé: | Gauthier, Laurent, Laboratoire d'Economie Dionysien (LED), Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis (UP8), CAC-IXXI, Complex Systems Institute, Espace, Pratiques sociales et Images dans les mondes Grec et Romain (ESPRI), Archéologies et Sciences de l'Antiquité (ArScAn), Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (UP1)-Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis (UP8)-Université Paris Nanterre (UPN)-Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (MCC)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (UP1)-Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis (UP8)-Université Paris Nanterre (UPN)-Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (MCC)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) |
| Zdroj: | Quality & Quantity. 59:797-818 |
| Informace o vydavateli: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2025. |
| Rok vydání: | 2025 |
| Témata: | [SHS.SOCIO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Sociology, human performance modeling, [SHS.SOCIO] Humanities and Social Sciences/Sociology, [SHS.HIST] Humanities and Social Sciences/History, Religious studies, [SHS.HIST]Humanities and Social Sciences/History, ancient Greek polytheism, Power laws |
| Popis: | The study of polytheism in sociology and anthropology is not a very well researched subject, apart from works that belong in historical anthropology, carried out by historians. One limitation in many of these is the lack of data, or any form of systematic survey that could inform quantitative analyses. In this paper, we examine acts of worship in polytheistic religion empirically and quantitatively on a large scale, which has not been done before. We study a large volume of ancient Greek epigraphic sources, and focus on the distribution of votive acs across divinities. Who had the most? Who was the least favored? We show that clear patterns emerge in the distributions of worship acts among gods, across city-states using a maximum likelihood estimator. They follow power laws with a high degree of regularity, and do not appear to be driven by particular characterizations of the polities, as various ordinary least-squares regressions indicate. |
| Druh dokumentu: | Article |
| Jazyk: | English |
| ISSN: | 1573-7845 0033-5177 |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11135-024-02024-3 |
| Přístupová URL adresa: | https://univ-paris8.hal.science/hal-04801218v1 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-024-02024-3 |
| Rights: | Springer Nature TDM |
| Přístupové číslo: | edsair.doi.dedup.....d56afe19cdb061f8748bdead110fd7c1 |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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Nájsť tento článok vo Web of Science | Abstrakt: | The study of polytheism in sociology and anthropology is not a very well researched subject, apart from works that belong in historical anthropology, carried out by historians. One limitation in many of these is the lack of data, or any form of systematic survey that could inform quantitative analyses. In this paper, we examine acts of worship in polytheistic religion empirically and quantitatively on a large scale, which has not been done before. We study a large volume of ancient Greek epigraphic sources, and focus on the distribution of votive acs across divinities. Who had the most? Who was the least favored? We show that clear patterns emerge in the distributions of worship acts among gods, across city-states using a maximum likelihood estimator. They follow power laws with a high degree of regularity, and do not appear to be driven by particular characterizations of the polities, as various ordinary least-squares regressions indicate. |
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| ISSN: | 15737845 00335177 |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11135-024-02024-3 |