![]() Plinths are sometimes found within them, suitable for a statue or other cult idol. ![]() The central cella area is usually thought to be a “house for the god”. We do not know the exact purpose of the temple buildings themselves. From this perspective, archaeologists cannot be sure that, for instance, the bigger temple was for Mars and the smaller one for the female deities. It is in the courtyard that much of the public ritual, such as sacrifices, would have taken place. Mars, Venus and the mother goddesses (and possibly others not yet discovered) were probably the deities included in the rituals observed in the two shrines and the equally important open air courtyard in which the shrines stood. The end usually came in the late Roman period, as pagan shrines were abandoned in the face of the expansion of imperially promoted Christianity. It seems that once established (either in the early Roman period or sometimes in the pre-conquest late Iron Age), rituals quickly settled down into patterns that continued, at some sites, for centuries. They reveal the development of a highly localised suite of ritual activities that varied significantly from one temple to another.Įqually striking is their long-term stability. The sculpture, inscriptions, artefacts and sacrificial remains are, however, widely variable. The temples are usually in the Romano-Celtic design, with a small square central tower surrounded by a portico (a row of evenly spaced columns with a lean-to roof up against the central tower). Looking at excavations of temples in Gaul (modern France, with parts of Belgium, Germany and Switzerland) and Britain, it is striking that the architectural form is often quite standardised. How the gods were worshipped at these temples Others, particularly in the towns, opted for a more full on Roman style of worship, even if the old native traditions still underpinned the rituals. Some had wooden buildings and few, if any, featured classical images of gods. This is reflected in the archaeology of their temple sites. Present day experts have found that ancient people chose their forms of worship, rather than having religions imposed upon them.Īncient communities could preserve Iron Age traditions or adopt aspects of Roman classical religion. The female names were usually derived from Celtic languages, while the male gods were from the classical Graeco-Roman pantheon, implying some sort of “marriage” between them and by extension, the synthesis of local culture with that of Imperial Rome.īut this theorising was a reflection of 19th and 20th century colonial thinking. Scholars of ancient religion in the Celtic north west regions of the Roman Empire (of which ancient France was a major part) used to regard a double temple arrangement as a dedication to a divine pair, one male and the other female, such as Apollo and Sirona or Mercury and Rosmerta. ![]() This design is typical of Romano-Celtic temples (found in modern France, parts of Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and the north-west provinces of the Roman Empire). Two buildings were at the core of the site – a square within a square, one slightly smaller than the other. But the site also had clay figurines of Venus and the mother goddesses, leading to uncertainty about which deity was worshipped there. It was the discovery of a fine bronze statuette of Mars that suggested the temple may have been a shrine to the god. ![]() They speculated that it had probably been used by Roman soldiers for hundreds of years to pay homage to Mars, the god of war. In April, archaeologists excavating at La Chapelle-des-Fougeretz, in Britanny, France, announced that they had discovered a large Roman temple, dating between the late first century BC and fourth century AD. ![]()
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