For anyone studying the local cultures of pre-Roman Italy and the transformations concurrent with the emergence of Rome's hegemony during the last three centuries b.c., T. Stek's book will be an essential reference point. Originating from the author's own fieldwork in Samnium and his PhD thesis on Sanctuary and Society in Central-Southern Italy (3rd to 1st Centuries B.C.), the book provides a useful synthesis of the nature and rôle of sanctuaries in the countryside of central/southern Italy and their function within the organization of the local communities, at a time of major changes in the cultural and political map of the Italian peninsula. If the time-frame of most of the arguments discussed is indicated as the last three or four centuries b.c., the geographical focus of the inquiry is only very loosely defined in the book title, although the map at fig. 1, adapted from E. T. Salmon‘s Samnium and the Samnites, provides an immediate visual reference to the Italic areas of the peninsula. Specific mention of the central and southern regions of the Italian peninsula is also made in the Introduction (3). It is evident, however, that the major emphasis of the research is on Samnium and most of the evidence discussed is from the Apennine hinterland. Both the chronology and geographical focus of the study allow the author to examine relevant points regarding the debate on settlement and cultural change in the Italic areas. Relying on a sound contextual approach based on the cumulative evidence provided by literary sources, epigraphy and archaeology, S. points out a number of problematic aspects of the conventional models generally used to understand the function of ‘rural’ sanctuaries in the Italic landscape. He then takes those problematic aspects as a point of departure to study the rôle of these cult places in the controversial and much debated process of ‘romanisation’. The author aptly uses the term in commas, given the more recent radical attacks on the very use of such a category, perceived by a large number of scholars as still very much embedded in nineteenth-century Romano-centric views of ‘Italian unification’.
The first chapters are devoted in large part to the analysis of current issues on religion and society in Italy during the last centuries b.c. In ch. 1, S., in line with the current debate on acculturation, reviews commonly held ideas on the nature and pace of ‘romanisation’ in Italy and argues against configuring changes occurring in the Italic areas as a mere phenomenon of local emulation and assimilation of Roman culture (so-called ‘self-romanisation’). To his credit, S.'s arguments are balanced and free of the jargon which often characterizes the on-going debate on the topic. While criticizing the simple, one-way configuration of change affecting the Italic communities, the author also acknowledges that it would be misleading to ignore the major rôle of Rome's growing power in the process. Ch. 2, on ‘Religious Romanisation’, is very much indebted to a number of key theoretical papers edited by E. Bispham and C. Smith in Religion in Archaic and Republican Rome and Italy (2000). S. addresses, in particular, the spread of Roman religious models such as Capitolium temples and anatomical votive terracottas. For the first, he quotes research by E. Bispham and E. Fentress that has challenged the actual reality of Aulus Gellius' ‘little Romes’, even in the case of colonial foundations, showing that Capitolia are in most cases a relatively later development. For the anatomical votives, S. underlines the fact that it would be wrong to read fixed meanings (i.e. Rome's primary rôle in their spread across the Italian peninsula) in selective aspects of material culture.
Ch. 3 is dedicated to the main area of his research, Pentrian Samnium. Not surprisingly, major emphasis is placed on the discussion of Pietrabbondante, where the monumentality of the buildings, reminiscent of Roman models of temple architecture, has often been assumed as outstanding evidence for ‘self-romanisation’. In S.'s view, these seemingly Roman-inspired architectural features were instead part of widespread cultural models and ‘common imagery’ (52) used by the Italic communities to express their own identity. Reference to comparanda in the southern Apennines, in particular the sanctuary at Rossano di Vaglio near Potenza, might have provided added support to S.'s argument. The following chapter addresses the location and function of Italic sanctuaries. Here the author introduces a crucial issue: the use of the pagus-vicus model for the Italic settlement system and the rôle of cult places within it. He also underlines that the actual meaning of ‘rural’ is problematic since the settlement context of ‘rural’ sanctuaries has in most cases been overlooked by archaeological investigations in favour of the more prominent and materially visible remains of the sacred buildings and votive offerings. It is exactly this problem that stimulated his own research at San Giovanni in Galdo, presented in the following chapter. The results show that the seemingly isolated sanctuary building stood in the proximity of an inhabited village throughout its use, from pre-Roman to imperial times. Given the systematic nature of the data collected from both excavation and field-survey, this case study may thus deal a serious blow to the generally accepted view of remote Italic sanctuaries, which conventional wisdom would see unrelated to a specific habitation context. Hence, S. argues against the view of the pagus-vicus model as the Italic type of hierarchical territorial organization in pre-Roman times. As shown by L. Capogrossi Colognesi and M. Tarpin and most recently E. Todisco (I vici rurali nel paesaggio dell'Italia romana (2011)) pagi and vici were non-hierarchical Roman institutions related to the administration of conquered territory. S. then in ch. 7 considers all the implications of this reinterpretation of the pagus-vicus model for the rôle of sanctuaries in the Italian countryside.
Finally, in chs 8 and 9, S. turns to rituals in Rome connected with pagi and vici: Paganalia and Compitalia. Rather than traditional festivals imported into Rome from the countryside, these were rituals exported to conquered territories for the administration of communities living under Roman rule. He also speculates that Compitalia may have been celebrated at Italic sanctuaries. The important implication is that the continuity in cult places between the pre-Roman and Roman periods, indicated by archaeological discoveries, may mask profound political and cultic changes at sanctuary sites. Thus, in these last chapters the discourse is shifted to Roman, rather than local initiative. No doubt some of S.'s views will raise discussion and debate, but it is exactly his provocative approach, as well as the breadth of his analysis, that make this book essential reading for any graduate course on the History and Archaeology of Republican Italy.
