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11 - Living in the Liminal

Lares Compitales Shrines, Freedmen and Identity in Delos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2022

By
Crysta Kaczmarek
Edited by
J. A. Baird  and
April Pudsey
J. A. Baird
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
April Pudsey
Affiliation:
Manchester Metropolitan University
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Summary

In addition to being the primary locus of family interaction and daily activity, the house is a mediating space where individual lifestyles, social order and cultural conventions meet. This chapter investigates the domestic ritual material remains related to the Italian Lares compitales cult on Delos, in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE, focusing on the shrines’ relationship with the expression and negotiation of different forms of group identities, and drawing on archaeological and textual evidence. Lares compitales shrines represent the material remains of the repeated social practice related to the expression of membership within this public cult, which in turn functioned as a means of group identity (or community) creation for freedmen, a newly formed civic group increasing in number during this period. Locating domestic space and associated activities within a liminal zone existing within, and/or confounding, the realms of public and private, this contribution contends that these shrines not only provided a physical location for certain activities related to this cult, but also performed a social function as a means of communicating and negotiating identities through the material expression of repeated social practice.

Keywords

DelosLares compitalesfreedmendomestic religionshrine
Type
Chapter
Information
Housing in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Material and Textual Approaches
 , pp. 354 - 380
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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