Pilgrimage Pragmatics: Travel Infrastructure, Connectivity, and Movement in Late Roman and Early Byzantine Cilicia Craft, Sarah Elizabeth creator 2015 xxiii, 454 p. born digital Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2015) Alcock, Susan Director Papaioannou, Stratis Reader Harvey, Susan Reader Rojas, Felipe Reader Brown University. Archaeology and the Ancient World sponsor theses This dissertation explores the dynamic world of Christian pilgrims in the eastern Mediterranean (ca. 400-600 CE) through a landscape archaeological approach, using archaeological evidence as well as a combination of literary and epigraphic texts. The geographical distribution of pilgrimage destinations is considered as part of a larger network of churches that was physically and conceptually linked by the infrastructure that facilitated travel. Together, these constitute the anchors and connections of the early Christian devotional landscape, one that was subject to various strategies of appropriation and claims to authority by the inhabitant communities. At the same time, early Christian pilgrimage and the destinations of that activity are considered along a continuum of overlapping scales – from the local to the interregional, considering the traveler’s origin as well as the destination’s attraction – in order that they be understood within their wider context of the vibrant, prosperous and multicultural world of the late antique eastern Mediterranean. The integration of spatial data drawn from saints’ lives, epigraphic evidence, architectural catalogues, and archaeological remains demonstrates that early Christian pilgrimage cannot be isolated from other forms of travel. Because pilgrims necessarily moved along the same routes that all other inhabitants of the late antique world also traveled, their movement was inextricably part of the more broadly conceived political, social, and productive landscapes of the late antique world. pilgrimage; early Christianity; Anatolia; landscape; archaeology; networks; movement; connectivity; travel infrastructure RPB 20150601 engEnglish10.7301/Z02F7KS5In CopyrightCollection is open for research.dissertations