This study questions the traditional view of sacrifices in hero-cults during the Archaic to the early Hellenistic periods (c. 700-300 BC) as consisting mainly in holocausts, rituals focusing on the blood of the animal victim and the presentation of meals, and rarely in thysia sacrifices followed by collective dining.

The work is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on the terms eschara, escharon, bothros, enagizein, enagisma, enagismos and enagisterion, which have been considered as being characteristic for hero-cults and marking them as distinct from the cult of the gods and linked to the cult of the dead. The study of the use and meaning of these terms shows that a connection with heroes can rarely be established before the Roman period and mainly so in the Byzantine lexicographers and in the scholia, the information of which has generally been considered as valid also for earlier periods.

The second part is an analysis of the epigraphical and literary evidence for sacrifices to heroes based exclusively on sources from the Archaic to the early Hellenistic periods. Contrary to the traditional notion, the main ritual in hero-cults during this period was a sacrifice in which the worshippers consumed the meat from the animal victim. The thysia could be modified by the offering of prepared meals (theoxenia), a ritual that also existed separately from thysia. A particular handling of the animal’s blood at a thysia or a holocaust, at which the whole victim was destroyed, can rarely be documented and these two kinds of rituals must be considered as marginal features in hero-cults.

In the third part, the ritual pattern of hero-cults is compared with the use of similar rituals both in the cult of the gods and in the cult of the dead in order to define the place and function of hero-cults within a wider context. Since the main kind of sacrifice in hero-cults was a thysia, a ritual that was intimately connected with the social structure of society, the heroes must have fulfilled the same role as the gods within the Greek religious system. The rituals considered as linking the heroes with the dead (holocausts, blood rituals and offerings of meals) can be found also in the cult of the gods or belong to the category heilige Handlungen (rituals performed as a response to a particular situation and not having any divine recipient). When used in hero-cults, holocausts and blood rituals can often be connected with a particular purpose of the sacrifice on that occasion or a desire to recognize in ritual a certain side of the character of the hero receiving the sacrifice. The fact that the heroes were dead seems to have been of little significance for the sacrificial rituals and it is questionable whether the rituals of hero-cults are to be considered as originating in the cult of the dead.

Numismatiken som vetenskap befinner sig i gränslandet mellan discipliner som arkeologi, historia och konstvetenskap. De vetenskapsteoretiska diskussioner som förs inom den nordiska numismatiken idag har mycket gemensamt med de som förs inom arkeologin. Temanumret diskuterar ur skilda synvinklar ett förhållningssätt där både de historiska och arkeologiska dimensionerna i det numismatiska materialet (mynten) kan tas tillvara och föra resultaten bortom det rena materialstudiet. Artiklarna ger exempel på detta utifrån författarnas specialområden.

The articles of this thematic issue of META explore the conditions and further possibilities of numismatic research, in particular as related to the discourse of Historical Archaeology. This introduction also briefly deals with the formation of the Swedish and Scandinavian numismatic discourse, with some critical concepts and distinctions, and with the multi-faceted character of the coin material. What’s the colour of money?

It is here suggested that the presence of gods on the vases had less to do with formal religion or cult than socio-cultural conventions. The vases may be seen as the medium by which is communicated, under the guise of mythological representations, the Athenian attitude to themselves and the world around them. By propagating, on the mass-produced vases, the same themes time and time again, the Athenians came to share common values, and this in its turn fostered a feeling of what it meant to be an Athenian. The presence of the gods underlines the ideological message and variations in frequency and degree of activity may have been due to changes in society or in the status of the medium itself

This article deals with geophysical and geochemical prospection surveys at the Stone Age site RAÄ 1372 at the shores of lake Luspasjaure in the province of Lapland, Sweden. The geophysical surveys measuring electrical conductivity as well as magnetic susceptiblity of the thin soil layer at the site, revealed a waste heap consisting mainly of fire cracked stones. The fire cracked stones werre interpreted to have been used during the preparation of food.