Local Deities in the Pantheons of the civitates in the North-West of Hispania. Processes of Change, Integration and Identity Creation

This paper analyses a group of public and private religious inscriptions that mention local divinities found in the northwest of Hispania citerior (conventus Asturum, Bracaraugustanus and Lucensis). The aim is to discover the changes of pre-existing pantheons and to identify the divinities and cults that may have played a role in the integration of local communities, as well as explore the creation of the new identities -created or reorganised by Rome- in this territory, characterised by the scarcity of urban phenomena and the heterogeneity of the civitates. In this sense is particularly remarkable the leading role played in the new civic pantheons by Deus Vagus Donnaegus in the respublica Asturicae Augustae; Deus Aernus in the civitas Zoelarum and Dea Cenduedia as the tutelary divinity of a 'secondary agglomeration' (castellum).