Votive weapons in the panhellenic sanctuary of Olympia (10th – 5th centuries B.C.): a diachronic analysis

Abstract

This paper presents the first results of a quantitative analysis of metal objects found in the Zeus sanctuary of Olympia, dating from the Protogeometric to the Classical period. We focus on weapons as one of the most comprehensively studied category of votive offerings, explore their spatial and temporal deposition patterns with diachronic data visualization and reconstruct a concrete pattern of change on the example of Greek hoplite panoplies. Due to its long occupation and then excavation history, the amount of artefacts documented in Olympia is high, but the spatiotemporal resolution of relevant context information very low. The temporal attribution of artefacts relies almost exclusively on typochronological classification. Despite this limitation, the dataset can contribute to an understanding of fashions of weapon offerings in the sanctuary which emerged not least as an outcome of changing religio-cultural perceptions, religious regulations, political interests and conscious management of the sanctuary space.