Contextualizing Papius: Samnite traces in the Roman colonial context of Venusia

As a tribute to the recently deceased grandmaster in ancient studies, Mario Torelli, we present the discovery of a stamped terracotta fragment exhibiting the name Papius in the territory of the Latin colony of Venusia. With the publication of this single find, we want to pay homage to a scholar who has been very influential in our research and academic development. Amongst the many things Torelli taught us, it is perhaps the deep complexity of the Roman conquest and the incorporation of the pre‑existing Italic polities and people of ancient Italy that have been particularly stimulating. Instead of envisioning monolithic cultures replacing one another, he was careful to locally contextualize various cultural and socio‑economic phenomena, bringing in a wide array of different types of evidence and reasoning. In doing so, he elucidated the equally deep complexity of the relationship between archaeology and textual documents for the study of the romanization of Italy.