Monumental steps, those that are broader than necessity requires, were used from at least the sixth century b. c.e. in Greek sanctuaries, as pathways for processions and as grandstands for observing events.1 Although they did not constitute the architectural statement of a temple or the ritual focus of an altar, broad steps facilitated and promoted participatory behavior around the central act of sacrifice. Shared experience confers authority on ritual. Sacrifice was important both for its symbolic content and because numbers of people observed and participated in the ritual. Broad steps both increased anticipation of the event in procession and intensified spectators’ experience as they massed in a crowd.
Studies of Greek architecture often dissect sanctuaries in terms of form, either as typologies of specific buildings or as arrangements of parts - solids and voids, temples and terraces - as if devoid of people. Studies of ritual and religious behavior, relying on votive objects, inscriptions and literary testimonia, rarely say much about place. In considering spatial aspects of group behavior around animal sacrifice, I will explore how architectural structures built to accommodate crowds of worshippers express and give shape to human activities while enhancing ritual enactment.2
At sites in Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy in the sixth through first centuries b. c.e., broad steps that provide routes of access and viewing facilities also integrate sanctuary design by linking architectural components within the temenos into a more coherent unity than in earlier eras. We witness evolutionary changes from built steps that give expression to parading and spectating to architectural complexes that incorporate these activities within a system of organized forms. While accommodating long-established customary behaviors, these structures give shape to their enactment. The study of Greek sanctuaries has emphasized significant developments in architectural configuration; however, studying architecture with plans, reconstruction drawings, and aerial photography rarely reveals how structures were perceived and used at ground level. Studying steps directs attention to interactions between behavior and the built environment. Because the dimensions of steps express a direct relation to body posture (sitting, standing, walking,) we can imagine which activities occurred where within the respective sanctuaries, so as to understand ritual behavior in these sacred spaces.
World History
