Description
Book Synopsis‘Performing the Sacra: Priestly roles and their organisation in Roman Britain’ addresses a range of cultural responses to the Roman conquest of Britain with regard to priestly roles. The approach is based on current theoretical trends focussing on dynamics of adaptation, multiculturalism, and appropriation and discarding a sharp distinction between local and Roman cults. The perspective is shifted from a centre-periphery model towards a spectrum of cultural responses. The book investigates a wide range of published and unpublished evidence to examine three main themes: a model of priesthood organisation, the embodiment of priestly authorities in a provincial environment, and how the different depositional contexts of priestly regalia contribute to our understanding of these roles. Previous accounts of this type of evidence from Britain has often linked the objects to local cults, for being somehow specific to the province. This was based on a limited search for comparisons among the evidence from other areas of the Roman world, both in terms of the individual objects and of the overall priestly organisation. Here, a methodical investigation of objects identifiable as priestly regalia and ceremonial tools was integrated into an assessment of historical, epigraphic, and iconographic sources. Mapped via the creation of a Geographic Information System and highlighting regional distributions, this work contributes to our understanding of the fluid provincial culture behind the religious organisation of the ritual landscape of Britain.
Trade ReviewMaking sense of the usually fragmented and ambiguous material is no small task, and presenting such a comprehensive dataset is achievement enough. But the author goes further, highlighting remarkable continuity between the Iron Age and Roman period, and assessing the pattern of deposition as well as use.
-- Edward Biddulph * Current Archaeology *
'The large quantity of objects from Roman Britain associated with people performing priestly functions is apparent to anyone who has written about religion in the province. Esposito’s book, based on a London thesis, brings most of these together... and is consequently very much to be welcomed.' -- Martin Henig * Britannia, Cambridge University Press *
Table of ContentsPreface; Chapter 1: Introduction to the study, assessment of the sources, and research questions; Chapter 2: Terminology, methodological framework, and data sources; Chapter 3: Priestly regalia from Britain. The material evidence for priestly roles; Chapter 4: Contextual analysis and distribution of priestly regalia; Chapter 5: Iconographic representations of ritual performers from Britain; Chapter 6: Epigraphic evidence of priestly titles in Britain; Chapter 7: Religious performers and their activities in Roman Britain; Appendix 1: Primary Sources; Appendix 2: Database; Bibliography
