Religious Architecture in Latium and Etruria c. 900-500 BC presents the first comprehensive treatment of cult buildings in western central Italy from the Iron Age to the Archaic Period. By analysing the archaeological evidence for the form of early religious buildings and their role in ancient communities, it reconstructs a detailed history of early Latial and Etruscan religious architecture that brings together the buildings and the people who used them. The first part of the study examines the processes by which religious buildings changed from huts and shrines to monumental temples, and explores apparent differences between these processes in Latium and Etruria. The second part analyses the broader architectural, religious, and topographical contexts of the first Etrusco-Italic temples alongside possible rationales for their introduction. The result is a new and extensive account of when, where, and why monumental cult buildings became features of early central Italic society and set precedents for the great temples of republican Rome.

Architecture in Ancient Central Italy takes studies of individual elements and sites as a starting point to reconstruct a much larger picture of architecture in western central Italy as an industry, and to position the result in space (in the Mediterranean world and beyond) and time (from the second millennium BC to Late Antiquity). This volume demonstrates that buildings in pre-Roman Italy have close connections with Bronze Age and Roman architecture, with practices in local and distant societies, and with the natural world and the cosmos. It also argues that buildings serve as windows into the minds and lives of those who made and used them, revealing the concerns and character of communities in early Etruria, Rome, and Latium. Architecture consequently emerges as a valuable historical source, and moreover a part of life that shaped society as much as reflected it.