"Objects, art, and architecture of an explicitly "Christian" character appear for the first time in the archaeological record in the second and third centuries. While the corpus of known artifacts from this era remains very small and has not increased appreciably in recent decades (e.g. Snyder's 2003 compendium of pre-Constantinian remains is hardly different from the original edition in 1985), Longnecker's recent study of the ubiquity and significance of the cross before Constantine (2015) highlights the potential value in reexamining older material. The paucity of material reflects real demographic factors such as the small number of Christians in this period as well as the relatively limited group of Christian elite who might produce the sort of material signature that archaeologists typically detect. But the absence of evidence may also point to the nature of representation in these early communities, their adherence to Mosaic proscriptions against iconic art, and their blending with the social worlds they inhabited (Finney 1997; Jensen 2000). Indeed, the creation of a distinctly Christian iconography (Bisconti 1999; Rutgers 2000, 82-117; Snyder 2003, 2) and purpose-built places of worship often involved very minor or subtle changes to existing forms (Bisconti, Chapter 11; Britt, Chapter 15). That Christians appear at all in the material culture of this period points to the numerical and material growth of the church, as the catacombs and burial sites in Rome and other places attest (Fiocchi Nicolai, Chapter 4). While it remains very difficult to discern religious identity in the material culture of this period, the emergence of distinctly Christian art or objects nonetheless speaks to common patterns of belief, community, and liturgy."