Panel 5.15 – Greek and Etruscan Vases: Shapes and Markets

Organiser/Chair:

• Dimitris Paleothodoros (University of Thessaly, Volos)

External Discussants:

• Alexandra Villing (British Museum)
• Alan Shapiro (Johns Hopkins University)

Speakers:

• Delphine Tonglet (Université libre de Bruxelles-F.R.S.-FNRS)
  A useful melting-pot: towards a definition of Etruscan banquet sets in funerary contexts
• Cécile Jubier-Galinier (Université de Perpignan Via Domitia)
  Shapes, markets and workshops’ strategy between specialisation and diversification
• Amalia Avramidou (Democritus Univeristy of Thrace)
  Attic Kraters and Pelikai from Ancient Thrace
• Dimitris Paleothodoros (University of Thessaly)
  Attic Red-Figured mugs in the market
• Barbara Cavallaro
  Attic vases in Vassallaggi (Caltanissetta, Italy): special commissions in a sican town
• Aaron Rhodes-Schroder (The University of Auckland)
  Death Driving Deposition: funerary practice as a motivator of Tarquinian selection in the Attic vase trade
• Winfred van de Put (Netherlands Institute at Athens)
  Markets and the survival of shapes: the case of the column-krater
• Vincenzo Baldoni (Università di Bologna)
  Vase shapes from funerary contexts of Picenum: imports and local production

The communis opinio regarding the diffusion of Attic painted pottery privileged the workshops of the Athenian Kerameikos and claimed that foreigners and non-Athenian Greeks bought whatever was produced without discrimination. A number of recent studies, however, have given rise to the awareness that workshops organized their production in order to fulfill specific demands from clients and that agency rested with traders and consumers as well as producers. Much of this recent work has elucidated the mechanisms of adoption and commercialization of specific shapes aimed at the Etruscan and Campanian markets. This session aims at broadening the spectrum by also taking into consideration other areas of the Mediterranean world (northeastern Italy, mainland Greece, the Italic world). Central are the use and the role of imported vases in a variety of contexts, although tombs predominate by necessity, and the way these imports interact with local production. The aim of the session is to explore the fluidity of use and meaning of Athenian vases in different contexts; how shapes and subjects are negotiated between consumer and producer; and how middlemen and networks of contacts and exchanges are operative in the process of popularizing vase shapes and types of decoration.

1. Delphine Tonglet (Université libre de Bruxelles-F.R.S.-FNRS)

A useful melting-pot: towards a definition of Etruscan banquet sets in funerary contexts
This paper presents part of my ongoing research on Etruscan communal banquet practices between the 10th and 6th centuries BC. Communal banqueting is archaeologically represented in vase assemblages within funerary and other contexts. Shared by many Mediterranean regions, it was a characteristic elite institution that expressed cultural identity and status.
Here I wish to show how vessels locally made in Etruria were grouped with imported and/or imitated Greek vases into mixed drinking sets – unlike Greek conventions.
After defining Etruscan “drinking sets”, i.e. the recurring combination of vase shapes necessary for a banquet gathering, I will present a series of case studies, chosen from different areas of Etruria during the 7th-6th cent. BC, with a view to inferring the functions of the different Greek and local vases. The evidence will provide the opportunity to consider the influence of the Greek symposion as well as its transformation and adaptation by the Etruscans. The final, chronological, part of my paper addresses the typological and functional development of a selection of Etruscan shapes such as the olla, chalice and kyathos. Their story sheds light on banqueting practices before and after the arrival of Greek sympotic objects and practices in Etruria.

2. Cécile Jubier-Galinier (Université de Perpignan Via Domitia)

'Shapes, markets and workshops’ strategy between specialisation and diversification
Because of Beazley and to simplify we talk about pot, cup, oenochoe or lekythos workshops, but in fact such specialised ergasteria don’t exist that way. Except for some cup potters, potters and painters produce different shapes. The diversification of production is more or less developed, in particular the so called lekythos-painters diversify much more their productions than expected.
The distribution maps depend on available data but year after year points are added on maps and the understanding of the pottery market progresses. In this communication, I will go further on the study of the distribution of the Diosphos-Haimon Workshop to follow its variation during two generations or more. Beside the lekythoi of the workshop found in different greek areas, the compared study of the distribution of other shapes also produced in this workshop shows the craftsmen’s continuing motivation to diversify.

3. Amalia Avramidou (Democritus Univeristy of Thrace) / Despina Tsiafakis (Research and Innovation Centre “Athena”)

Attic Kraters and Pelikai from Ancient Thrace
This paper explores the distribution patterns, usage and iconography of two case-specific shapes of Attic painted pottery, the krater and the pelike, within an area expanding from the r. Danube to the Aegean Sea, and from the Black Sea to the r. Strymon. Drawing from the on-going research project Attic Pottery in Ancient Thrace, the krater was chosen as a representative type of large, open pots and the pelike as a characteristic closed, storage-type shape. Kraters are the most frequent large shape found in the area between the sixth and fourth century–cups and lekythoi being the majority, while pelikai appear in noticeably fewer numbers. By considering Ancient Thrace as a single geographic unit rather than an area of compartmentalized study, this investigation aims to recreate the larger picture of Attic imports in the region. Kraters and pelikai are found in coastal and inland sites, in Greek colonies and Thracian tumuli, in settlements, necropoleis and sanctuaries, offering a unique opportunity to examine their diffusion, their function within the local societies and their chronological span. Where applicable, the vases are contextualized and discussed vis-à-vis local traditions but also contribute to a more synthetic approach, considering historical and political realities. Lastly, this study explores which painters and workshops of the Athenian Kerameikos are represented in our sample and juxtaposes these finds to the wider spectrum of Attic exports in the Mediterranean.

4. Dimitris Paleothodoros (University of Thessaly)

Attic Red-Figured mugs in the market
Attic red-figured mugs have received relatively little notice in the past. This paper presents a brief overview of the history of the shape, which was invented towards the end of the 6th century in the Athenian Kerameikos, apparently under the influence of the laconian mug that was a highly successful drinking shape in the Peloponnese and the West. Few workshops were involved in the initial production, but soon the shape underwent several modifications, while versions in metal and black-glaze also occurred and became increasingly popular.
If the identification of the shape with the kothon mentioned in ancient sources is correct, the mug was particulary apt for use by travelers, soldiers and people pouring libations. This is confirmed by iconography, as well. Most interestingly, the distribution of red-figured mugs presents a pattern that is unlike any other drinking form in early attic red-figure: most mugs have been found in Greece, South Italy and Sicily, with a large proportion coming from sanctuaries. The funerary destination is also ubiquitous, and it has to be noted that when context is available, mugs appear in tombs of young males. At the end of the fifth century, when the production almost ceases, the few examples produced are giant variants, apparently serving as mixing, rather than drinking vessels. The market orientation is now different, since all of them have been found in Northern Greece and Bulgaria.

5. Barbara Cavallaro

Attic vases in Vassallaggi (Caltanissetta, Italy): special commissions in a sican town
Between sixties and seventies of last century, the archaeologists D. Adamesteanu and P. Orlandini, excavated the southern necropolis of Vassallaggi, near San Cataldo (Caltanissetta, Italy), site of the ancient sican citadel of Motyon, mentioned by Diodorus Siculus since occupied by Ducezio in 451 B.C. and regained by Akragas in 450 B.C. Unfortunately, we don’t know the built-up area, still unpublished, so the knowledge of this community comes from classical necropolis that was used throughout the Vth century. B.C. We pay attention to funerary sets consisting of red-figure attic vases, associated with metal elements such as large knives and strigils and, in some cases, indigenous pottery. The inhabitants commissioned the Athenian Kerameikos to have vessel shapes linked to symposium, then sorted from Akragas's emporium. Kraters, oinochoai and pelikai are smaller than the standards. They are decorated with precise figurative scenes, mostly dionysian subjects and scenes of farewell, erotic pursuit or private life, chosen by customers to represent themselves in the afterlife through episodes of their lives. Vascular forms that make up the funeral set, together with knives and strigils, indicate that people was identified in community values represented by symposium, gymnasium and sacrificial rites. They therefore indicate the total acquisition of the greek costume at the funerary level (for use of grave-type and kit) and at the social level (for carrying out precise activities).

6. Aaron Rhodes-Schroder (The University of Auckland)

Death Driving Deposition: funerary practice as a motivator of Tarquinian selection in the Attic vase trade
This paper presents the results of a quantitative analysis of Attic vases from Tarquinia, based on data collated from the Beazley Archive and the holdings of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Tarquinia; the intention was to identify patterns of preference in the changes in shape and technique from the late 6th century to the early 5th century BC. It can be clearly demonstrated that vase-shape was not the sole determining factor for selection by the Tarquinians, but that decorative technique also played a part: the data show preference for the amphora over other vase-shapes, and almost exclusively for black-figure amphorae, whereas other vase-shapes were readily accepted in the red-figure technique when it became available. It would seem that for the Tarquinians, the selection of vases for burials was determined by specific local cultural practices, within which the black-figure amphorae seem to have had particular significance. This has major implications for understanding the decrease in the importation of Attic vases into Tarquinia: rather than being ascribed to the advent of the fifth century crisis (as per the communis opinio), the decline should now perhaps be seen as a response to the change in production in Athens from black-figure to red-figure, of large, high-quality vases - a development which coincides chronologically with the decline in Attic imports into Etruria.all urbanization is accompanied by some form of craft-specialization that resulted in a number of commodities that became available for many.

7. Winfred van de Put (Netherlands Institute at Athens)

Markets and the survival of shapes: the case of the column-krater
The column-krater is a truly Greek shape with a venerable history, starting somewhere in the seventh century BCE in Corinth but already prefigured in the Mycenaean repertoire. Throughout its existence in the Athenian production it was widely exported. Some shapes, such as the Nikosthenic Amphorae, were made in Athens for a very specific market. It is not surprising to see a short life-span of the Attic variant of such products. The purely Greek shape of the column krater, however, appears to fall out of favour in the mother country, while taking on a new life abroad, with uses not envisaged by the Corinthian inventors or Athenian producers. In the end, the column-krater shared status and fate of 'export shape' with types derived from non-Greek examples, to the extend that its survival depended solely on its popularity in Italy. The demise of the shape as an Athenian product may be connected with the overall collapse of the export of Athenian pottery to that region.

8. Vincenzo Baldoni (Università di Bologna)

Vase shapes from funerary contexts of Picenum: imports and local production
Numana represents the most significant emporion in the ancient Picenum between VIth and IVth century BC, being one of the crucial centers for commercial exchanges with the Greek world and the Middle-Northern Adriatic areas. 
A great amount of Attic pottery and other funerary goods were found in the several burials discovered in Numana, although only a few tomb contexts have been already published: in order to bridge this documentation gap, a team from Bologna University has recently started a systematic investigation considering a large sector of the widest necropolis (Quagliotti-Davanzali area). 
Basing on the considerable amount of available data, this contribution aims to analyze the mechanisms of adoption and circulation of specific vase shapes from Athens, South-Italy and the locally manufactured ones (with particular regard to the so-called Alto-Adriatic pottery), dated from the middle of Vth to the end of IVth century BC.
The methodical analysis of Numana funerary sets - to whom the above-mentioned production belongs - gives the opportunity to reflect upon the choices of vase shapes composing funerary sets, to investigate the interaction between imports and local production and, more in general, to examine cultural and production networks.