The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology

Oxford remains at the vanguard of well-researched topical summaries. Pettegrew, Caraher, and Davis are to be commended for offering an impressive range of interdisciplinary voices and expanding both the thematic and geographical horizons of archaeological investigations into Christian origins. * Church History * With thirty-four essays and dozens of images and illustrations, this is an outstanding resource, both for scholars in the field and for use by teachers hoping to cast light on the oft-overlooked material culture of the New Testament and the early church. * Religious Studies Review * This book is a timely and well-crafted contribution to the field of early Christian studies.... This handbook succeeds in showing the best of the field as it is today — a rigorous, holistic field that employs cutting-edge theory and methods.... The handbook will serve well as a primary entry point for students, scholars, and the general public interested in the field. It succeeds in presenting the archaeology of Late Antique Christianity as it is today, a field that has gotten past early problems in aims and methods and is now firmly rooted in 21st-century archaeology. The volume reflects an exciting moment of experimentation and broadening horizons. * American Journal of Archaeology * Presenting a lush harvest of several decades of archaeological exploration of materials documenting the Christian faith, this Oxford Handbook offers fascinating snapshots of the lived reality of early Christianity.... The editors are to be congratulated for having assembled a highly readable collection that demonstrates both the good use to which the handbook-genre can be put as well as — and more importantly — the vitality and significance of the study of material remains that are relics of the lives of Christians in the long first half millennium CE. * Bryn Mawr Classical Review * remains a tremendous reference for those interested in the field * and also interested in Christian origins and church history ... [it] will serve as a benchmark survey for years to come.Jamin Andreas Hübner, Reading Religion *