Today, it is extremely difficult to study the religions of ancient Italy. Due to the extreme dispersion of documentation, it is almost impossible to establish the context of an inscription or to study certain archaeological remains linked to a given cult. For this reason, we have decided to compile an inventory of all sources between the 7th c. BC and the5th c. AD , so that all researchers can quickly access all the documentation and bibliographical information currently available on this subject. We have adopted the approach that seemed to us the most effective: inventorying religious sources and classifying them according to place of worship. This is the only way to give them their full meaning. The religions of ancient Italy cannot be understood as local subdivisions of a universal, Italic or Roman religion; they formed homologous but autonomous micro-systems. Testimonies on religious life must therefore be studied in their geographical, institutional and social contexts.
Fana, templa, delubra. Corpus dei luoghi di culto dell'Italia antica (FTD)
Under the direction of John Scheid, Olivier de Cazanove, Filippo Coarelli and Adriana La Regina, the study of places of worship in ancient Italy is a large-scale project that has come to fruition with the publication of this series of fascicles Fana, templa, delubra (FTD).
