Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- CONTENTS -- List of illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Foreword -- How to use this book -- Authors and events: a time-chart -- 1 Approaching paganism -- Pagans, so primitive -- Christian ending -- Roman government -- Germanic invaders -- Beyond the Roman pale -- Beyond the Byzantine pale -- Evidence -- Latin and other languages -- Greek and Roman windows on barbarian culture -- 2 Dividing the landscape -- Location -- Focus and area -- Physical features (absolute position) -- Relative position -- Ownership: public and private -- Power -- The god in the stone? -- Strength in numbers: tree, stone, spring -- 3 Focus I: spring, lake, river -- Spring and well -- What a spring is -- Prevalence -- Purity and health -- What happens at springs and wells -- Saints, the conversion of the aniconic, and heads -- Other water -- Lake -- River -- Water worship -- 4 Focus II: stone and tree -- Stone -- What a stone is -- Feelings about stones -- Personalising stones -- Stones and permanence -- Stone as the object of cult -- What happens at stones -- Tree -- What trees are like -- Personalising trees -- Notable trees -- What happens at trees -- Pagan tree and Christian objectors -- 5 Area I: land -- Hill and mountain -- What mountains are like -- Worship on mountains: lightning and fire -- Shore and island -- Sea: shore and promontory -- Islands -- Cave -- 6 Area II: growth -- Meadow -- Grove -- What a grove is like -- Grove and temple-culture -- The feel of natural groves -- Grove and garden -- Groves and barbarians -- Groves and placenames -- The power of groves -- Ancient groves -- Inviolability -- On the Dusii demons . . . -- Divine ownership -- Inside the grove -- 7 Technology: statues, shrines and temples -- Statues -- The place of statues -- Impressive statues and Christian destruction -- Temple, fanum, ecclesia.

What a temple is -- The shape of temples -- Contents and decoration -- Shrines, vocabulary and placenames -- Temples in less developed cultures -- Continuity -- Instances -- What are Christians to do with temples or fana? -- Destroy the fana! -- Build churches! -- 8 Christian paganism -- Christian knowledge -- Textuality: coming down from Sinai -- Specificity -- What pagans do -- Eating and drinking -- Dance -- Particular customs -- New Year's Day -- Thursday -- The moon -- Laurel -- Catechism: renouncing what? -- 9 Pagan rite -- Sacrifice -- Why sacrifice? -- What to sacrifice -- The action of sacrifice -- Beyond Sacrifice -- Non-sacrificial offerings -- How to offer things that aren't alive -- Dance and song -- Human sacrifice -- Human sacrifice is 'only' execution? -- Battle and hanging -- Divination and other reasons -- Manipulation of place -- Procession -- Pilgrimage -- 10 Pagan time -- Time-reckoning -- Lunar months -- Intercalation and periods of several years -- Weeks -- Calendar and festival -- A Gaulish calendar -- Duration of festivals -- An English calendar -- Equinoxes and other times -- The Calendar of Erchia -- 11 A few aspects of gods -- Christian contrasts -- Pagan plurality -- Do the pagan gods exist? -- Divine functions -- Sets of gods -- Lightning -- 12 Priests -- The need for priests -- What a priest is -- Priestly specialism, development of the state -- Religion in the home, without professionals -- Priests and government -- King-priests -- Kings and priests -- Oligarchy in Gaul - 'no sacrifice without a philosopher' -- Oligarchy at Rome -- Temple priests, grove priests -- Greece -- Germans -- Gauls -- Divination -- Priests and ritual: a common Indo-European inheritance? -- The role of women -- Conclusions -- 13 Cradle to grave -- Cradle -- Transitions -- Illness and crisis -- Grave -- Normal people -- Grand burial.

Mounds to marvel at -- 14 Unity is the Thing -- Gaul: centrality of the shrine -- The Germanic Thing -- Groves and assemblies -- Periodicity and leagues -- Human sacrifice and beginnings -- The beginning of the world -- Afterword -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Abbreviations -- Primary literature: general information and where to find a text and translation -- Secondary literature -- Indexes -- Index locorum - passages cited or reported -- Index nominum I - gods, mythic entities and festivals -- Index nominum II - (real) persons, peoples and places -- Index rerum - topics and themes -- Index auctorum - modern authors.