The decoration of early shrines and temples

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte R. Potts
Keyword(s):  
Central Italy ◽  
Vernacular Architecture ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Careful Selection ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Religious Architecture ◽  
New Information ◽  
New System

An integral part of the transition from ‘huts’ to ‘houses’ in the seventh and early sixth century BC was the adoption of a new roofing system using wooden beams and terracotta tiles instead of traditional thatch. The two elements of the new system formed an integrated unit, with special tiles designed and positioned to protect the perishable wooden beams from rain, wind, and fire; many also carried painted and moulded decorations that have encouraged study of their iconography as well as function. The disappearance of wooden trusses and supporting mud-brick walls from the archaeological record means that thousands of these durable tiles and architectural terracottas now comprise the primary evidence for the size, form, and decoration of many early Etruscan and Latial superstructures. Excavations in the last seventy years have yielded new information about the distribution of the decorative elements of these roofs in Etruria and Latium, and in particular about the different types of buildings on which they appeared. It is clear that architectural terracottas were initially placed on a wide variety of buildings, unlike their Greek counterparts, but gradually became the preserve of religious architecture. This chapter will examine the nature and location of these roofs, their imagery, and explanations for their increasingly limited use. As such it will offer a detailed analysis of the process by which terracottas became a means of differentiating religious buildings from vernacular architecture during the sixth century BC. Tile production appears to have begun in central Italy by the middle of the seventh century BC and can be associated with significant changes in society and economy. With an approximate weight of 60 kilograms per square metre for tiles and up to 85 kilograms per square metre for the supporting roof beams, the downward and outward pressure of tiled roofs had to be countered with strong, preferably stonebased, walls following rectangular or square plans, the careful selection of timbers to span greater distances, and specialized craftsmen to make, fit, and repair the roofs. All of these factors imply more sedentary communities than hut architecture, growing technical infrastructure, and an ability and readiness to invest in the greater capital expense of a tiled roof.

Constructing histories

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte R. Potts
Keyword(s):  
Diagnostic Tool ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Religious Architecture ◽  
The Dead

Religious buildings are central to histories of ancient architecture and reconstructions of ancient societies. While this is in large part due to the prominence of their remains in the archaeological record, it also reflects the variety of ways in which religious buildings dominated early settlements. Their construction affected the appearance of towns and landscapes; the activities that occurred in and around them were closely connected to religious beliefs and the economy; and the resources involved in their creation and maintenance demonstrated the authority and priorities of certain individuals and communities. These factors allow religious architecture to be studied as either a corpus of structures displaying technical and artistic achievements or, alternatively, as a diagnostic tool for assessing how ancient societies functioned and changed. The ability of histories of religious architecture to be histories of both buildings and people means that they are now referenced in a variety of scholarship ranging from archaeology to anthropology and social and religious histories, and as such have an impact far beyond the formulation of architectural typologies. Religious architecture is so often incorporated into studies of the ancient world that it is important to regularly review, and sometimes revise, what we know about these buildings. This is particularly the case for cult buildings in pre-Roman central Italy, as five decades of new excavations, artefact studies, and interdisciplinary analyses have transformed our knowledge of Etruscan and Latial societies and their material cultures. The systematic excavation of settlements including Luni sul Mignone, Ficana, and Marzabotto, for example, now allows Etruscan scholars, long reliant on information from cemeteries and burials, to examine evidence of the living alongside that of the dead. Standard histories of Etruscan buildings and architectural decoration have been revised as a consequence of data from sites such as Poggio Civitate and Acquarossa. New excavations of sanctuaries at Tarquinia, Veii, Gravisca, and Pyrgi have given form to cult sites and practices that were previously reconstructed using only literary texts, and landmark conferences and publications on votive deposits have yielded unprecedented information on Etruscan gods and rituals. The study of sites and communities in Latium has also been enriched.

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.

Expressions of the Elites

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Hinton
Keyword(s):  
Olive Oil ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Similar Distribution ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
The West ◽  
Loire Valley

Because both Gildas and Bede wrote of mutual antipathy between Britons and Anglo-Saxons, it used to be thought self-evident that their hostility was expressed by the cultural differences that appear so obvious in the formers’ Christianity, Celtic speech, hillforts, and unfurnished graves, and the latters’ cremations, furnished inhumations, sunken-featured buildings, great squareheaded brooches, and the like. Different ideas about the adaptations that had to be made to meet changing circumstances have led to reappraisals of extreme positions about racial exclusiveness, however, and emphasis is now placed on the ways that people created new identities rather than on how they inherited one of two alternative dichotomies. The spread of furnished graves westwards and northwards in the second half of the sixth century could be taken as evidence of further waves of immigrants from the continent, but at least as likely is that existing populations were changing their practices as new conditions developed. In the west and north, the most visible change in the archaeological record after the middle of the sixth century is the disappearance of Mediterranean imported pottery from hillforts and other sites, replaced by southern French wares, implying that wine and olive oil shipped in wooden casks from the Loire valley and Bordeaux replaced Greek and African supplies sent in clay amphoras. As with the earlier bowls and dishes, the assumption is that much of the pottery was ‘associative’, sought after because it was seen as appropriate to use at feasts when luxuries were offered by a host. Unlike the earlier imports, however, in the seventh century there were also open-topped jars that seem to have been used as containers, presumably for dry goods as liquids would have slopped out. Some were used for cooking. The French seventh-century pottery, now called E-ware, is a little more often found than are the earlier wares; its absence from South Cadbury is good evidence that that site went out of use c.600, despite its former importance—a sign of the continued instability of the period. Just as none of the Mediterranean imported pottery had reached places far from the west coast, so too the French wares did not pass inland, or up the English Channel. Imports of glass have a broadly similar distribution, although dating is more difficult.

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 architecture of early shrines and temples

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte R. Potts
Keyword(s):  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Religious Rituals ◽  
New Buildings

The architectural transformations of the seventh and early sixth centuries, often described as the change from huts to houses, generated a range of building types that some scholars have associated with particular types of religious activities. Some small buildings with one or two rooms have been interpreted as oikos shrines; some buildings with multiple adjacent rooms are thought to have been venues for ritual banquets; and some courtyard complexes have been cast as political sanctuaries or residences where the inhabitants observed familial cults. The archaeological evidence for religious activities associated with any of these building types, however, is not straightforward. The first part of this chapter examines whether it is possible to identify any preferred plan for structures that sheltered and complemented religious rituals during the seventh and early sixth centuries BC. The second part then contrasts this inquiry with the relatively straightforward identification of religious buildings during and after the sixth century BC permitted by the introduction of a distinctive, religious architectural marker, namely podia. As such this chapter explores the emergence of a formal architectural vocabulary for Etrusco-Italic religious buildings and identifies when and where cult buildings became architecturally differentiated from other structures within settlements. Although the architectural changes of the seventh and early sixth centuries BC in Latium and Etruria are not linear or uniform, it is clear that round, oval, and rectangular huts with wattle-and-daub walls and thatched coverings were gradually replaced by rectangular structures with stone foundations and tiled roofs. From the middle of the seventh century plans of the new buildings were regularized to the point where it is possible to identify three main types. The names of these types, however, vary both within and between different scholarly traditions, with the result that a rectangular, tile-roofed building thought to have a religious function can be variously labelled an oikos shrine, a proto-temple, or a temple, and a more elaborate building may be described as a Breithaus, a casa a vani affiancati, a courtyard building, a palazzo, a regia, or an elite residence.

Secular Monograms, Social Status, and Authority in the Late Roman World and Early Byzantium

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Imperial Authority ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Noble Identity ◽  
Late Roman

This chapter examines the use of monograms as graphic signs of imperial authority in the late Roman and early Byzantine empire, from its appropriation on imperial coinage in the mid-fifth century to its employment in other material media in the following centuries. It also overviews the use of monograms by imperial officials and aristocrats as visible signs of social power and noble identity on mass-produced objects, dress accessories, and luxury items. The concluding section discusses a new social function for late antique monograms as visible tokens of a new Christian paideia and of elevated social status, related to ennobling calligraphic skills. This transformation of monograms into an attribute of visual Christian culture became especially apparent in sixth-century Byzantium, with the cruciform monograms appearing in the second quarter of the sixth century and becoming a default monogrammatic form from the seventh century onwards.

Merovingian Religious Architecture

2020 ◽  
pp. 656-692
Author(s):  
Pascale Chevalier
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Architectural Form ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Religious Architecture ◽  
Construction Techniques ◽  
Cultural Exchanges ◽  
New Research ◽  
Functional Content

For nearly 270 years, between the end of the Roman Empire and the advent of the Carolingian dynasty, the Merovingian territories experienced an intense flowering of religious construction, which recent archaeology has documented with increasing detail. This chapter sheds light on new research and recent discoveries; however, rather than reviewing all of the sites and studies of Merovingian churches and the contemporary sources mentioning them, it gives some new clues and reflections about so-called Merovingian architecture and the broad vision of an architectural form that was expressed in quite simple but majestic designs. These structures, constructed of stone (or wood), reveal a society progressively Christianized under the leadership of bishops, clerics, and monks, as well as by the Merovingian sovereigns. Without any break with classical antiquity, the Merovingian centuries fit into a continuous legacy that transformed the monumental landscape in both cities and countryside. The various forms of Christian monuments of the fifth to eighth century thus illustrate this heritage, sometimes through an extreme simplification of antique patterns and sometimes through the enrichment of aesthetic forms brought by the arrival of immigrant populations. Within a changing world, religious buildings appear to have been a catalyst for cultural exchanges as places of visibility and gathering, as witnesses of the building fever of the period. Our understanding of religious architecture in Merovingian Gaul is gradually becoming more accurate. We now know an increasing amount about the establishment, planning, forms and sizes, construction techniques, ornamentation, and liturgical and functional content of all these structures. These structures, which were so varied in size and use, reveal extensive artistic plurality.

The Tiber river delta plain (central Italy): Coastal evolution and implications for the ancient Ostia Roman settlement

The Holocene ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (7) ◽  
pp. 1105-1116 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Bellotti ◽  
G. Calderoni ◽  
F. Di Rita ◽  
M. D’Orefice ◽  
C. D’Amico ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Central Italy ◽  
River Mouth ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
River Delta ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Delta Plain ◽  
Tiber River ◽  
Military Posts ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
The Town

Geomorphologic, stratigraphic, faunistic, palynological and carbon isotope analyses were carried out in the area of the Tiber river mouth. The results depict a complex palaeoenvironmental evolution in the area of the Roman town of Ostia, ascertain the changes of the Tiber river delta over the last 6000 years and support a re-interpretation of some archaeologic issues. The wave-dominated Tiber delta evolved through three distinct phases. In the first step (5000–2700 yr BP) a delta cusp was built at the river mouth, which was located north of the present outlet. Subsequently (2700–1900 BP), an abrupt southward migration of the river mouth determined the abandonment of the previous cusp and the progradation of a new one. The third step, which is still in progress, is marked by the appearance of a complex cusp made up of two distributary channels. The transition from the first to the second evolution phase occurred in the seventh century bc and was contemporary to the foundation of Ostia, as suggested by historical accounts. However, the oldest archaeological evidence of the town of Ostia dates to the fourth century bc, when human activity is clearly recorded also by pollen data. We suggest that the first human settlement (seventh century bc) consisted of ephemeral military posts, with the aim of controlling the strategic river mouth and establishing the Ostia saltworks. Only after the fourth century bc the coastal environment was stable enough for the foundation and development of the town of Ostia.

scholarly journals Wild Goat style ceramics at Troy and the impact of Archaic period colonisation on the Troad

2013 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 35-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn C. Aslan ◽  
Ernst Pernicka
Keyword(s):  
Neutron Activation Analysis ◽  
Activation Analysis ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Ceramic Production ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
New Information ◽  
Gallipoli Peninsula ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThe establishment of colonies along the Hellespont by inhabitants of Ionia, Athens and Lesbos is well-known from historical texts. Recently, stratified contexts at Troy as well as other surveys and excavations have yielded new information about the chronology and material markers of Archaic period settlements in the Troad and the Gallipoli peninsula. The archaeological evidence for colonisation in this region is not clearly seen until the late seventh to early sixth century BC when there is a dramatic change in the material culture. Destruction evidence from Troy indicates that the new settlers probably entered a weakened and depopulated region in the second half of the seventh century BC. The Ionian colonists transplanted their pottery traditions and started production of East Greek style ceramics in the Troad. Neutron Activation Analysis of Wild Goat style ceramics found at Troy offers further confirmation for the existence of Hellespontine Wild Goat style ceramic production centres. The Wild Goat style examples from Troy help to define the characteristics of the Hellespontine group, as well as the chronology and impact of colonisation in this area.

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