Abject Objects: The Lives and Times of Early Christian Material Culture

Abstract

■ Introduction The Lives of Objects is an object about objects. This is admittedly an odd way to describe a book, for we often focus on the cerebral content contained within the physicality of the book. But such a description fits with the project at hand, which, in author Maia Kotrosits’s words, is “a book about the lives of objects considered through a history of the ancient Mediterranean” (1). Yet, Lives is about more than static objects that live at a remove from people. It is also about our relationships with and attachments to said objects, how they embed themselves in our psyche and continue to exert an influence on us over time. By focusing on unconventional objects—as we will see, some might even debate whether some are objects at all— Kotrosits wants her project to bring “nonobvious histories” into relief (1). Each chapter is thus a kind of case study in thinking through an ancient object (again, broadly conceived) and its relationship with early Christ followers. Taken as a whole, Lives demonstrates a creative rethinking of the histories we tell about the origins of Christianity. In the review that follows, I quote liberally from Kotrosits’s