Cultural Change in the Religious Sphere of Ancient Umbria between the Sixth and the First century BCE

This dissertation examines the architecture and votive deposits from Umbrian sanctuaries between the sixth and early first century BCE. In line with traditional approaches to central Italian cult places, scholars who focus on the Umbria region have largely considered Roman expansion as the cause of apparent change in the use of Umbrian sanctuaries, as well as in the composition of their votive offerings during the Hellenistic period. Pointing out the limitations of this argument, I suggest a different model to track cultural change in the region’s religious sphere. By reviewing all available evidence from the onset of Umbrian religious material culture to the enfranchisement of the Italian peninsula, I analyze each sanctuary as a component of a larger Umbrian regional sacred landscape. Following my introduction (Chapter 1), the dissertation is divided into two parts. The first part (Chapters 2 and 3), introduces the theoretical frameworks used to approach the study of cultural change and sacred spaces in central Italy and the Umbrian region. The second part (Chapters 4, 5, and 6) elaborates Umbrian sacred spaces in their material and ritual contexts. Chapter 4 offers an overview of the region’s history and points out how recent work on Roman expansionism complicates our traditional understanding of the third and second century BCE as crucial to the political, social, and cultural changes that occurred during this time. Chapter 5 explores the topography, architecture, and votive deposits of each of the fifteen Umbrian sanctuaries that form my core corpus. Drawing from archival material, primary and secondary literature, and a first-hand analysis of all figurative votive offerings displayed in museums and stored in local depots in Umbria, I demonstrate that the continued use of Umbrian sanctuaries during the Hellenistic period did not depend on the political allegiances of local communities to Rome. Furthermore, I argue that the appearance of terracotta votive offerings is not related to Roman expansionism. The practice of dedicating anatomical votive offerings was an established custom in Umbria as early as the sixth/fifth century BCE. The conclusion (Chapter 6) explores the larger stakes of this work: the transformation of socio-economic and cultural trends over time. I posit that the transformation visible in Umbrian sanctuaries during the Hellenistic period is the result of multiple factors: endemic economical regional trends; the interconnection and negotiations among Umbrian and Roman elites; long-lived ritual practices; and the increasing contacts between Umbrian and Hellenistic cultures. Ultimately, this project shows that indigenous populations maintained extant local architectural and ritual customs while at the same time responding and adapting to the new socio-political realities that accompanied Roman hegemony.PHDClassical Art & ArchaeologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/155029/1/ariannaz_1.pd

The Umbrian cave of Grotta Bella. The diachronic evolution of a meeting place

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Morphological and molecular species boundaries in the Hyalella species flock of Lake Titicaca (Crustacea: Amphipoda)

The Hyalella species diversity in the high-altitude water bodies of the Andean Altiplano is addressed using mitochondrial cox1 sequences and implementing different molecular species delimitation criteria. We have recorded the presence of five major genetic lineages in the Altiplano, of which one seems to be exclusive to Lake Titicaca and nearby areas, whereas the rest occur also in other regions of South America. Eleven out of 36 South American entities diagnosed by molecular delimitation criteria in our study are likely endemic to the Titicaca and neighbouring water bodies. We have detected a remarkable disagreement between morphology and genetic data in the Titicacan Hyalella, with occurrence of several cases of the same morpho-species corresponding to several Molecular Operational Taxonomic Units (MOTUs), some even distantly related, and other instances where a particular MOTU is shared by a morphologically heterogeneous array of species, including species with body smooth and others with body heavily armoured. Species diversification and incongruence between morphological and molecular boundaries within this species assemblage may be associated to the sharp changes in hydrological conditions experienced by the water bodies of the Altiplano in the past, which included dramatic fluctuations in water level and salinity of Lake Titicaca. Such environmental shifts could have triggered rapid morphological changes and ecological differentiation within the Hyalella assemblage, followed by phenotypic convergence among the diverse lineages. Factors such as phenotypic plasticity, incomplete lineage sorting or admixture between divergent lineages might lie also at the root of the morphological-genetic incongruence described herein.This work was supported by the Spanish MINECO Grant CGL2016-76164-P, financed by the Agencia Española de Investigación (AEI) and the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER)

Comparative Mitogenomics in <i>Hyalella</i> (Amphipoda: Crustacea)

[eng] We present the sequencing and comparative analysis of 17 mitochondrial genomes of Nearctic and Neotropical amphipods of the genus Hyalella, most from the Andean Altiplano. The mitogenomes obtained comprised the usual 37 gene-set of the metazoan mitochondrial genome showing a gene rearrangement (a reverse transposition and a reversal) between the North and South American Hyalella mitogenomes. Hyalella mitochondrial genomes show the typical AT-richness and strong nucleotide bias among codon sites and strands of pancrustaceans. Protein-coding sequences are biased towards AT-rich codons, with a preference for leucine and serine amino acids. Numerous base changes (539) were found in tRNA stems, with 103 classified as fully compensatory, 253 hemi-compensatory and the remaining base mismatches and indels. Most compensatory Watson-Crick switches were AU -> GC linked in the same haplotype, whereas most hemi-compensatory changes resulted in wobble GU and a few AC pairs. These results suggest a pairing fitness increase in tRNAs after crossing low fitness valleys. Branch-site level models detected positive selection for several amino acid positions in up to eight mitochondrial genes, with atp6 and nad5 as the genes displaying more sites under selection