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 whoused them.

Reconnects ancient buildings with the people who made them, with their surroundings, and with practices in other times and cultures.

Now in paperback, a brief introduction to the mysteries of the enigmatic, ancient civilization in the area of modern Italy. The Etruscans were a powerful people, marked by an influential civilization in ancient Italy. But despite their prominence, the Etruscans are often portrayed as mysterious—a strange and unknowable people whose language and culture have largely vanished. Lucy Shipley’s The Etruscans presents a different picture. Shipley writes of a people who traded with Greece and shaped the development of Rome, who inspired Renaissance artists and Romantic firebrands, and whose influence is still felt strongly in the modern world. Covering colonialism and conquest, misogyny and mystique, she weaves Etruscan history with new archaeological evidence to give us a revived picture of the Etruscan people. The book traces trade routes and trains of thought, describing the journey of Etruscan objects from creation to use, loss, rediscovery, and reinvention. From the wrappings of an Egyptian mummy displayed in a fashionable salon to the extra-curricular activities of Bonaparte, from a mass looting craze to a bombed museum in a town marked by massacre, the book is an extraordinary voyage through Etruscan archaeology, which ultimately leads to surprising and intriguing places. In this sharp and groundbreaking book, Shipley gives readers a unique perspective on an enigmatic people, revealing just how much we know about the Etruscans—and just how much still remains undiscovered.

The Oxford Handbook of Pre-Roman Italy provides a comprehensive account of the many peoples who lived on the Italian peninsula during the last millennium BCE. Written by more than fifty authors, the book describes the diversity of these indigenous cultures, their languages, interactions, and reciprocal influences. It gives emphasis to Greek colonization, the rise of aristocracies, technological innovations, and the spread of literacy, which provided the urban texture that shaped the history of the Italian peninsula.

This interdisciplinary edited volume presents twelve papers by Roman historians and archaeologists, discussing the interconnected relationship between religion and the Roman economy over the period c. 500 BC to AD 350. The connection between Roman religion and the economy has largely been ignored in work on the Roman economy, but this volume explores the many complex ways in which economic and religious thinking and activities were interwoven, from individuals to institutions. The broad geographic and chronological scope of the volume engages with a notable variety of evidence: epigraphic, archaeological, historical, papyrological, and zooarchaeological. In addition to providing case studies that draw from the rich archaeological, documentary, and epigraphic evidence, the volume also explores the different and sometimes divergent pictures offered by these sources (from discrepancies in the cost of religious buildings, to the tensions between piety and ostentatious donation). The edited collection thus bridges economic, social, and religious themes. The volume provides a view of a society in which religion had a central role in economic activity on an institutional to individual scale. The volume allows an evaluation of impact of that activity from both financial and social viewpoints, providing a new perspective on Roman religion - a perspective to which a wide range of archaeological and documentary evidence, from animal bone to coins and building costs, has contributed. As a result, this volume not only provides new information on the economy of Roman religion: it also proposes new ways of looking at existing bodies of evidence.

This book reorients the study of sacrifice, examining the locus of ritual action - the altars of Republican Rome and Latium.

The Religious History of the Roman Empire: The Republican Centuries is the second Oxford Readings in Classical Studies volume on the religious history of the Roman Empire, accompanying the volume on paganism, Judaism, and Christianity. This volume presents fourteen chapters dealing with aspects of the religious life of Republican Rome between c. 500 BCE and the fall of the Republican constitution in c. 30 BCE. The topics covered include Iron Age rituals (Christopher Smith); Roman Priesthood (John Scheid; Mary Beard); religion and war (Jörg Rüpke); religious behaviour in the context of polytheism (Andreas Bendlin); religious ritual in early and middle Republic (John North); Italian warfare practices (Olivier de Cazanove); the role of women (Rebecca Flemming); sacrificial ritual in Roman poetry (Denis Feeney); the centuriation-ritual (Daniel Gargola); Roman divination (Mary Beard); Augustan Peace and the stars (Alfred Schmid); the great cult-places of Italy (John Scheid); the grove of Pesaro (Filippo Coarelli). Originally published between 1981 and 2011, these chapters provide a vivid picture of key issues under discussion in this period, providing a missing link in the historiography of Roman republican religion. A central question concerns the balance to be found between ritual and belief, both problematic concepts in interpreting this religious tradition. While there can be no question that the performance of rituals was a regular traditional activity to which Romans attached great significance, particularly those who were in a responsible position as priests or senators, the later years of the Republic increasingly saw religious issues taken as matters for debate, and books on religious themes, unknown before the age of Cicero and Varro, began to appear.