Materialist Insights: The Tablets of Dodona as Objects

For a long time, Greek sanctuaries were studied from a positivist perspective, that is, in terms of their spatial evolution and the typologies of their architecture and artefacts. At the sanctuary of Dodona, this perspective has also been applied to a great variety of structures and objects. The present paper offers new ways of looking at one of the most intriguing classes of objects found at the sanctuary, the lamellae on which were written the questions for and answers from the oracle. Consistent with the growing interest in the materiality of writing, we discuss the physical properties of the lamellae and the contexts in which they were used with respect to their adoption at the sanctuary during the Archaic period. We argue that the ease with which lead tablets can be inscribed, folded, and transported made this material more suitable for the context of the sanctuary than ostraca, another inexpensive medium often used for writing in ancient Greece.