The Masters of Lakonia: Religous Landscape and Identities at Sparta from Archaic to Hellenistic times (VIII-III BC).
Religious Landscape, Identity, Sparta and Lakonia.
This thesis seeks to analyze the construction and maintenance of a Religious Landscape at Sparta, which took place between the VIII and III centuries, through the spatialization of rites, rituals and cults of a Spartan religious system. Such operation sought to establish social cohesion through a Religious Identity among the inhabitants of Lakonia. We will make use of both the observation of available literary records, as well as the analysis of artifacts from material culture. As a guiding hypothesis, we understand that the building and reconstruction of temples and shrines - their own cults, rituals and festivities - enabled the construction of a Religious Landscape, which allowed the ancient Spartans and the populations linked to them to build a religious identity, through factors that strengthened ties and bonds between them, legitimizing and thus helping to maintain the Spartan status quo. What generated, in the foreground, political-religious unity, economic and social stability, to the Spartan power, the Masters of Laconia, thus ensuring a certain internal cohesion and, on the other hand, such balance allowed the Spartan power to maintain aspirations regarding its leadership role in the theater of conflicts and interactions in the disputes between the other poles of ancient Hellas.