Central to this research are Roman period bronze and terracotta figurines of deities, human figures and animals, the majority coming from established find-spots in the Netherlands. From the 1960s onward, bronze statuettes have generated numerous catalogues and studies focusing mainly on typologies and production centres. Terracotta statuettes received less attention and the first comprehensive study in the Netherlands on this subject saw the light in 1987. Bronze and terracotta statuettes have not been studied together and seldom in relation to their find-spots.

Roman period statuettes have been found throughout Europe, in Asia Minor and North-Africa. In northwestern Europe, the statuettes were introduced by Roman troops at the end of the 1st century BCE. They were used in different ways. Besides offerings in sanctuaries they were set up in household shrines and niches in houses, deposited in graves as funerary gifts and deposited in dry and wet places in and around settlements as part of a ritual. The anthropologist Kopytoff has advanced that we can draw up cultural biographies of objects. Prior to their deposition in a sanctuary, grave or other place, statuettes could have had other functions, which usually remain invisible to us. They could have been a diplomatic gift, a means of payment, a toy, a curiosum or souvenir. In some cases, a previous function can be deduced from specific characteristics of a statuette. An example is the terracotta bird from Schagen, which originally was a toy, but ended up as a ritual deposit under the entrance of a building.

This study is dedicated to the use of statuettes in people’s everyday life, the daily praxis of religion, a concept known as lived religion. In this study it will be explored which statuette representations people preferred in different areas and what they did with them. The daily praxis of religion must be seen as an indispensable complement in the study of religion. It focuses on the individual as a religious agent and the rituals he or she performed in the context of his/her house or settlement.