Given to the Masters as part of the agreement at the surrender of the Kingdom of Ari, Elva must learn to survive amongst those who see her as little more than food. Brought up to revere the old gods by her mother, can her faith in an outlawed religion help her to survive in situations she never dreamed of? After proving her worth as a living being, she must navigate the political world of the Masters where one wrong move could not only result in her own death, but also that of everyone she knows. At the same time, she cannot be seen as purely a tool of the Masters as this will alienate her family and friends. Meanwhile those who govern the Masters seek to use Elva for their own advantage, a pawn that can be sacrificed when it has out lived its usefulness.

The Archaeology of Roman Portugal aims to contribute to the wider debate on Roman imperialism and expansionism, by bringing to the fore a much-underrepresented area of the Roman empire, at least in English-language scholarship: its westernmost edge in modern day Portugal. Highlighting the perspective from Roman Portugal will contribute to our understanding of the Roman empire, because it presents both an extraordinary landscape in the sense of economic opportunities (ocean resources, marble and metal mining) and settlement history. The volume aims to present new data and insights from both archaeology and ancient history, and to discuss their significance for our understanding of Roman expansion and imperialism. A key goal of the volume is to discuss how the Portuguese panorama compares to other areas of the Iberian peninsula. An explicit goal of the volume is to better integrate Portuguese scholarship in the academic debate on the Mediterranean Roman world, and to contextualize it firmly in the wider Iberian and Western Mediterranean context. Therefore, chapters are produced by internationally diverse scholars in archaeology and ancient history from Portugal, Spain, Germany, the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy. With a view to asses the potential of integrating best practices in archaeological approaches and methodology, different national and disciplinary research traditions and historical frameworks will be explicitly discussed.