Gli Heraia nelle colonie achee: culti urbani ed extraurbani nel dialogo politico tra città e territorio

This study investigates the political and religious dynamics of the cults of Hera in the Achaean colonies of Magna Graecia, focusing on the interplay between urban and extra-urban sanctuaries as instruments of territorial control, social cohesion, and identity construction. Starting from the historiographical framework developed by Ettore Lepore and Georges Vallet concerning the relationship between polis, chora, and sanctuary, the paper explores how the Heraia of Poseidonia, Metapontion, and Kroton reinterpreted metropolitan cultic models – especially those of the Argive plain – through processes of selective appropriation and cultural re-semantization. Archaeological, topographical, and ritual evidence reveals that the dual localization of Hera’s cult corresponded to complementary functions: civic integration and collective renewal within the urban sphere, and political mediation and frontier negotiation in the rural hinterland. The comparative analysis of the sanctuaries along the Sele and Bradano rivers highlights asynchronous developments and localized adaptations, where sacred landscapes acted as active agents in the colonization and reconfiguration of indigenous territories. By integrating archaeological data with anthropological theories of cultural memory, the paper argues that the Achaean Heraia should be interpreted not as passive transpositions of Peloponnesian prototypes, but as dynamic expressions of collective memory and political identity. In this sense, sacred spaces emerge as mnemonic, political, and intercultural devices through which the colonial polis negotiated its relationship with both the past and the surrounding non-Greek world.