Book Description

Most of the previous scholarship on Apulian red-figure pottery has focused on the cataloguing of collections, the attribution of vases to painters and workshops, iconographic and stylistic matters, and individual vessels and vase forms. This partly reflects the history of vase-painting scholarship, which grew out of antiquarian collecting during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the fact that a full archaeological provenance is not preserved for the overwhelming majority of vessels. This book takes a different approach by using a database containing in excess of 13,500 vessels and fragments to identify patterns in the production and decoration of Apulian vases that cast light on the choices made by vase-producers and the preferences of their customers. Individual chapters consider the popularity of different vessel shapes over time, the use of highly generic decorative scenes, which are characteristic of Apulian red-figure, as well as the popularity of scenes of myth, images of the gods, scenes of the life of the non-Greek population of ancient Puglia, and those showing funerary monuments. As virtually all of the vases in the sample derive from tombs, the patterns identified provide insights into the ways in which the ancient populations of South-East Italy, both Greek and indigenous, honoured their dead.