Among the variety of topics to pursue, three have been selected because they exemplify a typical characteristic of Arcadia: its wetness. Each of the three chapters departs from a situation observed in Arcadia by ancient sources and examines the responses articulated to explain it. The second part explores how myths and rationalising discourses allowed the Greeks to make sense of the salient characteristics and numen of their surrounding natural landscape. Finally, chapter four evaluates the impact of the Roman conquest on Arcadian religious sites.
The third looks at how Arcadian sanctuaries responded to the increased religious mobility of the Classical and Hellenistic period. The second looks at how the building of temples after the eighth century indicates a significant change in the way communities were structured in Arcadia. The first sets the stage and surveys the known sacred sites of Arcadia at the end of the Bronze Age and during the Dark Ages. These changes and their response articulated in sacred space are identified in four chapters.
The first part rests on the acknowledgement that sanctuaries are places of interaction for a certain community of cult (which can but need not overlap with a given polis) and explores how they can be indicators of social change, defined here as responses to changes with large impact on the human milieu. It relies on the assumption commonly made in the field that, since ritual practice was of prevalent importance for the Greeks, cult sites are the most important places for the communities, and therefore they can tell us a lot about the people who built, visited and looked after them. The thesis examines the religious topography of Arcadia through two particular aspects: the built and the natural landscape, and how each relates to human communities, their places of living, and their understanding of the world around.
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