Compared to better-known areas of central Italy, the more inland territories—such as ancient Umbria, the focus of this work—remain understudied and continue to lag behind in archaeological research. For this reason alone, the publication of this study is a welcome and significant contribution. The book is a revised version of the author’s doctoral dissertation, defended in 2020 at the University of Michigan. It aims to provide a critical synthesis of the cultural transformations attested in Umbrian sanctuaries between the Archaic period and the Late Republic. Particular emphasis is placed on the crucial period between the Middle and Late Republican phases, when the region came under Roman influence.
As stated in the Introduction, the author seeks to move beyond the traditional scholarly framework, which mostly attributed these transformations primarily—if not entirely—to Roman influence. Instead, she adopts a more nuanced approach in line with recent scholarship on cultural change, emphasizing the active role played by local Umbrian communities. The book, in an elegant format and well-written, is structured into an Introduction and five chapters, each concluding with useful summaries that synthesize key points. It also includes three appendices, a bibliography, and a concise index.
Following the Introduction, the second chapter outlines the theoretical and methodological framework of the study. The first section addresses the complex relationship between cultural change and Roman influence, providing an effective synthesis of the extensive scholarly debate on this topic from the early 20th century to the present. As mentioned, the author aligns with contemporary interpretative models that, while acknowledging necessary nuances, emphasize the agency of local communities. She explicitly (p. 14) adopts the concept of the Middle Ground, arguing that the cultural transformations examined in her study resulted from the negotiation of such a space between Umbrians and Romans, in which neither group assumed a dominant role. This is followed by a discussion of scholarship specifically related to the context of ancient Umbria. The second section focuses on cultural change in the religious sphere of central Italy, addressing theories regarding the role of rural sanctuaries—the predominant category of sites considered in the study—in political and social organization, as well as their transformation over time. This section also introduces two key themes, the critique of which constitutes one of the author’s main research objectives: the supposed deactivation of rural sanctuaries due to Roman-driven urbanization and the interpretation of terracotta anatomical votives as markers of an old-fashioned ‘Romanization’. Drawing on the most up-to-date scholarship, the author critiques these traditional perspectives before substantiating her arguments with archaeological evidence in the subsequent chapters. The third subsection situates, again, the debate within the specific context of ancient Umbria, highlighting the limited and often fragmented nature of existing research.
The third chapter provides a concise yet effective review of scholarship on the archaeology of religion and ritual, votive religion, and votive offerings in central Italy and Umbria. Among these offerings, special attention is given to schematically produced bronze statuettes, which played a significant role in the earliest phases of the sanctuaries but declined sharply during the critical period between the 4th and 3rd centuries BC; and to the terracotta figurative (anatomical and head) votives, which play an important role in the author’s analysis of diachronic change.
The fourth chapter, the last dedicated to contextualizing the study, examines the geography and history of ancient Umbria in greater detail. As expected, because of the theoretical and methodological premises, the region emerges as a territory with fluid boundaries and notable internal cultural diversity over time. This discussion inevitably leads to an exploration of the concept of collective identities, particularly the ethnic identity of the ancient Umbrians. The author presents two main scholarly approaches: a traditional, primarily Italian perspective, which argues for a distinct Umbrian cultural and ethnic identity, and a constructivist, largely Anglo-Saxon approach, which favours a more fluid conception of identity. She aligns more closely with the latter, arguing that the archaeological record supports the existence of “local ethnic groups rather than an overarching Umbrian ethnos” (p. 63). However, this argument appears problematic. While a clearly defined Umbrian ethnic identity is indeed difficult to establish based on archaeological evidence, identifying distinct local groups is equally challenging, particularly when such distinctions rely on relatively minor variations. Moreover, the use of the term “ethnic” to describe these groups, even in contrast to an overarching Umbrian “ethnos” identity, introduces additional conceptual difficulties and it does not seem adequate.
A related issue arises earlier in the chapter. The author situates the emergence of “what might be called an Umbrian culture” in the late 7th century BC (p. 49),[1] yet later (p. 65) notes that as early as the 10th to 8th centuries BC, Umbria exhibited a cultural uniformity comparable to the Villanovan and Latial spheres. Given the limited direct evidence, any attribution of cultural commonality to ethnic identity is, for these phases, inevitably speculative. However, there seems to be a certain inconsistency here. Both periods are characterised by a pronounced cultural homogeneity, which raises the question, since it is not detailed in the text, of why only the later phase is regarded as formative for an Umbrian culture.
The chapter concludes with final remarks that, unlike earlier summaries, introduce significant new elements and engage with broader themes such as the political and social evolution of Umbrian communities and their incorporation into the Roman sphere. The author applies concepts from the more sophisticated and recent approaches, including those developed within the project Non-Roman Elites: Tracking Persistence and Change in Central Italy through the Roman Conquest, of which she is a member. In particular, she stresses the existence of factionalism and the role played by the intertwining of different agendas within both Roman and local societies.
Chapter Five, the core of the study, presents an analysis of individual sanctuaries and the archaeological material recovered from them—a ‘Micro-Scale Approach’. The case studies are organized geographically in four macro-areas. Each site is introduced with an overview of its location and research history, followed by an examination of spatial distribution, archaeological structures, and material culture across two chronological macro-phases (6th–4th centuries BC and late 4th–early 1st century BC). The inclusion of charts visually summarizing figurative votives and high-quality photographs in appendix 3 is particularly valuable.
This chapter successfully provides a synthesis that is highly useful for both specialists and a broader audience. One shortcoming—albeit entirely understandable, given the enormous amount of work (and pages) that a systematic treatment of these data would have required—is the lack of detail on the other material, first of all the pottery, found in association with the presented finds. Such material could indeed offer valuable insights into the chronology and function of these sites and could heavily influence the analysis of the processes of change that form the focus of the study.
Throughout the chapter, the author convincingly challenges traditional assumptions, demonstrating that many inland and Apennine sanctuaries persisted beyond the Roman conquest, with some even undergoing monumentalisation. Notably, she finds no direct correlation between sanctuary survival and their proximity to Roman colonies, demonstrating the fallacy of this simplistic, previous explanation. On the contrary, the author points to other possible, more complex economic and social causes behind this change.
In the chapter’s concluding remarks and in the ‘Macro-Scale Approach’ of the following chapter, the author proceeds to offer an overarching interpretation of the evidence. Incidentally, the charts summarizing votive types are particularly useful, though some data presentations would benefit from clearer numerical representation and improved graphical clarity (e.g., fig. 43). In the analysis, where she adopts more nuanced positions that move beyond the dichotomies which characterised the previous traditional scholarship, her interpretation is both convincing and persuasive. However, some claims appear more categorical and less consistently supported.
For the Archaic period, she endorses Bradley’s view that ancient Umbria exhibited local community identities rather than a unified Umbrian ethnic identity, based on three main points: the in situ production of schematic bronze figurines, the restricted distribution patterns of some types of figurines, and their characterization as low-investment offerings. However, the evidence for in situ production is limited (some lead slugs from Grotta Bella and some bronze ones from Monte Torre Maggiore), and most of the figurine types (e.g., the ‘Esquilino Group’) have wide distributions across central Italy. Moreover, while individual figurines may have been inexpensive, we lack data on dedicants’ social status; multiple offerings by a single individual also remain a possibility. Thus, while the idea of sanctuaries as expressions of local collective identities is per se at least in part plausible, the evidence presented does not constitute a proof supporting this claim, pointing instead to the existence of wider commonalities.
Furthermore, she argues that terracotta anatomical votives and votive heads should not be considered markers of Roman influence, but rather evidence of a transformation within pre-existing Umbrian religious practices. To support this claim, the author highlights the presence—albeit in limited numbers—of bronze anatomical votives, as well as the existence of terracotta heads (such as those from Monte Ansciano and Colle Moro) during the earlier phase, between the 6th and 4th centuries BC. From this perspective, she contends that the appearance of terracotta anatomical votives and heads in the subsequent phase does not constitute a novelty that introduced change into local ritual practices. Here too, the argument does not seem entirely compelling. Anatomical terracotta votives and heads of types of the second macro-phase clearly appear across much of central Italy as a result of the integration of these regions into the Roman sphere of influence, with colonial influx playing a role in this process. Moreover, the presence of votive types with possibly similar functions in the earlier macro-phase does not necessarily imply continuity in ritual practices—except, at most, in the broadest sense of ‘well-being rituals’, a category too vague to be of significant use in reconstructing the historical dynamics of cultural interaction.
For these themes, and to better assess the author’s hypotheses on the Umbrian world, it would have also been interesting to have a greater comparison between this documentation and the one, albeit highly fragmented, of other contexts belonging to the Oscan-Umbrian linguistic group of central Italy. While there are several references to Etruria, Latium, and Samnium, comparison with Sabina, Picenum, and, more generally, to those territories that would later fall within regiones IV and VI of Augustus’ reform are only occasional, despite ancient Umbria sharing much with them.
In conclusion, Zapelloni Pavia’s work represents an invaluable synthesis for the study of inland central Italy’s religious landscape, a context where archaeological knowledge remains limited, and the scholarly literature is both sparse and highly fragmented. Particularly useful is the presentation of such a substantial body of evidence for this region. The analysis, firmly grounded in the most sophisticated and up-to-date approaches to these topics, successfully overcomes the shortcomings of a now outdated traditional framework. It is rich in innovative and thought-provoking insights, even if not always entirely convincing. These characteristics will undoubtedly establish it as a key reference work for the topics it addresses.
Bibliography
Weidig J. 2021, “Elementi cronologici e culturali per l’epoca orientalizzante nell’Appennino centrale”, in S. Bourdin, O. Dally, A. Naso and Ch. Smith (eds), The Orientalizing Cultures in the Mediterranean, 8th-6th Cent. BC. Origins, Cultural Contacts and Local Developments : the Case of Italy, Mediterranea, Supplementi, N.S. 1. Roma, CNR Edizioni, 153-184.
Notes
[1] Cf. Weidig 2021, 170, who, while carefully avoiding any discussion of ethnic identities, notes that Terni, at least until the entirety of the Early Italic Orientalising period (last quarter of the 8th–first half of the 7th century BC), belonged to a “ceppo umbro,” alongside Spoleto and Colfiorito.