Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T06:35:19.541Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Provenance and Firing Techniques of Geometric Pottery from Veii: A Mössbauer Investigation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

Francesca Boitani ,
David Ridgway  and
Antonio Deriu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Samples of seventeen painted Geometric vases from Veii in southern Etruria were subjected to Mössbauer analysis, a technique that has recently achieved the notoriously elusive distinction between LG made at and imported to Pithekoussai. The two main groups (A, B) and three subgroups (B-i, B-ii, B-iii) established analytically at Veii are compared with the identifications proposed on stylistic grounds for the same pieces by J.-P. Descœudres and R. Kearsley in BSA 78 (1983) 9–53. Only the five non-calcareous samples in group A appear to qualify for imported Euboean status; of the calcareous subgroups, B-i (four samples) is tentatively equated with Veii itself and B-ii (four samples) with mainland Campania; no provenance can as yet be assigned to B-iii (two samples); there are two ‘rogues’. Agreement with Descœudres and Kearsley is possible on six samples, and partially so on three more; disagreement is total in the six cases where the origin is defined stylistically as Greek and analytically as Italian (or vice versa). In view of the current shortage of comparable Mössbauer analyses, the authors stress the need for caution in interpreting the present results, and refer briefly to the circumstances in which some ‘Euboean Geometric’ from western sites might have been made by immigrant potters.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 80 , November 1985 , pp. 139 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

All three authors wish to express their warmest thanks to Dr Paola Pelagatti, Soprintendente Archeologa dell'Etruria Meridionale, for her permission to undertake this project and for the constructive interest she has shown in its progress. This work has been partially supported by the ‘Centro Interuniver-sitario di Struttura della Materia’ and the ‘Gruppo Nazionale di Struttura della Materia’ of the Italian National Research Council (CNR).

1 Deriu, A., ‘Mössbauer Study of Ancient Pottery from the Greek Colony of Pithekoussai’, in Proc. Int. Conf. on the Applications of the Mössbauer Effect (Jaipur; Dec. 1981)Google Scholar, printed by Indian Nat. Sci. Acad., New Delhi (1982) 838–40; A. Deriu, G. Buchner, and D. Ridgway, ‘Provenance and Firing Techniques of Geometric Pottery from Pithekoussai: a Mössbauer Investigation’, Journal of Mediterranean Anthropology and Archaeology (forthcoming). A general account of Mössbauer analysis and its archaeological potential: Kostikas, A., Simopoulos, A., and Gangas, N. H., ‘Analysis of Archaeological Artifacts’, in Cohen, R. L. (ed.), Applications of Mössbauer Spectroscopy (1976) 241–61.Google Scholar

2 ‘Euboea and south Italy is a sore example’ of ‘clays from different areas which cannot as yet readily be distinguished at all’: Boardman, J. and Schweizer, F., BSA 68 (1973) 268.Google Scholar Cf. J.-P. Descceudres on Veii, ten years later: ‘Nor is there at the present moment much justification for the hope that scientific clay analysis could come to our rescue like a deus ex machina’: BSA 78 (1983) 28.

3 Ridgway, D., ‘Composition and Provenance of Western Geometric Pottery: a Prospectus’, in Papers in Italian Archaeology I: The Lancaster Seminar (BAR Suppl. ser. 41–1, 1978) 121–8.Google Scholar Subsequent logistic difficulties at the British School at Rome prevented the initiation of the programme of thin-section analysis announced in this paper, which may nevertheless serve as extended and not entirely outdated background reading to the present investigation.

4 Id., L'Alba della Magna Grecia (1984) 57–135.

5 AR 1970–71, 67.

6 Coldstream, J. N., ‘The Cesnola Painter: a Change of Address’, BICS 18 (1971) 1–15Google Scholar; id., art. cit. (next note) 28.

7 Descoeudres, J. P. and Kearsley, R., ‘Greek Pottery at Veii: Another Look’, BSA 78 (1983) 9–53Google Scholar; M. Popham, A. M. Pollard, and H. Hatcher, ‘Euboean Exports to Al Mina, Cyprus and Crete: a Reassessment’, ibid. 281–90. Coldstream, ‘Some Problems of Eighth-Century Pottery in the West, seen from the Greek Angle’, read in Naples in 1976 but unfortunately not available in print until 1983, is also highly relevant to our project: in La Céramique grecque ou de tradition grecque au VIIIe siècle en Italic centrale et mèridionale (1982 [1983]) 21–37.

8 Popham et al., op. cit. 290.

9 Relative chronology: Close-Brooks, J., ‘Proposta per una suddivisione in fasi’, NSc 1965, 53–64.Google Scholar Absolute chronology: ead., ‘Considerazioni sulla cronologia delle facies arcaichedell'Etruria’, StEtr 35 (1967) 323–21; D. Ridgway, ‘“Coppe cicladiche” da Veio’, ibid. 311–21. The original English text of these three items is available in Ridgway, D. and Ridgway, F. R. (eds.), Italy Before the Romans (1979) 95–127Google Scholar, with editorial remarks 55–7.

10 Various authors, NSc 1963, 77–279; 1965, 49–236; 1967, 87–286; 1970, 178–329; 1972, 195–384; 1975, 63–184; 1976, 149–220. The several hundred graves catalogued in these reports were excavated at Quattro Fontanili between 1961 and 1975. Elsewhere at Veii, Colini, G. A. (NSc 1919, 5)Google Scholar referred to a further 1,200 graves, excavated mainly in the Grotta Gramiccia, Casale del Fosso, Valle La Fata, and Macchia della Comunità localities between 1913 and 1916; they are still substantially unpublished. The first and so far the last instalment of the full account of the Iron Age cemeteries at Veii mentioned as forthcoming by D. Randall-Madver in 1924 (Villanovans and Early Etruscans, 193, 269f.) appeared in 1979: G. Bartoloni and F. Delpino, Veio I: Introduzionc allo studio delle necropoli arcaiche di Veio: il sepolcreto di Valle La Fata = MonAnt 50, on which see Ridgway, D., AntJ 60 (1980) 372 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Unpublished MA thesis (Edinburgh 1984), in which Toms argues convincingly for the addition of IB and IIC phases to the Veii sequence. For ease of comparison, reference is made in the present paper to the ‘traditional’ four-phase scheme—however dated (in either sense).

12 Hawkes, C. F. C., JRS 39 (1949) 142Google Scholar, reviewing Å. Åkerström, Der geometrische Stil in Italien (1943): pace Descœudres and Kearsley, BSA 78, 53.

13 See n. 9, above. Coldstream's invaluable Greek Geometric Pottery (1968) also appeared after the publication of the works there cited.

14 StEtr 35, 329; in D. and F. R. Ridgway, Italy Before the Romans, 113.

15 BSA 78, 52.

16 StEtr 35, 317; in D. and F. R. Ridgway, Italy Before the Romans, 119. So too Coldstream, , Geometric Greece (1977) 223.Google Scholar

17 BSA 78, 32 f.

18 Ibid. 34 (with n. 72); and cf. 41.

19 Ridgway, D., in Nouvelle contribution à l'éude de la société et de la colonisation eubténnes (1981) 45 f.Google Scholar and the references there cited.

20 Id., L'Alba della Magna Grecia, 152 f.

21 See n. 11, above.

22 BSA 78, 29–41 nos. 1 to 19 with previous bibliography and references to illustrations. The inventory numbers are those assigned by the South Etruria Superintendency: ibid. 29 n. 66.

23 Ibid. 30 n. 68: our nos. 20 (Krater: NSc 1975, 103 fig. 25) to 28 (Stand, : MEFRA 92 (1980) 584–5 figs. 1–2Google Scholar), of which three items were sampled.

24 Coldstream discusses the chronology of this piece and of its ‘firm [horizontal] stratification’ at Quattro Fontanili in La Céramique grecque (n. 7, above) 24 ff.; his plate I shows other one-bird skyphoi from Al Mina, Tarquinia, Narce, Paphos, and Capua.

25 BSA 78, 48, and 52.

26 BSA 68 (1973) 192.

27 NSc 1965, 188 fig. 89.

28 NSc 1967, 253 fig. 101.

29 NSc 1965, 213 fig. 102.

30 Kündig, W., Boemmel, H., Konstabaris, G., and Lindquist, R. H., ‘Some Properties of Supported Small α-Fe2O3 Particles of Iron Oxide in Soil’, Phys. Rev. 142 (1966) 327–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Maniatis, Y., Simopoulos, A., and Kostikas, A., ‘Mössbauer Study of the Effect of Calcium Content on Iron Oxide Transformations in Fired Clays’, J. Am. Cer. Soc. 64 (1981) 263–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 See n. 7, above.

33 See n. 1, above.

34 See n. 31, above.

35 BSA 78, 39.

36 Similarly, Coldstream, in La Céantique grecque (n. 7 above) 23, has noted that, in spite of the attention it has attracted in the West, the chevron motif itself is far from being the commonest feature of skyphoi at home in Greece.

37 BSA 78, 39 n. 96.

38 DialAr 3 (1969) 229 f. index s.v. ‘coppe GM a chevrons’ for examples from Capua (W. Johannowsky, figs. 1–13) and Pontecagnano (B. d'Agostino, fig. 14a). San Marzano, Valle del Sarno: B. d'Agostino, in La Céramique grecque (n. 7, above) pl. 9.1; id., AION ArchStAnt 1 (1979) figs. 34, 35. More examples are reported from the current (1984) excavations at Pontecagnano, where Deriu is conducting a further Mössbauer investigation.

39 See n. I, above.

40 BSA 78, 49–52.

41 BSA 68(1973) 192.

42 Geometric Greece, 224.

43 Tharros, THT 81/6/6: Acquaro, E., Rivista di Studi Fenici 10 (1982) pls. 26.2 and 33Google Scholar (D. R. is grateful to Dr Lucia Vagnetti for drawing this piece to his attention: he has not seen it). Elsewhere in Sardinia, a Cypriot elbow fibula (Lo Schiavo, F., StEtr 46 (1978) 42 no. 20Google Scholar; 38 fig. 6.3) at Barumini belongs to the same family as an example associated with a psc skyphos of Kearsley's Type 6 at Kouklia in Cyprus: Karageorghis, V., BCH 87 (1963) 267 fig. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. BSA 78, 48. For the wider issues, see Macnamara, E., Ridgway, D., and Ridgway, F. R., The Bronze Hoard from S. Maria in Paulis, Sardinia = British Museum Occasional Paper 45 (1984)Google Scholar; D. Ridgway, ‘Sardinia and the First Western Greeks’, in M. S. Balmuth (ed.), Studies in Sardinian Archaeology ii (forthcoming).

44 Cf. Boardman, J., ‘Greek Potters at Al Mina?’, Anatolian Studies 9 (1959) 163–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 BSA 78, 30 n. 68; cf. n. 20, above.

46 BSA 33 (1932–3) 192:‘… the skill and precision of the drawing and the exact reproduction of Greek designs and shapes point to Greek workmanship.’

47 See n. 5, above.

48 Brown, W. LI., The Etruscan Lion (1960) 2Google Scholar; cf. Ridgway, D., The Etruscans (1981) 25Google Scholar; Cristofani, M. and Martelli, M. (eds.), L'Oro degli Etruschi (1983) 35–51.Google Scholar

49 An important new addition: Andrioménou, A., ‘Skyphoi de l'atelier de Chalcis (fin Xe—fin VIIIe s. av. J.-C.)’, BCH 108 (1984) 37–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar