Revisiting the sacred landscapes of Northeast Italy between the 8th century BC and the 2nd century BC
My thesis offers a humanistic and experiential re-interpretation of the relationship between people, landscape and the gods in Iron Age and Romanisation Northeast Italy (from the 8th century BC to the 2nd centuries BC included). In it I search for, and explore a Venetic sense of place' by appraising the significance of cult practices within a complex network of social groups known as the 'Veneti'. After identifying the shortcomings of current research on Iron Age Veneto - and pre-Roman Italy as a whole -, which is largely typological and site-based with little attention to the landscape context and materiality of meaningful places, I adopted an approach that questions previous landscape and artefact interpretations and challenges monument-biased assumptions. I argue for a thicker and more comprehensive outlook on ancient places, be it 'natural' landscapes or humanly made structures and features. My chief aim is that of investigating and bringing to the fore the complex dynamics of landscape dwelling, navigation, place selection and worship: to do so I endeavoured to produce a rigorous and systematic study of how people used landscape and how they related to the meaningful objects they deposited at selected
De Nardi, Sarah
Revisiting the sacred landscapes of Northeast Italy between the 8th century BC and the 2nd century BC. My thesis offers a humanistic and experiential re-interpretation of the relationship between people, landscape and the gods in Iron Age and Romanisation Northeast Italy (from the 8th century BC to the 2nd centuries BC included). In it I search for, and explore a Venetic sense of place' by appraising the significance of cult practices within a complex network of social groups known as the 'Veneti'. After identifying the shortcomings of current research on Iron Age Veneto - and pre-Roman Italy as a whole -, which is largely typological and site-based with little attention to the landscape context and materiality of meaningful places, I adopted an approach that questions previous landscape and artefact interpretations and challenges monument-biased assumptions. I argue for a thicker and more comprehensive outlook on ancient places, be it 'natural' landscapes or humanly made structures and features. My chief aim is that of investigating and bringing to the fore the complex dynamics of landscape dwelling, navigation, place selection and worship: to do so I endeavoured to produce a rigorous and systematic study of how people used landscape and how they related to the meaningful objects they deposited at selected
revisiting sacred_landscape northeast italy offer humanistic experiential re_interpretation relationship_people landscape god iron age romanisation northeast italy century include search explore sense_place appraise significance cult_practice within complex_network social_group know identify shortcoming current iron age pre_roman italy whole largely typological site based little_attention landscape_context materiality meaningful place adopt question previous landscape artefact interpretation challenge monument assumption argue comprehensive outlook ancient place natural_landscape make structure feature chief aim_investigate bring fore complex_dynamic landscape dwelling navigation place selection worship endeavour produce rigorous systematic_study people use landscape relate meaningful object deposit select