ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

Chapter 4: Religious Landscape and Community BuildingI. IntroductionColonization as a phenomenon involves not only the people occupied with creating a newcolony, but also the local population that is host or neighbor to the colony and, equally asimportant, the landscape in which the colony is founded. As seen in Sluyter's model (cf.chapter 1), the concept of 'landscape' encompasses the material and physical features ofthe land as well as the definitions imposed on the land by its human inhabitants. 1Such alandscape can be described at the macro level, through the use of generalizing models, orat the micro level, through examination of specific sites and contexts. Chapter 3introduced the commissioners' influence over the colonial landscape in general.Expanding on this discussion, the purposes of the first two sections of this chapter are toexplore the ancient Roman definition of what a city landscape contained and also wherein the landscape religious action occurred.After this treatment of the macro-level models of ancient religious landscapes, thechapter turns to examples of certain colonies in Southern Italy: Fregellae, Paestum, andSora. These three studies suggest that the religious landscape of each colony, althoughunique in every case, acted to define boundaries, demarcate colonial space, claimcommon identities, and integrate various inhabitants into one, unified group. Moreover,each colonial pantheon had a unique level of correlation (or lack thereof) with the'Sluyter(2002),p.23.2 Riva and Stoddard (1996), p. 93. I follow Riva and Stoddard in embracing discussion of both the macroand micro level of landscapes (contra Tilley 1994). While the specific context landscape analysis is usefulfor understanding a single site, the generalized models offered in this chapter assist in illuminating trends,insofar as they exist, in colonial religious practices.145