Making Memories and Making Provincial Society… with Dogs
Daily, domestic religion as it was lived, was a negotiation between older, indigenous practices and new ones that came with conquest. Pre-Roman precedents––sacrifice, special deposits made in deep places, dog killing––were part of a repertoire of actions that continued throughout the Roman period, not in their exact Iron Age forms, but rather inflected with new ideas and practices from elsewhere in the empire. The process, however, was two-way. Soldiers, merchants, administrators, and others new to Britain came to embrace a host of local ritual practices, including dog killing. Here, we take an in-depth look at a handful of communities where we can witness low-status locals and people from elsewhere in the empire participating side-by-side in ritual events centered on dogs. We do this in order to discern the mechanisms and processes standing behind the development of a distinctly provincial, Romano-British society.
