ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

passive element in the act of colonization. Thus, in situations where a colony was notfounded ex novo, the colonists had an extant cultural landscape to negotiate, especially inthe existing temples or shrines to local deities.Laurence suggests that it was the association of city, population, and gods that lentthe city cultural meaning over the course of time. 11Through beginning to worship inlocal sanctuaries, the colonists could insert themselves into the cultural meaning of aplace and allow themselves to be defined by their own processions to, and worship of, thetutelary deities of their new home. Similarly, at the same time as they built their civicstructures into the landscape, the land itself dictated their occupations: sea-farers, farmers,miners, etc. Eventually, the colonists shared with the locals the self-definition imposedby the landscape because the point of colonization is to control land, resources, andaccess routes, but the outcome of colonization is the creation of a new community in anew and dynamic landscape. In short, colonization, with its political and economicmotives, is the background situation in which the religious systems of the coloniesdeveloped.III.The Religious LandscapeThroughout the previous discussion of the interrelationships between landscape and thehuman elements of colonization, the gods, temples, and cemeteries manifestedthemselves as crucial nodes within the landscape. 12In Italy, the physical location of11 Laurence (1996), p. 120.12 Laurence (1996), p. 111 "the building and dedication of a temple created a node in the landscape thatneeded to be maintained and perpetuated by the attention of human activity, and it was difficult for such a152