Abstract
The position of women in the Greek sacrificial process forms part of the background to the inclusion and exclusion of particular categories of participants in ritual contexts. Absolute exclusion from sanctuaries is an exceptional measure. However, if accessibility is the default, access may be conditioned by the specific characteristics of certain celebrations. Where there is exclusion, it is mainly based on the origin of participants (in the case of foreigners) or their gender. The exclusion of women has fuelled questions about their relationship to sacrifice, some of the most important historiographical moments of which have already been mentioned. However, the supposed sidelining of women from the altar contradicts the fact that the priest was empowered to place the divinity's portion on the flaming altar, since there is nothing in our documentation to suggest that women servants did not perform the same task as their male counterparts. On the other hand, the cutting of the animal's throat was undoubtedly not done by them, but this is less a question of an absolute ban on bloodshed than the result of a gendered division of tasks. What's more, the priests themselves did not necessarily kill the sacrificial animals. As for the consumption of meat linked to participation in the sacrifices, we take up the case of the inscriptions which are systematically called to the stand to contest or confirm it. The fact that the same pieces of epigraphic evidence can be called upon in either direction invites us to carefully reconsider the context in which they were produced. This is particularly true of a Thasian ritual norm uncovered in the city's Thesmophorion, authorizing women's access to the sacrificial sharing during a feast of the ancestral Athena. Such a norm can only be understood in relation to the family cults attested in the same place, which concerned civic divisions of the same type as Athenian phratries.
