Sinner Alejandro G., Revilla Calvo Victor (eds.) Religious Dynamics in a Microcontinent: Cult Places, Identities, and Cultural Change in Hispania

Brepols, 2022. — 248 p.The Roman conquest of the Iberian peninsula, a land already inhabited by peoples who were characterized by cultural, ethnic, and social diversity, was one of the longest and most complex colonial processes to have occurred in the Roman world. Different political entities saw integration and interaction taking place at different speeds and via different mechanisms, and these differences had a profound impact on the development of religious dynamics and cultural change across the peninsula.This edited volume draws together contributions from a number of experts in the field in order to deepen our understanding of religious phenomena in Hispania — in particular cult, rituals, mechanisms, and spaces — and in doing so, to offer new insights into processes of cultural and social change, and the impact of conquest and colonialism. The chapters gathered here identify how forms of religious interaction occurred at different levels and scales, and explore the ways in which religion and religious practices underpinned the construction, development, and renegotiation of different identities. Through this approach they shed important light on the crucial role of cultic practices in defining cultural and social identity as Iberia’s provincial communities were drawn into the Roman world.Alejandro G. Sinner is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Greek and Roman Studies at the University of Victoria. His research focuses on the social and cultural history of Roman Spain and the western provinces.Victor Revilla Calvo is a Professor at the University of Barcelona and an invited professor at the Universities of Campinas (Brasil), Padua and Verona (Italy), and Cádiz (Spain). His main research lines include the analysis of the rural economy and settlement in Hispania, the economic interdependence between the Roman provinces, and the forms of dependence and communication in the Roman provincial society of the Early Empire.