Ecstasy, trance, and soul flight … these powerful and potentially transformative elements of ancient experience have long been left to the fringes of

archaeological research.” Dr. Sarah K. Costello and John begin with a question exploring the often unconscious issue of projecting modern perspective onto

antiquity to support a current argument. As an archeologist, anthropologist, & art-historian, Dr. Costello’s peak into antiquity is through the lens of the

material content. We continue exploring the contributions of Dr. Costello’s various disciplines, challenges of evaluating art in antiquity, symbols, Gobekli Tepe,

interpretation of antiquity, carefully approaching one’s intuitive assumptions about antiquity and the risk of projection and bias, the Transcendent as a cultural

universal, challenging the idea of universals, narrativization of consciousness, cross-cultural studies, universals and the particulars, we discuss her creative

process for the book, “The Routledge Companion to Ecstatic Experience in the Ancient World,” defining ecstatic experience, we discuss, The Immortality Key,

& cultural containers for alternate states in antiquity.Bio: Sarah Kielt Costello, Ph.D., has taught art history at UHCL since 2014. She teaches graduate and

undergraduate courses in the humanities and the history of ancient art. She was the recipient of the UH Provost’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2012. Dr.

Costello’s research focus is the visual culture of the early periods of the Ancient Near East.In her writing, she investigates the social contexts of visual culture,

especially how people store and communicate ideas, and how imagery relates to religion. She is a project leader of a collaborative research initiative with

Houston’s Menil Collection, focused on the art of the ancient Mediterranean world. She has conducted field research in Cyprus, Turkey, Israel, and Greece,

and in 2013 studied in Greece as a Fulbright Fellow in the summer session at the American School of Classical Studies.