Introduction / Diana L. Stein, Sarah Kielt Costello and Karen Polinger Foster
Contextualizing the study of ecstatic experience in ancient old world societies / Sarah Kielt Costello
Not only ecstasy : pouring new concepts into old vessels / Etzel Cardeña
From shamans to sorcerers : empirical models for defining ritual practices and ecstatic experience in ancient, medieval and modern societies / Michael J. Winkelman
Psychoactive plants in the ancient world : observations of an ethnobotanist / Giorgio Samorini
Ecstasy meets paleoethnobotany : botanical stimulants in ancient Inner Asia / Alison Betts
Caucasian cocktails : the early use of alcohol in 'the cradle of wine' / Stephen Batiuk
Mind-altering plants in Babylonian medical sources / Barbara Böck
Plant-based potions and ecstatic states in Hittite rituals / Rita Francia
Forbidden at Philae : proscription of aphrodisiac and psychoactive plants in Ptolemaic Egypt / Riccardo Andreozzi and Claudia Sarkady
The Ring-Kernos and psychotropic substances / David Ilan
Beer, beasts and bodies : shedding boundaries in bounded spaces / Anne Porter
Lament, spectacle and emotion in a ritual for Ishtar / Sam Mirelman
Writing for the dead, welcoming the solar-eye goddess and ecstatic expression in Egyptian religion / John Coleman Darnell
Altered states on prepalatial Crete / Emily Miller Bonney
Bodies in ecstasy : shamanic elements in Minoan religion / Christine Morris and Alan Peatfield
The Mycenaeans and ecstatic ritual experience / Susan Lupack
Emotional arousal, sensory deprivation and 'miraculous healing' in the cult of Asclepius / Olympia Panagiotidou
Ecstasy and initiation in the Eleusinian mysteries / Alice Clinch
Apolline and Dionysian ecstasy at Delphi / Yulia Ustinova
Communing with the spirits : funeral processions in ancient Rome / Maik Patzelt
Ecstatic experience and possession disorders in ancient Mesopotamia / Ulrike Steinert
Ghosts in and outside the machine : a phenomenology of intelligence, psychic possession and prophetic ecstasy in ancient Mesopotamia / John Z. Wee
Ecstatic speech in ancient Mesopotamia / Benjamin R. Foster
Ecstatic experience : the proto-theme of a Near Eastern glyptic language family / Diana L. Stein
Understanding the language of trees : ecstatic experience and interspecies communication in late Bronze Age Crete / Caroline J. Tully
Psychedelic art and ecstatic visions in the Aegean / Karen Polinger Foster
Sight as ecstatic experience in the ancient Mediterranean / Nassos Papalexandrou.