Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Archaeology of Early Roman Religion

The Archaeology of Early Roman Religion

Colantoni, Elizabeth

Hardcover

Series: Routledge Studies in Archaeology

Religion General Ancient Rome

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0415836646
ISBN13: 9780415836647
Publisher: Routledge
Published: Jan 1 2026
Pages: 208
Language: English

The religion of the people of Rome in the first centuries of the city's history has long been a topic of interest for scholars, but it has been investigated primarily through literary evidence recorded in the first century BC and later, many centuries after an urban community first began to develop in Rome in the eighth century BC. The contemporary archaeological data from the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries BC have been taken into account only sporadically, with the result that most scholarship supposedly focused on early Roman religion instead reproduces later Roman ideas about the origins and development of Roman religion--ideas that were often colored by the standards and principles of later Romans, supported by their own conjecture rather than by factual evidence. A standard scholarly method of dealing with the later written evidence about early Roman religious practices is to attempt to strip away any later or false information in order to isolate the genuine characteristics of early Roman religion. This teleological approach, however, causes early Roman religion to seem destined from the beginning to result in the later version of Roman religion. The only changes over time that can then be identified are those that show early Roman religion moving toward the model of the better known Roman religion of the first century BC and after. This book is the first to investigate early Roman religion on the basis of archaeological evidence.

Also in

Ancient Rome

View All