Funerary architecture can profitably be analysed through the lens of connectivity. As material that connected the living and the dead, both at the level of the individual and the community, funerary architecture exhibits the values held to be important in both realms and, like religious architecture, is a vehicle for connecting the tangible and intangible. The characteristics and development of Etruscan funerary architecture have to be studied mainly in their connections with settlements, society, and domestic, religious, and foreign architecture. A case study of rock tombs shows the problems that arise in trying to identify certain forms as either predominantly local or international, and thus effectively signals the limits of analyses of geographical connectivity and the need to go beyond typology in certain cases.

Earlier studies have examined manifold connections between the city of Tarquinia and other parts of Italy and the Mediterranean. This chapter adds to these with a rich holistic analysis of the ‘monumental complex’ and the Ara della Regina sanctuaries, drawing out the cultural and religious attitudes of the community at Tarquinia that may have shaped their adoption and adaptation of external stimuli. Connections between the buildings on the plateau, the city they served, and the natural world around them are explored in ways that yield new potential insights into Etruscan rituals and the buildings that supported them. In arguing for the embeddedness of architecture in local and religious contexts, the chapter emphasizes the importance of returning to the lived experience of buildings, and in so doing raises important issues concerning the interplay between the local and the international in architectural design.

Following the reinvention of terracotta roof tiles in the second quarter of the seventh century BC, most probably in Corinth, the technology spread to other regions of the Mediterranean world. During the third quarter of the seventh century, several local and regional workshops can be identified, at select sites in Greece and in Etruria. By the fourth quarter of the century, decorated roofs are found in other parts of Greece and Italy. The most prolific and highly decorative period is the first third of the sixth century BC, when local workshops actively copied elements from elsewhere and invention of new forms was at its peak. This discussion focuses on the interrelationship between the roofs of different regions, the sharing of technology and of décor, in order to show the special place of Etruscan terracotta roofs in the evolution of this distinctive architectural feature. Etruria not only followed trends in terracotta roofing found throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, but also can be shown to have contributed specific roof elements and types of roof decoration which had a wide impact on later generations of roofs.

This concluding chapter explores the construction of Greekness through Egyptian religion in Roman Greece. Using a scene from Apuleius’ Met. XI as a central theme, the questions of intersectional ethnicity, deterritorialization of Egypt, materiality, difference, and colonial experience are discussed. Isiac Greekness is then contrasted with well-defined Second Sophistic forms of Greekness, revealing that Isiac identity is defined according to different time-scales and geographical referents from, but through similar methods to, traditional forms of Greek ethnicity.

This chapter explores the idea of a cohesive Isiac identity in Roman Greece. Using R. Brubaker’s paradigm of groupness, it examines epigraphic and literary evidence that suggests the cults’ structures encouraged active devotees to identify with the cults. It also explores the geographic and spatial distribution of this evidence, which indicates that devotee communities at different sites sought to build religious and social ties across the region.

This chapter sets the practice of Egyptian religion in Greece in an imperial and global context. The rise of Isis and Sarapis as popular gods is considered alongside the development of Greek identities found in Second Sophistic literature and Roman provincial archaeology. Proposing a more intersectional and process-based approach, this chapter suggests a new framework for considering minority forms of ethnicity in the Roman Empire.

By focusing on built and natural landscapes in Isiac sanctuaries, this chapter explores the ways in which devotees used the cult for self-location: situating individuals and groups in relation to one another through geographic metaphors or thought. Using the sanctuaries of Marathon, Dion, and Gortyna as case studies, it explores the ways that devotees built references to the Nile into sanctuaries in order to create a Nilotic landscape appropriate to their conceptions of Isis, and Egypt more generally.

Focusing on Isiac hymns called aretalogies that appear across Achaia, Macedonia, the Greek islands, and Asia Minor, this chapter explores the ways in which Greek devotees conceptualized Isis. It first discusses prevailing Greek stereotypes of Egypt, which emphasize timelessness, experimentation, and wonder. Then, it explores the aretalogies themselves and how they universalize Isis and embed her and her companions in Greek myth and geography.

This chapter considers the role that ideal sculptures in sanctuary settings play in the process of self-understanding: the beliefs and ideologies that give shape to a group and also inform how outsiders perceive the group. Using the Sarapeum of Thessaloniki as a case study, this chapter defines the Greek sculptural types and materials used most commonly to depict Isis and Sarapis in Greece, and explores their relationships with Greek sculptures that were often displayed alongside these images.