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Provenance and Firing Techniques of Geometric Pottery from Veii: A Mössbauer Investigation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2013
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.
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- Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1985
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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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27 NSc 1965, 188 fig. 89.
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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).
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47 See n. 5, above.
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