Download or read book The Italic Patronage of Early Apulian Red-figure written by Jed M. Thorn and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation investigates the relationship between Early Apulian red-figure pottery workshops and the Italic peoples of Apulia. Apulian red-figure--produced from c. 430 BC through the end of the 4th century BC--is rarely found outside of South Italy. It has long been assumed that it was made in the modern Italian region of Puglia, where the majority of it has been found. The earliest Apulian red-figure pottery exhibits contiguity with contemporary trends in Attic red-figure; its style, iconography, and shape selection were, with a few notable exceptions, thoroughly Greek. Consequently, it has been widely assumed that red-figure potters and painters had emigrated from Athens to Taras, Apulia's only Greek colony, where they established a local industry that served as the exclusive supplier of Apulian red-figure pottery for roughly a century. This is, however, a conjecture that has not yet received support from archaeological finds. The questions of where Apulian red-figure was born and where it was made remain open; these are the central questions addressed in this dissertation. The analysis focuses on three main types of archaeological evidence: distributional, iconographic, and archaeometric. The distributional evidence confirms that the primary market for Early Apulian red-figure was a network of Italic (i.e., non-Greek) communities to the northwest of Taras (modern Taranto), on the Adriatic side of the Apulian Murge. The iconography of the vases that reached this market suggests that their painted scenes may have been consciously selected on account of the meaning they held for the people who acquired them. This evidence raises the possibility that Apulian red-figure painters and their patrons may have, in some cases, been in direction communication with each other, a possibility that does not accord well with traditional views regarding the locations of workshops. Finally, the core evidence cited in this study is data produced by a neutron activation analysis project that isolated the chemical compositions of 41 Apulian red-figure vases. The project's sample group included archaeological reference material made with Tarantine clays, enabling it to test the assumption that Early Apulian red-figure was produced exclusively at Taras. The chemical analysis demonstrated that while certain vase-painters can be linked decisively with Taras, other Early Apulian workshops were using a clay type that seems not to have been Tarantine in origin. The evidence presented and discussed in this dissertation suggests that some Early Apulian red-figure pottery was produced at Italic settlements outside of Taras. This conclusion has important implications for our understanding of intercultural dynamics in Classical Apulia.