The Archaeology of South-East Italy in the First Millennium BC

Front matter

: Douwe Yntema

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Preface

INTRODUCTION: AIM, CONCEPT AND BIASES

BRONZE AGE PRELUDES: FOREIGNERS AND FORTIFICATIONS Introduction

From the neolithic period till the Late Bronze Age

The Late Bronze Age (c. 1350-1150 bc)

The final Bronze Age (c.1150-900 bc)

THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE The land: past and present The people of the past

HUTS, HOUSES AND MIGRANTS: THE IRON AGE (c. 1000/900-600/5 50 BC)

The beginnings of the Iron Age

Settlement and landscape

Raiders, traders and migrants

Long-distance contacts, exchange and economy

Burials, social stratification and religion

Regionalization and craft

TEMPLES, POLEIS AND PARAMOUNT CHIEFS:

THE ‘ARCHAIC-CLASSICAL’ PERIOD (C. 600/550-370 BC).

Introduction

The rise of urban centres and sanctuaries in the coastal strip of the Gulf of Taranto Settlement and religion in areas with non-Greek populations

Burials and the rise of local and regional elites

Changes in craft

Economy, interrelations and long distance contacts

Ancient written sources and intellectual achievements

TOWNS, LEAGUES AND LANDHOLDING ELITES:

THE EARLY-HELLENISTIC PERIOD, C. 370/350-250/230 BC Introduction: ancient written sources and history165

Landscape and settlement

Mortals and immortals.

Craft

Economy and external contacts

VII

7 PEASANTS, PRINCES AND SENATORS: SOUTHEAST ITALY AT THE PERIPHERY OF A ROMAN WORLD (C. 250/230-100/80 BC) 7.1 Ancient written sources 7.2 Changing landscapes 7.3 Burials, religion and social landscape 7.4 Craft and economy 7.5 Romanization and southeast italy

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Index

PREFACE

By pure coincidence I came across a handful of painted pots of the pre-Roman period (the so-called ‘Messapian trozzellas’) when I was studying Classics and Archaeology at the Utrecht University in 1970. These objects brought me to southeast Italy and especially to the Salento peninsula which is the heel of the Italian boot.

The archaeology in the Netherlands has a strong tradition of regional research. When I was appointed lecturer at the Amsterdam VU University (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) in 1975, I introduced ‘my’ region to the staff and managed to convince them that southeast Italy offered excellent opportunities to carry out archaeological research. This resulted in a series of excavations and field surveys (both urban and rural) carried out by the VU-University teams. These were the rural field surveys in the area surrounding the settlement of Oria (1981-1983; final report:Yntema 1993a), the excavations and the urban and rural field surveys at Valesio (1984-1992; final reports:Yntema 1993b; Boersma et al. 1995; Yntema 2001), the urban surveys at the sites of Muro Tenente, Muro Maurizio, San Pancrazio and Cellino San Marco (1992- 1995; final report: Burgers 1998), the excavations at Muro Tenente (1996-2009; interim reports, Burgers /Yntema 1999, Burgers / Napolitano 2010), the field surveys at Ostuni (1999-2000; report: Burgers / Attema / Van Leusen 1998), the excavations at LAmastuola (from 2003-2008; Burgers / Crielaard 2007 and 2011) and the field surveys in the southern parts of the Murge hills (final report: Burgers / Recchia 2009). The first initiatives, therefore, developed into a full blown, long term regional research program in which every three to five years new themes were addressed. I wish to thank my colleagues and/ or collaborators who directed or co-directed these field projects: Peter Attema and Martijn van Leusen (Groningen), Hans Boersma, Gert-Jan Burgers and Jan Paul Crielaard (Amsterdam).

I have lived with the archaeology of southeast Italy for many years. On the one hand, the images presented in this volume are the result of a distinct intimacy with the subject, the region and the people who work in it. On the other hand, I am part of the tribe of Dutch archaeologists who are basically oriented on Anglo-Saxon archaeology. This means that I am both an insider and an outsider to the archaeology of southeast Italy and produce images in which approaches of Anglo-Saxon type are married to Mediterranean traditions in research. The reader must judge whether this is a happy marriage.

Of course, the VU University was not the only institution to carry out field work in southeast Italy. The data presented in this volume were collected by many different groups. In writing this overview I stood on the shoulders of many others who gave me their information, their views, their advice and their permissions to publish photographs. My greatest debt is to Francesco D’Andria (Lecce University) who invited me to participate in his excavations at Cavallino (1977) and Otranto (1978-1979) and encouraged me to start research projects in southeast Italy. His team mates Cosimo Pagliara, Grazia Semeraro, Mario Lombardo and Liliana Giardino also helped me in many ways: Lecce has always been a second home to the Amsterdam teams. The second pillar that has supported our activities in southeast Italy was the Soprintendenza alle Antichita at Taranto: we are very grateful to the various superintendents (the late Felice Gino Lo Porto, Ettore De Juliis, Pier Giovanni Guzzo, Giuseppe Andreassi) and their team members: Assunta Cocchiaro, Antonietta Dell’Aglio, Laura Masiello, Angela Ciancio, Ada Riccardi, Marisa Corrente, Maria Luisa Nava (initially in Foggia, later Potenza), the late Graziella Maruggi and the late Marina Mazzei. They assisted us in many ways. As for the Basilicata Soprintendenza, my greatest debts are to Angelo Bottini and Antonio De Siena. I also greatly profited from discussions with Salvatore Bianco (Policoro), Giuseppina Canosa (Matera) and last, but not least the late Dinu Adamesteanu, the godfather of the Basilicata archaeology. I am equally indebted to the late Benita Sciarra (Museo Provinciale

VII

Brindisi), Giovanna delli Ponti (Museo Provinciale, Lecce), the late Renato Peroni (Rome, but above all Broglio di Trebisacce), Giuliano Volpe (Foggia University), Massimo Osanna (Matera University), Marina Castoldi and the late Piero Orlandini (Milan University). I owe much to archaeologist from various other countries who carried out their research in southeast Italy: Dieter Mertens (Rome), Joseph Coleman Carter (Austin, Texas), Maurizio Gualtieri (Edmonton, Perugia), Jean-Luc Lamboley (Grenoble), Mario Denti (Rennes), the late Joseph Mertens (Louvain), Alastair and Carola Small (Edmonton, Edinburgh), Ted Robinson (Sidney) and the late Arthur Dale Trendall (Bundoora, Australia). During my research in southeast Italy many colleagues mentioned above gave me illustrations and the permissions to publish these. In the photo credits the institution to which they are or were attached, is mentioned. I wish to stress that none of these friends and colleagues can be held responsible for the views expressed below. I know that some of them will heartily disagree with some of the passages.

The time lapse between the composition of the texts and the publication of the book was considerable. The main cause of the delay was that I was appointed dean of the Faculty of Arts of the VU University Amsterdam in 2006, when the texts were nearly finished. The profound changes the faculty was forced to make as a result of political decisions at various levels, absorbed me completely. In the spring of 2009 the work on this book came to a complete stop when I happened to become the vice-president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences as a result of an emergency. It was only when these two impegni burocratici were finished in the autumn of 2011 that I could make a rapid update of the texts.

It is always a good thing to ask for other people’s views on your mental products. Alastair Small (Edinburgh), Jan Paul Crielaard (Amsterdam) en Peter Attema (Groningen) were kind enough to read the texts and comment upon them. Alastair Small also corrected the English texts. The mistakes that remain should be laid at my door. I am very grateful for the time and energy they spent in order to help me with passages in which I had been carried away by my own enthusiasm or had been struck by tunnel vision. Bert Brouwenstijn and Jaap Fokkema (VU University Amsterdam) made or adapted the maps and drawings and designed the layout of the book.

Amsterdam, summer 2012

VIII

1 Introduction: Aim, Concept and Biases

The archaeology of Greek and indigenous southern Italy of the first millennium BC is usually seen as a part of the domain of Classical Archaeology. This means that it was mostly studied by archaeologists who were educated in classics-oriented departments. Here a traditional culture-historical approach often dominated in which the ancient written sources played a major role. This is also the educational background of the author of this book. In 1970 the archaeology of the Mediterranean in the Netherlands was basically a specific form of cultural history. Since that time the domain has changed enormously with the rise of the survey and landscape archaeology, the immensely increasing importance of the data from the sciences and the introduction of anthropological concepts and ideas. The culture-historical paradigm, moreover, has lost its dominant position. We have seen the rise of the New Archaeology followed by the wide variety of approaches that characterizes the post-modern archaeology. Though these more recent paradigms have their flaws and advantages, they all contributed in a significant way to more nuanced approaches resulting in a better insight into the past.

This book deals with a millennium that witnessed a series of unprecedented changes. In these centuries many Mediterranean societies changed from a great variety of small, predominantly tribal entities into the enormous state currently indicated as the Roman Empire. The main aim of this book is to offer a new and coherent narrative of change of a particular region (southeast Italy) during a specific period of its history (1st millennium BC). In this book I wish to produce an overview consisting of dynamic images of the societies that lived in that region in a distant past. During the construction of these images questions are asked and explanations are offered. The latter sometimes differ from the traditional views on such matters and I seem to have shocked some of my Italian colleagues.' The narrative presented here has been foreshadowed in papers in which I questioned the current views on the early Roman period (‘Hannibal’s legacy’), on the sudden rise of the Lucanians and the Greek ‘colonization’ of southeast Italy.’

In this narrative the landscapes and the human impact on landscapes will receive particular attention. A comparative study in settlement and land-use dynamics (‘Regional Pathways to Complexity’) regarding two regions of southern Italy and Latium was published in 2010 by Attema, Burgers and Van Leusen, with whom I have cooperated intensely. The changing character of the manmade landscapes (both urban and rural) will be a recurring item in each of the chapters of this volume as well. Most chapters close with a summary containing a personal view on what I believe are the most important aspects of a particular period in the history of southeast Italy.

After two short introductory chapters containing background information (Chapter 2: ‘The Bronze Age’; Chapter 3: ‘The Land and the People’) the narrative starts with the Iron Age. Though the Iron Age societies were doubtlessly rooted in the Bronze Age, the people who lived in Iron Age southeast Italy created entirely new societies with characteristics that differed vastly from those of the Late Bronze Age. The four chapters dealing with subsequent periods (chapters 4-7) make up the core of this book. In these I follow mainly the most current subdivision in Italian archaeology which separates the Iron Age (9th-7th centuries BC) from the Archaic-Classical period (6th-late 4th century BC) and the

' Cf. Greco 2005 and 2011. 1997; for new light on Greek colonization (‘a stone in For the early Roman period, see Yntema 1995, 2006 the pond’ according to some Italian colleagues), see and 2009; for the rise of the Lucanians, see Yntema Yntema 2000 and 2011.

(early)-Hellenistic period (late 4th- 3rd century BC). Usually narratives on southern Italy stop with the Roman conquest of the region (272-265 BC). It should, however, be noted that it was not the event itself, but especially its long term consequences that were important. In the first 70 years after the Roman victories the societies of southeast Italy evolved in a very gradual way, but they changed in a truly dramatic way in the 2nd century BC. Therefore, I have added a chapter discussing southeast Italy under Roman dominance (late 3rd- early 1st century BC).

The narrative necessarily stops at the beginnings of the 1st century BC. The reason for this is that both the archaeological evidence and the information supplied by ancient authors becomes very scarce indeed from this time onward. For the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD the meager evidence comes from only a few spots and does not suffice to produce images of southeast Italy that go beyond the present stereotypes.’ This means that the probably most intense phase of Roman influence on the district is sadly missing. There is still insufficient evidence to study, for instance, the important process of municipalization (1st century BC) and to trace the effects of the lex Plautia Papiria (89 BC) that made all free born south-Italians with both Greek and indigenous roots into citizens of the Roman state. The meager evidence concerning this period supplied by the ancient written sources has been collected by Kathryn Lomas.’

As we have seen above, the main aim of this book is to produce a decent overview of southeast Italy during the first millennium BC. An attempt to synthesize the present evidence seemed a useful undertaking, since the area under discussion has been subject to very numerous excavations and field surveys over the past thirty years. These were partly caused by development programs of the Council of Europe. European funds resulted in large infrastructural works and large-scale innovations in agriculture. These activities have caused very substantial damage to southeast Italy’s archaeological heritage and resulted in an avalanche of rescue operations.

The data generated by these numerous and relatively recent activities have rarely been used to produce a general insight into the archaeology and history of the people that lived in southeast Italy during the first millennium BC. Of course, syntheses have been made in recent years. These, however, are invariably written in Italian and concern usually only limited parts of the region discussed here. They sometimes deal with present-day administrative entities such as the Italian regione of Basilicata or the regione Puglia, whilst an analysis of an area delineated by natural boundaries seems more adequate. The Greek groups and indigenous ‘Italic’ groups of southeast Italy have almost invariably been discussed separately, although their paths were strongly interwoven.’ Moreover, these syntheses are often characterized by a mainly cultural-historic approach. They have mostly been constructed in attempts to reconcile the artefactual data with the often patchy evidence from the ancient written sources. Important subjects such as urban and rural landscapes, social and societal change and interactions between the various groups and districts of the region have not been generously served. The important role of the ancient written sources in the construction of the past resulted, moreover, in ‘indigenous’ archaeologies seen through Greek and Roman eyes.

Research concerning the indigenous populations of southeast Italy has always been carried out in relation to the Greeks and the Romans: these ‘peoples without history’ have rarely been studied for their own sake. Greeks were implicitly seen as the centre, the natives were the periphery. The non- Greek tribes, for instance, were often said to have lived in the ‘hinterlands’ of Greek polities, whilst a good case can be made for viewing the south-Italian Greeks as a relatively marginal phenomenon in

° For the full Roman period in southeast Italy, see, e.g. * Lomas 1993. Lippolis 1997 and 2005 on Tarentum; Mertens 1995 on 5 Greeks and non-Greeks have been discussed together north-Apulian Herdoniae. in Bottini / Guzzo 1988.

relation to the large native tribes that dominated well over 90% of the region under discussion. This Graeco-centric view has caused a considerable bias in research concerning the indigenous populations. The concept of this synthetic study is to deal with both Greek and indigenous groups together by attempting to shed the traditional biases of Graeco-centrism, Greek superiority and Greek-indigenous dichotomy. As for the early Roman period (chapter 7), the inhabitants of southeast Italy are not seen as poor and unresisting victims of Roman imperialism. They are presented as groups who devised strategies and took opportunities in order to solve problems caused by the rapidly changing world around them.

As early as 1974 the first overview of the pre-Roman archaeology of the Italian Basilicata region was composed. It was made by the late Dinu Adamesteanu.® Most syntheses, however, were made during the 1980s. Overviews on pre-Roman Basilicata were made by Bruno D'Agostino, Angela Greco Pontrandolfo and Angelo Bottini.’ A compilation regarding the native cultures of Apulia was produced by Ettore De Juliis, whilst the pre-Roman phases in the north-Apulian district were highlighted in a excellent synthesis by the late Marina Mazzei and her collaborators.* Continuity and change in the south-Apulian peninsula were mapped by Francesco D’Andria,’ whilst other aspects of the same district were discussed by various authors in the congress papers collected in I Messapi (30th Convegno di Studi sulla Magna Grecia, Taranto 1990). A good synthetic study of the Greek world of southern Italy (basically a handbook for university students) was composed by Emanuele Greco."

The archaeology of pre-Roman southeast Italy has its own set of problems and biases. Foremost among these are the problems of chronology. These regard especially the 5th and the 3rd centuries BC. The problem of the 5th century BC seemed to be that the period was largely absent. This missing 5th century has conveniently been explained away (e.g. by the arrival of the Lucanians), but appears to have been caused predominantly by pottery typo-chronologies constructed on the basis of false assumptions. The problem will be discussed in some detail in chapter 6.1. The 3rd century BC was often problematical because of the widespread, implicit belief that the Roman conquest of southeast Italy (272-265) resulted in an almost complete void. Practically no one bothered to look into the period that followed these doubtlessly traumatic events, because it was believed to be a time of severe decline. However, the seriation of the tombs of the Greek polis of Taras and the analysis of the settlement contexts of the native-Italic site of Valesio have both produced ceramic typo-chronologies that tie in well and are probably reliable." They demonstrate that the 3rd century BC was a period of substantial flourishing in both Taras and Valesio. Since the same 3rd-century BC pottery shapes have turned up in large numbers at almost every pre-Roman site of southeast Italy, the period is now quite well attested. Publications that appeared before the turn of the millennium, however, may still suffer from this bias.

The intensity of archaeological research in the various districts of southeast Italy varies considerably. The results of field activities are often presented in preliminary reports. Intensive field surveys have been carried out in various parts of Basilicata, in north- and south-Apulia, but are still absent in the central part of the latter region. Excavations have been carried out in considerable numbers in most

€ Adamesteanu 1974

D’Agostino 1974 and 1989, Greco Pontrandolfo 1982, and Bottini 1987.

For synthesis om pre-Roman Apulia, see De Juliis 1988; for north-Apulia (Daunia) see. Mazzei et al. 1984 and the posthumously published I Dauni — Archeologia dal XI al V secolo a.C., Foggia 2010, by the same author.

E.g. D'Andria 1988.

Greco 1992.

For the seriation of the Taranto burials, see Lippolis 1994 and Graepler 1997; for the ceramics from the settlement contexts of Valesio, see Yntema 2001.

districts. The main lacuna here is the district on the Adriatic Sea near Bari for which the archaeological evidence concerning the 1st millennium BC is relatively meagre."

As for the objects of the excavations: tombs and tomb groups have been dug up in many places. Till within the 1980s the archaeology of southeast Italy was predominantly an archaeology of tombs and funerary wares. Since these are in constant danger of being robbed by the infamous guilds of the clandestini, they have had a distinct priority in the superintendencies of both the regione Puglia and the regione Basilicata. Reports on large and fairly coherent burial plots, however, are rare, since most tombs were (and still are) found in rescue operations: often the majority of the graves of a burial group has been plundered.” Sanctuary sites which may contain vast quantities of votive offerings run the same risk. Mostly the layouts of the sacred places have been published, but usually little information is given on the quality, the quantity and the character of the votive offerings.’ There is still much to learn about the sacred places of southeast Italy. The excavations in the settlements that were often inhabited for hundreds of years and, therefore, have complicated stratigraphies, are time- and energy-consuming. They were rare till within the 1970s, but grew into a flood in the 1980s. Preliminary reports on these activities are fairly abundant, but final reports with detailed site plans, a representative selection of finds, interpretations and narratives on local developments are often lacking. For the two Greek poleis of Taras and Metapontion the scattered evidence has been compiled, whilst fairly detailed excavation reports are available for the settlement excavations at the Greek polis of Siris-Herakleia.'? There are very good reports on a rural site in the territory of Metapontion.!° Substantial reports have been published concerning tribal settlements of indigenous-Italic populations. These concern various sites in both Basilicata-Lucania and Apulia.”

Complete reports have been published on the field survey in the Bussento district in south-Campania (Gualtieri / Fracchia 2001), the field survey around south-Apulian Oria (Yntema 1993a) and five urban surveys in the same district (Yntema 1993b; Burgers 1998); there are excellent reports on the field surveys in the Metaponto area (e.g. Carter 2001, 2006; Carter / Prieto 2011) and on field surveys in western Apulia and the uplands of Basilicata by British-Canadian teams (e.g. Small 1991and 2001; and further literature cited there); for preliminary reports on north-Apulia, see Goffredo 2010 and Goffredo / Ficco 2010; for overview on central-Apulia, see Greiner 2003.

The most complete burial sites published hitherto are the 5"-4" century necropolises of Lavello in northeast Basilicata (Giorgi et al. 1988; Bottini/Fresa 1991), the Iron Age graves of San Teodoro-L’Incoronata (Chiartano 1977, 1994, 1996), the cemeteries of Sala Consilina of the 9" to 5" century BC (Kilian 1964 and 1970; La Geniére 1968), the necropolis of a rural site in the territory of the Greek polis of Metapontion (Pizzica Pantanello; Carter 1998) and the necropolis of Taras (e.g. Lippolis 1994; Graepler 1997; Hempel 2001)

The most complete publications of sanctuaries are

D’Andria 1978 (south-Apulian Santa Maria di Leuca)

and Osanna / Sica 2005 (Torre di Satriano); but see also Olbrich 1979 (S. Biagio alla Venella), Fabricotti 1979 (Ruoti, Fontana Buona,), D’Andria 1990 and Ciaraldi 1999 (Oria-Monte Papalucio) and Adamesteanu / Dilthey 1992 (Rossano di Vaglio), Otto 1996 (Herakleia).

For summaries regarding the poleis of Taras and Metapontion, see De Juliis 2000 and 2001; for Siris- Herakleia, see Neutsch 1967; Hansel 1973; Pianu 1990; Giardino 1996.

For the rural site of Pizzica Pantanello in the territory of Metapontion, see, for instance, Carter 1998, 2001, 2011.

The most important reports concerning settlements in Basilicata-Lucania are those on Roccagloriosa (Gualtieri / Fracchia 1990 and 2001), Oppido Lucano (Lissi Caronna 1975. 1980, 1983), Torre di Satriano (Osanna 2009), Pomarico Vecchio (Barra Bagnasco 1997), Cozzo Presepe (Taylor et al. 1977) and Cività di Tricarico (de Cazanove 2008). For present-day Apulia there are substantial reports concerning Ordona (e.g.

Mertens 1995) and Canosa (Cassano et al. 1992) in north-Apulia, Monte Sannace (Scarfì 1961 and 1962; Ciancio et al. 1989) and Gravina di Puglia (Small

1992) in central Apulia, and for Valesio (Boersma et

Bio-archaeology is still in its infancy in southeast Italy. In many cases macro-remains of plants have not been systematically collected. Moreover, pollen do not preserve well in many districts of the region under discussion. There is still much to learn about the various crops and the vegetation of natural environments. The quantity of data concerning hunting and stock raising (animal bones) is steadily increasing, but the data are not so numerous that they allow us to have a good grip on farming and hunting in pre-Roman southeast Italy. There is some information on the human bones from burials. However, the present evidence is hopelessly insufficient to study health problems and life expectancy in the first millennium BC.

All in all, the enormous amount of data on southeast Italy generated in the past 30 years deserves it to be put in front of a wider public in a synthetic study. Although the quantity and character of the archaeological evidence varies from district to district, there is quite enough to create new images in which both regional changes and sub-regional variability are highlighted.

al. 1995; Yntema 2001), Cavallino di Lecce (Pancraz- ma (see http://www.museumfrancavilla/publications/) zi 1979, D’Andria 2005) and Vaste (D’Andria et al. and Sybaris (various supplements to Notizie degli Scavi: 1990) in south-Apulia; for northern Calabria, reports Sibari I-V).

have been published concerning Francavilla Maritti-

Tiati/Teanum Apulum (0) (e) S. Severo Coppa Nevigata ff (0) (o) “2 Lucera à (e) 2 O Arpi Siponto O | it 0 50 km “ Fgh g p fe) Ee rr m eon A Le O Troia Salapia Sis È) m eg d - Ordona/Herdonia O A AE fae pa j g O Cannae £ SRI + . =p: ca ~~ Ascoli Satriano/Ausculum o —S:Maria di Ripalta 0° Ceglie del Campo PEA, i + La => Canosa/Canusium Ruvo di Puglia AN Vt tr AP bt \ 4 o PEDI = yee Ofanto roe Minervino Murge (0) ei ogee -Pisciolog ar ee Corato-S. Magno SER. ©) ni iF ‘fio Rutigliano Toppo Daguzzo O lo) i DE TP Mi i Venosa a da > WG A pa Z 4 Gravina La ae a Te =a Banzi g - Altamura A E An Bomo od i jose A \ o Monte 6 TEAL Sl A E T “6, Sannace 76 LA A po “Sp ODI O TREN ERA g- gn” FERITA, S

Fig. 1.1. North- and Central-Apulia: sites mentioned in the text.

O Rutigliano

O Conversano Gnathia/Egnazia pee fe) Risieddi annace o) i Ceglie Messapica Ostuni Doni o Giancola S. Vito dei Normanni ~ Brindisi Difesadi *AMASUOlA Monte Salete Muro Mesagne S. Biagio o Tenente © i Taras/Tarentum Pezza Valesio Petrosa 0 O ©) Cozzo ra M. Maurizio Presepe . (e) Manduria O san Pancrazio Lecce Metapontion Castelli E Manduri Rudiae® O i astelli di Manduria Cavallino Rocavecchia

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50 km

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Nardo O

Montesardo

O Alezio

Ugento (e)

O Soleto

M. Leccese (©)

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Castro

S. M. di Vereto

Leuca

Fig. 1.2. South-Apulia: sites mentioned in the text.

¿— Banzi jor (0) Gravina Altamura p O

; Monte o ‘Oppido Lucano Sannace “ pyForret e raro Monte Irsi “<= he EO O Cancellara e - % > Matera e 4 “+ Timmari o (e) 'Buctino/Volegil® oa Baan” A ; “Sera di bin oe olicarico Wy lait A ` a 3; di Satriano. P we Miglionico © 7 acaglioso) Difesa di ai wa Ra o. FI er e di ba O. S. Biagio fra, > (NN) we wang, E araguso Pomarico O x “See J gona tipa. "A ie “Ke È, pozze Posidonia/Paestuîîr= ~ <# On, TI: fay ry 7 A Pisticci e, ms mira | è 9 Sala€ensilinaG z g H gigas in re i, si Craco O o it SE ale AI DE. S. Teodoro O LE eh ALGA Z +o Ari fia a Aor f 7506 ; NG: ew APY SCE P- nd LB j = A ATI PA 14 ronata fat, = ny ne Li

Elea/Velia

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Sybaris/ Thourioi/Copiae

Fig. 1.3. Basilicata and north-Calabria: sites mentioned in the text.

2 Bronze Age Preludes: Foreigners and Fortifications

2.I INTRODUCTION

Many books on pre-Roman Italy have started their narratives with beginnings of the Iron Age. This phenomenon is probably caused by the fact that Bronze Age cultures and societies have always been problematical issues for ‘Classical’ archaeologists. This observation has been repeatedly made for Bronze Age Greece. On the one hand the Greek Bronze Age was considered as a heyday of civilization and could be shown to display links with Iron Age cultures and societies of Greece that were generally considered to be part of the domain of classical archaeology. On the other hand, the Bronze Age societies of Greece were separated from the later ‘classical’ world by the uncanny Dark Ages. Scholars studying the Greek Bronze Age, moreover, rarely ventured into the Iron Age or later periods of ancient Greece and students of the ‘classical’ world of Greece of the first millennium BC almost never looked into problems of the Bronze Age. The Dark Age was a great divide in the archaeology of Greece. Since this ‘classic’ phase in Greece was often believed to have contributed to the formation of western civilization in a significant way, the Greek Dark Ages were considered to be a period when a cultural dusk spread over the human world and the torch of civilization burned low.

A similar phenomenon can be observed in Italy, and especially southern Italy. The Italian Bronze Age was the domain of Italian paletnologia, whilst the Iron Age, pre-Roman and Roman periods of Italy were studied by those who practiced the archeologia classica. Different periods of early Italy were studied by different groups of archaeologists having different theoretical backgrounds, having different methods of research and using different chronologies. Intercommunication between prehistorians and classical archaeologists working in Italy, moreover, was rather limited. In this field too, there was a great divide between scholars studying the Bronze Age and students of the so-called ‘classical’ periods of ancient Italy.

Though the Italian Bronze Age was less spectacular than the Greek Bronze Age, it is generally perceived as a time of great flourishing. This was demonstrated for instance by intense contacts with Mycenaean Greece. The end of the Bronze Age (Italian: Bronzo Finale) and the beginnings of the Iron Age (with an almost complete absence of external contacts) constituted the Italian Dark Age. It separated the ‘Mycenaeanizing’ world of Bronze Age Italy from the Greek and Italic ‘cultures’, the formative phases of which were believed to have started in the late Iron Age (8th-7th centuries BC).