Manuel Fernández-Götz, School of History, Classics & Archaeology, University of Edinburgh
“Constructing Identities: Sanctuaries and Assemblies in Late Iron Age Europe”

Abrstract: The construction of collective identities through sanctuaries is a key element for the understanding of Iron Age societies and in particular of their dynamics of aggregation. In this sense, a good example of interrelationship between ethnicity, politics and religion is provided by the Treveri, one of the main Late Iron Age Gallic polities. Recent work on the oppida of this area has offered extensive information about public spaces and sanctuaries within these sites. Starting with the best known case, Titelberg, this paper will analyze the evidences of political and religious activities in the central places of the Middle Rhine-Moselle region.

To date, spaces for religious practices and assemblies have been identified in six of the seven Treveran oppida, in five cases at the highest point of the respective oppidum. These huge fortified centres were places for assemblies (→ political role), collective rituals (→ religious role), fairs and coin minting (→ economic role). Expanding the view to other oppida of the European continent, we can affirm that the rituals and celebrations held at sites such as Manching, Bibracte or Corent would have been key elements in the fostering of social cohesion, self-awareness and shared identity. The number of people that might have lived permanently inside the oppida would have been less important than the function of these centres as objects of identification for larger groups, generating collective identities and serving as nuclei of aggregation and points of reference in a world that was basically rural. Moreover, in Temperate Europe there are various examples where it has been proved that a place for cult activities and/or assemblies preceded the concentration of a significant number of people or even the fortification of the area. Interestingly, ancestor worship seems to have been at the centre of numerous public cults, and barrows very often acted as foci for political and religious assemblies. Taken together, these aspects lead us to consider a renewed approach to the genesis of oppida.