Religious Architecture in Latium and Etruria, c. 900-500 BC

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte R. Potts
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Detailed History ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Religious Architecture ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of

Religious Architecture in Latium and Etruria, c. 900-500 BC presents the first comprehensive treatment of cult buildings in western central Italy from the Iron Age to the Archaic Period. By analysing the archaeological evidence for the form of early religious buildings and their role in ancient communities, it reconstructs a detailed history of early Latial and Etruscan religious architecture that brings together the buildings and the people who used them. The first part of the study examines the processes by which religious buildings changed from huts and shrines to monumental temples, and explores apparent differences between these processes in Latium and Etruria. The second part analyses the broader architectural, religious, and topographical contexts of the first Etrusco-Italic temples alongside possible rationales for their introduction. The result is a new and extensive account of when, where, and why monumental cult buildings became features of early central Italic society.

Conclusions

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte R. Potts
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Religious Architecture ◽  
And Function

This book began by stating that histories of religious architecture can be accounts of both buildings and people. This particular history, focused on the archaeological evidence for the development of cult buildings in early central Italy, has reconsidered traditional narratives about the form and function of Etrusco-Italic religious architecture and proposed an alternative reconstruction of how their architects and audiences may have interacted with one another in Rome, Latium, and Etruria between the ninth and the sixth centuries BC. Comparison with the construction of monumental temples elsewhere also indicated that settlements including Rome, Satricum, Pyrgi, and Tarquinia can perhaps be considered part of a network of Archaic Mediterranean settlements with material, commercial, and religious connections, and that monumental architecture may have been a mechanism for successful social interaction. This study has therefore supported the suggestion that the physical and social fabric of ancient communities were closely linked, and that regional studies of Latium and Etruria may furthermore benefit from being set in Italic and Mediterranean contexts. This concluding chapter briefly recapitulates the arguments made in the main body of the book and the significance of each of those arguments for studies of ancient architecture and society. It also assesses how these findings relate to broader debates about Archaic Italy. Finally, it acknowledges the limitations of this analysis and highlights opportunities for future research. Part I of this book demonstrated that ancient religious architecture was a protean phenomenon. Three chapters analysed the ambiguous evidence for Iron Age sacred huts, the range of different buildings types associated with ritual activities in the seventh century BC, and the emergence of a separate architectural language for religious buildings during the Archaic period. Detailed analyses of foundations and roofs revealed that as changes in technology and society led to the widespread use of more permanent building materials, the physical fabric of central Italic settlements was also increasingly marked by the use of particular architectural forms and decorations to differentiate cult buildings from other structures, setting them apart in a form of architectural consecration.

Ritual activation: altars, cult statues, and temples

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte R. Potts
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Imperial Cult ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Religious Rituals ◽  
Religious Architecture ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Ritual Space ◽  
And Function

Religious buildings, altars, and cult statues are often conceived of as complementary, if not indivisible, elements of Roman republican and imperial cult sites. The design and function of religious architecture have been ascribed to their interaction, with the result that it is not uncommon for one to be used to explain the presence of the others: buildings were constructed to shelter cult statues, which were aligned with external altars to provide sightlines between the gods and their worshippers. Together the three components shaped ritual space and made communication with the divine intelligible and tangible. Yet these three elements were not inherent parts of all ancient religious rituals and venues. There is no evidence of dedicated religious buildings, altars, or cult statues at the water sources that received some of the earliest votive deposits in central Italy, such as the spring at Campoverde, and the arrangement of accumulated votive offerings and statuettes in caves such as the closed deposit of the Caverna della Stipe similarly suggests that no image was accorded particular prominence or accompanied by a permanent altar. Proposals that some Iron Age residences hosted ritual meals do not theorize the complementary presence of cult statues and open-air altars, nor do suggestions that Greco- Roman temples developed from aristocratic banqueting halls. If the resulting impression of an era without cult statues and prominent altars is correct, then histories of religious architecture should consider the evidence for the introduction of such features and their influence on the form and function of relevant cult buildings. This chapter will accordingly examine the archaeological evidence for pre-republican altars and cult statues in Latium and Etruria. It will explore the problematic identification of these religious accessories, and identify the quantity and nature of those that can be connected with cult buildings. The significance of altars and cult statues as religious markers, or potential means of distinguishing cult buildings from other structures, will also be considered. Finally, it will evaluate the theory that the introduction of altars and anthropomorphic cult statues stimulated the construction of monumental temples.

The first religious buildings: ‘sacred huts’

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte R. Potts
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Hot Springs ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Religious Activity ◽  
Neolithic Period ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
The Bronze Age

The votive assemblages that form the primary archaeological evidence for non-funerary cult in the Neolithic, Bronze, and early Iron Ages in central Italy indicate that there is a long tradition of religious activity in Latium and Etruria in which buildings played no discernible role. Data on votive deposits in western central Italy is admittedly uneven: although many early votive assemblages from Latium have been widely studied and published, there are few Etruscan comparanda; of the more than two hundred Etruscan votive assemblages currently known from all periods, relatively few date prior to the fourth century BC, while those in museum collections are often no longer entire and suffer from a lack of detailed provenance as well as an absence of excavations in the vicinity of the original find. Nevertheless, it is possible to recognize broad patterns in the form and location of cult sites prior to the Iron Age, and thus to sketch the broader context of prehistoric rituals that pre-dated the construction of the first religious buildings. In the Neolithic period (c.6000–3500 BC), funerary and non-funerary rituals appear to have been observed in underground spaces such as caves, crevices, and rock shelters, and there are also signs that cults developed around ‘abnormal water’ like stalagmites, stalactites, hot springs, and pools of still water. These characteristics remain visible in the evidence from the middle Bronze Age (c.1700–1300 BC). Finds from this period at the Sventatoio cave in Latium include vases containing traces of wheat, barley seed cakes, and parts of young animals including pigs, sheep, and oxen, as well as burned remains of at least three children. The openair veneration of underground phenomena is also implied by the discovery of ceramic fragments from all phases of the Bronze Age around a sulphurous spring near the Colonelle Lake at Tivoli. Other evidence of cult activities at prominent points in the landscape, such as mountain tops and rivers, suggests that rituals began to lose an underground orientation during the middle Bronze Age. By the late Bronze Age (c.1300–900 BC) natural caves no longer seem to have served ritual or funerary functions.

Joseph Henry Maclagen Wedderburn, 1882 - 1948

1949 ◽  
Vol 6 (18) ◽  
pp. 618-625
Keyword(s):  
Heart Attack ◽  
Professor Emeritus ◽  
Detailed History ◽  
Free Church ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Parish Minister ◽  
The People ◽  
Early School ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of

Joseph H. M. Wedderburn, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mathematics of Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.A., was found dead in his residence at Princeton on 9 October 1948. Professor Wedderburn who was a bachelor had, for many years, lived alone. His body was found by the people who took care of the house and grounds. The medical authorities concluded, after examination, that death had occurred several days previously as a result of a heart attack. Wedderburn was born on 26 February 1882, in Forfar, Scotland, the tenth child in a family of fourteen children, which included seven brothers and six sisters. His father was Alexander Stormonth Maclagen Wedderburn, M.D., of Pearsie. His mother was Anne Ogilvie. On his father’s side his grandfather was Parish Minister of Kinfauns and Professor of Exegesis in the Free Church College of Aberdeen. His paternal great-grandfather was Parish Minister of Blair Atholl and a Chaplain in the Black Watch. On his maternal side his grandfather was a lawyer in Dundee, as had been true of the family for several preceding generations. The detailed history of the Wedderburn family has been recorded in the Wedderburn Book . Of his many brothers and sisters only two survived him, a brother, Ernest Wedderburn of Edinburgh, Scotland, and a sister, Miss Elizabeth Wedderburn, of Paris, France. Wedderburn’s early school years were spent at the Forfar Academy from 1887 to 1895. In the latter year he transferred for the last three years of his school education to George Watson’s College in Edinburgh, 1895-1898. From this college at the age of sixteen and a half years he obtained the leaving scholarship and entered Edinburgh University in the autumn of 1898. After five years as a student in this university he obtained, in 1903, the M.A. degree with First-Class Honours in Mathematics.

scholarly journals The Early Iron Age in South Italy

1907 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 284-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. E. Peet
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
The South ◽  
Po Valley ◽  
South Italy ◽  
History Of

To theorize with regard to the development of South Italy in prehistoric times is at once easy and dangerous: easy because the ascertained facts to be accounted for are few, dangerous because the chance of new and disconcerting discoveries is greatest in an unexplored territory. At the same time the theory which is at present most widely held with regard to the early iron age in South Italy is not entirely convincing. Until recently the history of South Italy in pre-Roman times was almost a complete blank, no explanation being possible because there were no facts to be explained. But the discoveries at Torre del Mordillo, Spezzano Calabrese, Piedimonte d'Alife, Cuma, Suessola, and other places have lately provided a certain basis for construction. Very few attempts, however, have been made to supply the explanation of these data; indeed archaeologists were already well employed upon the far more copious material of Northern and Central Italy. But in 1899 interest in the south of the Peninsula was heightened by Quagliati's discovery of a terramara at Tarentum. To anyone who has examined the immense mass of material from this site there can be no particle of doubt that the terramara of Scoglio del Tonno at Tarentum is exactly identical in type with the terremare of the Po valley.

L'Assetto Rurale in Età Arcaica ed in Età Romana Del Territorio Di Poggio Sommavilla (Sabina Tiberina)

2002 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 79-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flaminia Verga
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Road Network ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Republican Period ◽  
Commercial Exchange ◽  
Pattern Characteristic ◽  
Trade Route ◽  
Tiber Valley

RURAL SETTLEMENT PATTERNS IN THE ARCHAIC AND ROMAN PERIODS IN THE AREA OF POGGIO SOMMAVILLA (SABINA TIBERINA)This paper presents the results of an historical and topographical survey carried out in the middle Tiber valley, more specifically in the Sabina Tiberina, in the area around Poggio Sommavilla. The survey focused particularly on the area under the present-day administration of the Comune of Stimigliano, with the aim of reconstructing the topographical layout of the Roman landscape. The field survey shed important new light on the nature of the archaic and Roman road network. In particular, as well as the Via Flaminia that runs along the western limits of the study area, another road was identified running in a broadly northeast-southwest direction, which appears to have formed the main trade route that served the area during both the archaic and Roman periods. Furthermore, the study of earlier maps, together with the evidence from the survey, has permitted the identification along the Tiber of a number of ancient ports, the positions of which were not known previously.It is interesting to note that the settlement pattern characteristic of the Iron Age, which favoured high plateaux overlooking the Tiber, continued into the archaic period. This appears to have had a significant impact on settlement of the Roman period, in that the earliest attested Roman villas in this area are those situated next to the Tiber. The development of the ‘phenomenon of the villa’ in the area of the Sabina Tiberina from the end of the Republican period (third to second centuries BC) is consistent with the results of studies in other parts of central Italy. The study of the pottery collected from settlements of the archaic period (Colle Rosetta) and the Roman period (San Sebastiano) confirms the importance of the Tiber as a trade route for commercial exchange.

From football stadium to Iron Age hillfort. Creating a taxonomy of Wessex hillfort communities

2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Davis
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
Professional Football ◽  
The People ◽  
Football Clubs ◽  
Material Environment ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Use ◽  
Football Stadium

AbstractThe variability of Wessex hillfort form, use and development has long been noted, but not satisfactorily explained. This paper seeks to explain this variability and suggests that each hillfort may have had its own distinctive history of use, dependent upon the nature of the hillfort community – the people who visited, inhabited and used the hillfort. This paper starts by using grid–group analysis to define identities that can be found among modern communities – such as that of spectators of contemporary professional football clubs – which helps to frame our understanding of hillfort communities as constituted of households with differing motivations, loyalties and identification with the material environment. The variable trajectories of hillfort development are thus explained by the changing cultural relationships between Iron Age households and hillforts.

scholarly journals ON THE ORIGINS OF SACRED ARCHITECTURE: INTERPRETATIONS OF THE EGYPTIAN TEMPLE

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurizio Paga
Keyword(s):  
Internal Space ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Sacred Architecture ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Religious Architecture ◽  
Entire Structure ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Architecture ◽  
Entire History ◽  
The Temple

Abstract: According to the interpretation of Hegel, Egyptian religious buildings, and among them especially the temples, represent the beginning of the history of architecture, and so the beginning of the entire history of art.The Egyptian religious architecture has a symbolic character, because its configuration tries to represent the spiritual content without being fully adequate to it. So the Egyptian temple alludes to the divine through its entire structure, but does not have a proper internal space, dedicated to the worship of the image of God.On this point, contemporary Egyptology corrected Hegel’s view, because broadly speaking the Egyptian temple had an interior where the image of the deity was safeguarded. However, Hegel’s thesis paradoxically remains suitable for a particular case of the Egyptian experience that he could not know at that time: in the monotheistic religion of Amarna, the temple of the sun-god Aton has no images and does not have a center, because the Divine is present everywhere, like the sunlight that illuminates equally all over the temple.Key words: Egypt; architecture; temple; symbol; image.

scholarly journals Can non typical traditional forms of sacral space serve as a guide in the development of new forms of religious architecture in Serbian Orthodox Church?

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 44-51
Author(s):  
Božidar Manić ◽  
Igor Marić ◽  
Ana Niković
Keyword(s):  
Current Situation ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Religious Architecture ◽  
History Of

This paper presents the possibilities of the development of new forms of religious architecture in Serbian Orthodox Church, on the basis of certain traditions. Current situation in this field is analyzed with special emphasis on non-typical religious buildings and spaces. The authors show that the domination of traditionalism in architectural expression is not based on the canonical restrictions, but rather the result of striving to establish the interrupted continuity by replicating forms from previous époques. Freedom of architectural creation in this field is strongly supported with the variety of forms existing through history of which zapis is particularly interesting.

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