The Cleansing of a Political System: Obliterations, Burials and ‘Reuse’ of Palaces and Seats of Power in Central Italy (Seventh–Fifth centuries BCE)

This paper deals with pre-Roman Italy from the seventh to the early fifth century BCE. During this period, tyrannies, autocracies and monarchies were overthrown in favor of republican systems of governance in the city-states. I argue that as the consequence of such an overthrow of governance, the public institutions of rulers’ palaces and seats of power were cleansed by removing their previously central function for public life, framing them as symbols of the now disgraced systems and reusing them in very different ways. Members of early republican city-states in Central Italy used at least three main strategies for the cleansing of their political systems: (1) ritual obliteration; (2) destruction; and (3) the ‘reuse’ of palaces for different purposes.