Communicating Identity in Italic Iron Age Communities

Recent archaeological work has shown that South Italy was densely occupied at least from the Late Bronze Age, with a marked process of the development of proto-urban centers, accompanied by important technological transformations. The archaeological exploration of indigenous South Italy is a relatively recent phenomenon, thanks to the bias towards the study of Greek colonies. Therefore an assessment of processes taking place in Italic Iron Age communities is well overdue. Communicating Identity explores the many and much varied identities of the Italic peoples of the Iron Age, and how specific objects, places and ideas might have been involved in generating, mediating and communicating these identities. The term identity here covers both the personal identities of the individuals as well and the identities of groups on various levels (political, social, gender, ethnic or religious). A wide range of evidence is discussed including funerary iconography, grave offerings, pottery, vase-painting, coins, spindles and distaffs and the excavation of settlements. The methodologies used here have wider implications. The situation in the northern Black Sea region in particular has often been compared to that of southern Italy and several of the contributions compare and contrast the archaeological evidence of the two regions.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Communicating Identity in Iron Age Italic Communities – and Beyond (Jean MacIntosh Turfa)
Communicating Identities in Funerary Iconography: the Inscribed Stelae of Northern Italy (Kathryn Lomas)
The ‘Distaff Side’ of Early Iron Age Aristocratic Identity in Italy (Margarita Gleba)
Weaving, Gift and Wedding. ? Local Identity for the Daunian Stelae (Camilla Norman)
Identity in the Tomb of the Diver at Poseidonia (E. G. D. Robinson)
Communicating Identity in an Italic-Greek Community: the Case of L’Amastuola (Salento) (Jan Paul Crielaard and Gert-Jan Burgers)
Family and Community: Self-Representation in a Lucanian Chamber Tomb (Helena Fracchia)
The Inscribed Caduceus from Roccagloriosa (South Italy): Image of an Emerging ‘Political’ Identity (Maurizio Gualtieri)
Hybridity and Hierarchy: Cultural Identity and Social Mobility in Archaic Sicily (Gillian Shepherd)
Wohnen in Compounds: Haus-Gesellschaften und soziale Gruppenbildung im frühen West- und Mittelsizilien (12.–6. Jh. v. Chr.) (Erich Kistler)
Constructing Identity in Iron Age Sicily (Matthew Fitzjohn)
Constructing Identities in Multicultural Milieux: The Formation of Orphism in the Black Sea Region and Southern Italy in the Late 6th and Early 5th Centuries BC (Jane Hjarl Petersen)
Greek or Indigenous – from Potsherd to Identity in Early Colonial Encounters (Søren Handberg and Jan Kindberg Jacobsen)
Coinages of Indigenous Communities in Archaic Southern Italy - The Mint as a Means of Promoting Identity? (Helle W. Horsnæs)
Corfinium and Rome: Changing Place in the Social War (Elena Isayev)
Aspects of the Emergence of Italian Identity in the Early Roman Empire (Gary D. Farney)

'Overall, the quality of contributions to this volume makes it an excellent addition to the growing body of scholarship focusing on the question of ancient Italic identity and its archaeological expression.' (Anthony Tuck American Journal Of Archaeology)