Abstract
The province of Lusitania encompassed a large and diverse territory in the westernmost reaches of the Iberian Peninsula. Although the province was quite far removed from the heart of the Roman Empire, maritime and river routes provided relatively easy access connecting the province's extensive agricultural territories to the wider economic network via major coastal centers. Further inland, in the more rugged areas of the northern and central districts, contact with the broader world was more limited, both before and after Roman conquest in the first century
bce
. This unevenness of contact was one of the factors that eventually contributed to a diversity of settlement patterns. Southern and coastal Lusitania followed a general Mediterranean trend toward increased urbanization, as cities were pulled into the vast economic and cultural network of Rome. In some cases, as in the provincial capital at Augusta Emerita, these cities attest to the powerful influence of Roman urban ideals. Farther to the north, however, investment in the urban infrastructure was somewhat more muted, even where Roman style epigraphic conventions were widely adopted by the mixed Roman and indigenous population. Clearly, the integration of Lusitania's people and towns into the Roman administrative system, from the time of Augustus onward, did not entirely obviate pre‐Roman structures and traditions. Lusitania thus offers an interesting set of evidence to illustrate the broad range of cultural responses available to indigenous and Roman provincials from the period of conquest down through the end of the Empire.