From mountain flames to domestic smoke: rescaling ritual fire in the Gubbio valley from the Bronze Age to Imperial Rome

Archaeological accounts of religion in the Gubbio valley have often presented incorporation into the Roman world as a rupture, privileging public expressions of Roman religion. This leaves unresolved how locally embedded ritual practices changed across this transition. This paper investigates the changing scale and location of fire-related ritual from the Final Bronze Age to the Roman Imperial period. It combines contextual analysis of excavated evidence from Monte Ingino and Monte Ansciano with typological and GIS-based spatial analysis of lamps and incense burners recorded by the Gubbio Project. Burnt deposits and faunal assemblages indicate communal practices involving fire and feasting at elevated locations during the Final Bronze and Early Iron Ages. Sixth-century BCE construction and votive deposition at Monte Ansciano marked more explicitly defined collective ritual activity. Roman-period lamps and second-century CE incense burners reveal the dispersal of fire, light and smoke into household and rural settings, demonstrating the repeated rescaling and reformulation of ritual practice across changing contexts.