From Borderland to Province - Iaitas/Ietas, 200–80 BCE

Abstract: 

How does political influence become actual rule? When Rome conquered Sicily in the third century BCE, this did not immediately transform people’s lives everywhere on the island. For generations, local communities preserved their own traditions, economic practices, and forms of social cohesion.

The project investigates how this situation changed through the example of Monte Iato in western Sicily. The ancient hilltop settlement of Iaitas/Ietas offers a rare opportunity to trace how a local community continued to live under Roman supremacy for a long period before eventually becoming incorporated into a more direct system of Roman rule.

Particularly revealing is an ancient cult site known as the Temple of Aphrodite. For three centuries, an older communal order was repeatedly re-enacted and reaffirmed here. Collective deer hunts, sacrifices, and ritual feasts recalled that agriculture, animal husbandry, and the use of surrounding woodlands depended on cooperation between different households. At the temple, these mutual dependencies were made ritually visible and renewed as bonds of community. In this way, an older model of social cohesion remained present within an increasingly urbanised settlement.

Around 100 BCE, however, this very place underwent profound change. The temple was stripped of its monumental character, the neighbouring assembly hall was dismantled, and the surrounding area was reorganised. Yet the temple did not disappear: its visible ruins remained as a reminder that the old cult site had been deprived of its former significance and power. This may reveal a new form of Roman rule. Rather than constructing an entirely new city, Rome intervened selectively in existing places, memories, and institutions, investing them with new meanings. Dietary practices also changed around 100 BCE: the centuries-old importance of deer declined, while pork and new ways of cooking and eating associated with the Roman world became increasingly prominent.

The project investigates whether these changes were interconnected. New excavations will be combined with analyses of architecture, pottery, coins, animal bones, and plant remains, as well as food residues and isotopes. The aim is to establish when and how Roman supremacy developed into direct intervention in the local social order.

Monte Iato, or ancient Iaitas/Ietas, thus becomes a model case for a larger historical question: How does an empire take shape on the ground? The focus is not only on conquest and decisions made in Rome, but also on local structures that initially endured and were subsequently appropriated, transformed, or deliberately dismantled. The history of a small community in the Sicilian uplands can thus reveal how a borderland became part of a Roman province.