Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

This is an exciting time to review the evidence for Romano-British cult practices and cosmologies, since a considerable amount of recent research has focused on such important Roman provincial issues as colonialism and resistance, acceptance and coercion, all of which would have had an impact on religion. The old models of Romanization have rightly been subjected to critical scrutiny and, at last, elements of socio-anthropological theory—long utilized in approaches to prehistoric archaeology—are being applied to Roman Britain in general and to Romano-British religion and ritual in particular. The application of these new cognitive models allows us to think in innovative ways about the material culture of cult and belief, about ways of seeing earth world and the supernatural world, and about the functional interpretation of religious expression, whether in the form of iconography, epigraphy or the use of sacred space. This essay seeks to present some of the evidence for cults, deities and sanctuaries that apparently had their genesis in the cosmological systems and paradigms of western Europe outside the Mediterranean littoral. Despite such a remit, it is not easy to draw sharp distinctions between beliefs and ritual practices of British origins and those of the Graeco-Roman world, partly because romanitas arguably pervaded parts of Britain for at least a hundred years prior to ... log in or subscribe to read full text