Ancient Pilgrimage and Inscriptions. Examples from Pre-Roman Rock-Inscriptions of Italy

Abstract

After a critical review of the linguistical methodological tools that are at our disposal for an integrated and multidisciplinary approach to studying the ancient world and sacred places, this paper will focus on two marginal areas of pre-Roman Italy: the Alpine area in the north and Apulia in the south. The methodological approach employed includes anthropological and ethnographic aspects of pilgrimage (Turner 1978; Coleman, Eade 2004; Le Breton 2012; Häussler, Chiai 2020), the Landscape Linguistics by Ron Scollon (2006), the theory of context developed by the linguist Eugenio Coseriu and the frame semantics by Charles J. Fillmore 1976. Finally, the anthropology of writing, mainly outlined by Giorgio Raimondo Cardona (1981, 1986) and by the French anthropologist Béatrice Fraenkel (2006, 2007), is used to identify different kinds of pilgrimage and understand similarities between ancient pilgrimage sites and modern memorials.

Keywords

• Pilgrimage
• Pre-roman Antiquities
• Alpine Area
• Apulia
• Epigraphy