The goal of this project was, by means of archaeological and literary sources, to try to localise the course of the procession and to study the correlations between the space the procession went through, including the sacred places and the ritual activities of the participants. Furthermore the aim was to visualize the reconstructed sacred space in a Geographic Information System.
Research
The focus was on the Pythaïs Procession, an irregularly occurring procession of the Athenians in honor of Apollo Pythios in Delphi. On the one hand there is a reconstruction of the social and economic structure of the participants based on the unusually detailed inscriptions from the Hellenistic period. On the other hand the relationship between Athens and Delphi has been analyzed against the background of international changes throughout the centuries as well as the direct consequences for this procession. Another goal of this project is, by means of archaeological and literary sources, to try to localise the course of the procession and to study the correlations between the space the procession went through, including the sacred places and the ritual activities of the participants. The aim is to visualize the reconstructed sacred space in a Geographic Information System.
The dissertation was successfully completed in 2014.