Consumption and exchange in Central Italy in the ninth through sixth centuries BCE [electronic resource]
Keywords: Classics.

This dissertation addresses issues of connectivity in central Italy in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE by examining consumption. Specifically, I analyze how indigenous consumptive practices created specific material demands that fostered contact with other Mediterranean regions. Large demands for banqueting equipment were driven by widespread, extant practices of wine consumption. Demands were largely met locally until the end of the 6th century, when central Italians began to acquire large quantities of banqueting equipment from Greece, especially Athens. Central Italian demand for banqueting equipment drew Greek materials into the region, thereby explaining the large quantities of Greek drinking vessels discovered in central Italy. The 8th and 7th centuries in central Italy were a time of intense urbanization and increasing social stratification. Additionally, scholars often describe these centuries in central Italy as an Orientalizing Period, when materials and practices from the eastern Mediterranean were brought to central Italy by traders, mainly Greek merchants. Local Italian elites would have consumed foreign materials and adopted foreign practices as a means of differentiating themselves from non-elites. In the last 50 years, many scholars have drawn causal links between the arrival of Greeks in the central Mediterranean and the immense changes that occurred in central Italy. The resulting model for change is known as Orientalization. Models of Orientalization link urbanization and increasing social stratification in central Italy to increasing contact with the eastern Mediterranean, especially Greece. In this model, indigenous populations receive little credit for the changes that the region underwent. In this dissertation, I test models of Orientalization by employing a statistical and contextual approach to the study of portable artifacts in central Italy. I have compiled a database of 43,000 artifacts deposited between 900 and 500 BCE at six sites, including Poggio Civitate, San Giovenale, Populonia, Caere, Veii, and Rome. For each site, I have tracked the places of production, deposition contexts, and dates of deposition of locally-made and imported artifacts. I have calculated the amounts and percentages of imports found in 50-year intervals and determined that in the 8th and 7th centuries, imports in central Italy were rare; they were not common until the end of the 6th century. Furthermore, imports were deposited in places accessible to many people, indicating that the consumption of available imports was widespread. An examination of artifact typologies, layered with contextual data, demonstrates that the sorts of materials imported to central Italy were similar to materials being produced locally and were used similarly. Drinking and pouring vessels used for wine consumption consistently outnumbered other ceramics and were common in many sorts of contexts. Based on these findings, I argue that central Italians of various statuses consumed wine regularly, beginning at least in the 9th century BCE. Widespread wine consumption created a demand for banqueting equipment that was largely met locally. Beginning in the second half of the 7th century, central Italians began to acquire some banqueting equipment from Greeks, but remained self-sufficient. By the end of the 6th century, central Italians acquired large quantities of banqueting equipment from Athens. Widespread central Italian wine drinking, an extant indigenous practice, drew Greeks and Greek materials into the region, explaining the vast quantities of Greek vessels found in central Italy dating to the 6th and 5th centuries. This was not caused by Orientalization, a push of materials and practices from east to west, but rather by a pull from west to east.