This multi-authored work tackles the problem of how to examine the historicity of identity. Through four discrete case studies, seven scholars of religion expose the disconnects in the academic discourse on diaspora, identity, and creolization, and suggest ways of achieving greater theoretical clarity in the study of identity - or better, identity claims - as it takes shape over time and space.

This multi-authored work tackles the problem of how to examine the historicity of identity. Through four discrete case studies, seven scholars of religion expose the disconnects in the academic discourse on diaspora, identity, and creolization, and suggest ways of achieving greater theoretical clarity in the study of identity - or better, identity claims - as it takes shape over time and space.

Taking seriously critiques of historiography produced in recent decades, Vaia Touna advocates for an alternative approach to the way the past is studied. From Euripides' tragedy Hippolytus, to the notion of voluntary associations in the Greco-Roman world, to the authenticity of traditional villages in Greece, Fabrications of the Greek Past argues that meanings (and thus identities) do not transcend time and space, and neither do they hide deep in the core of material artifacts, awaiting to be discovered by the careful interpreter. Instead, this book demonstrates that meanings...