Sacro-Creative Action and the Making of Gods in and beyond Rome (20 min)

Presenters

John Hopkins, New York University; and Emily Frank, New York University

Abstract

It is well known that Roman life was steeped in religious practice. Historians also generally understand that the predation of an imperializing, centrally administered government in Rome began to deploy religion as a syncretizing, assimilationist, and appropriative measure in Italic and Mediterranean occupation from the third century B.C.E., at least. This is probably true, and the violent epistemicide that followed is increasingly well documented. Still, the idea of Roman religion as a kind of imperial weapon imagines in some ways a world where, before and during conquest, there had been such a thing as Roman religion and that those who organized its institutions and oversaw its influences were elite sociopolitical figures. This talk will contend with both suppositions by considering the creative intelligence of itinerant, often non-Roman maker communities, the constitutive ecologies of sacred materials, and the effective roles of sacromaterial creation in ritual encounters and religious institutions before and during the early years of Roman expansion. I focus on remains of sculpture from sacred buildings crafted between ca. 400 and 200 B.C.E. in Rome, Falerii, Volsinii, and at other sites, and I consider how a renewed focus on maker communities, their actions and their contributions to sacred life redirects some attention away from political hegemony in the making of belief.

  AIA-3H