Cult Places And Cultural Change In Republican Italy

Summary: This study throws new light on the Roman impact on Italic religious structures in the last four centuries BC and, more generally, on the complex processes of change and accommodation set in motion by the Roman expansion in Italy. Cult places had a pivotal function among the various 'Italic' tribes known to us from the ancient sources, which had been gradually conquered and subsequently controlled by Rome. Through an analysis of archaeological, literary and epigraphic evidence from rural cult places in Central and Southern Italy including a case study on the Samnite temple of San Giovanni in Galdo, the authors investigate the fluctuating function of cult places in among the non-Roman Italic communities, before and after the establishment of Roman rule.

Probes evidence of the rising hegemony that became Rome

Processes of Cultural Change and Integration in the Roman World is a collection of studies on the mechanisms by which interaction occurred between Rome and the peoples that became part of its Empire between c. 300 BC and AD 300.

A complete geographical and thematic overview of the village in an antiquity and its role in the rise of Christianity. The volume begins with a “state-of-question” introduction by Thomas Robinson, assessing the interrelation of the village and city with the rise of early Christianity. Alan Cadwallader then articulates a methodology for future New Testament studies on this topic, employing a series of case studies to illustrate the methodological issues raised. From there contributors explore three areas of village life in different geographical areas, by means of a series of studies, written by experts in each discipline. They discuss the ancient near east (Egypt and Israel), mainland and Isthmian Greece, Asia Minor, and the Italian Peninsula. This geographic focus sheds light upon the villages associated with the biblical cities (Israel; Corinth; Galatia; Ephesus; Philippi; Thessalonica; Rome), including potential insights into the rural nature of the churches located there. A final section of thematic studies explores central issues of local village life (indigenous and imperial cults, funerary culture, and agricultural and economic life).

"This book uses all the available evidence to create a site biography of Larinum from 400 BCE to 100 CE, with a focus on the urban transformation that occurs there during the Roman conquest. Larinum, a pre-Roman town in the modern region of Molise, undergoes a unique transition from independence to municipal status when it receives Roman citizenship in the 80s BCE shortly after the Social War. Its trajectory illuminates complex processes of cultural, social and political change associated with the Roman conquest throughout the Italian peninsula in the first millennium BCE. This work highlights the importance of local isolated variability in studies of the Roman conquest, and provides a narrative that supplements larger works on this theme. Through a focus on local-level agency, it demonstrates strong local continuity in Larinum and its surrounding territory. This continuity is the key to Larinum's transition into the Roman state, which is spearheaded by the local elites. They participate in the broader cultural choices of the Hellenistic koiné and strive to be part of a Mediterranean-wide dialog that, over time, will come to be dominated by Rome. The case is made for advancing the field of Roman conquest studies under a new paradigm of social transformation that focuses on a history of gradual change, continuity, connectivity and local isolated variability that is contingent on highly specific issues rather than global movements"--

Although there are many studies of certain individual ancient Italic groups (e.g. the Etruscans, Gauls and Latins), there is no work that takes a comprehensive view of each of them—the famous and the less well-known—that existed in Iron Age and Roman Italy. Moreover, many previous studies have focused only on the material evidence for these groups or on what the literary sources have to say about them. This handbook is conceived of as a resource for archaeologists, historians, philologists and other scholars interested in finding out more about Italic groups from the earliest period they are detectable (early Iron Age, in most instances), down to the time when they begin to assimilate into the Roman state (in the late Republican or early Imperial period). As such, it will endeavor to include both archaeological and historical perspectives on each group, with contributions from the best-known or up-and-coming archaeologists and historians for these peoples and topics. The language of the volume is English, but scholars from around the world have contributed to it. This volume covers the ancient peoples of Italy more comprehensively in individual chapters, and it is also distinct because it has a thematic section.

This book examines the nature of human mobility, attitudes to it, and constructions of place over the last millennium BC in Rome and Italy. It demonstrates that there were high rates of mobility, challenging the perception of sites and communities as static and ethnically oriented entities.

This book examines the poorly understood transformations in rural landscapes and societies that formed the backbone of ancient empires.