Archaeometric studies of local pottery on archaic Monte Iato (Sicily)

The tension between indigenous and colonial

Abstract:

Sherds of ceramic vessels of various manufacture, form, and decoration are often regarded in the archaeology of Sicily as key evidence for cultural encounters and processes of exchange between Phoenicians, Greeks, Etruscans, and Indigenous peoples in the Archaic Mediterranean (700–480 BC). This interpretative automatism in the recording, cataloguing, and evaluation of sherd finds from inland sites ultimately leads to attempts to map the ethnic and cultural landscapes of the different native tribes of Sicily through their regional distribution—aligning these supposedly tribal cultural landscapes with the tribal territories described by Thucydides (4.2) for the Elymians, Sicanians, and Sicels.

Despite the postcolonial reorientation and adjustment of this ethnic interpretative approach over the past twenty years, what ought first to be demonstrated is still taken for granted—namely, that ethnic identities shape material cultures in their own distinctive and characteristic ways. Yet this supposed axiom of the “ethnic interpretative paradigm” has been, and continues to be, increasingly undermined—particularly in the case of Archaic Sicily—by archaeometric studies showing that material cultures, and ceramics in particular, are not explicit media of ethnic identity.

Challenging and relativizing these ethnocentric interpretative models is the aim of the Iato excavation projects conducted by the Universities of Zurich and Innsbruck. The Indigenous settlement on Monte Iato in western Sicily represents one of the very few excavation sites in Sicilian archaeology that provides continuously stratified contexts from the 9th/8th to the 5th century BC. Yet Iato’s exceptional significance lies not only in its stratigraphy. Equally crucial are the markedly divergent assemblages of finds within the contemporaneous cultural layers between the settlement beneath the later agora and the cult complex surrounding the Aphrodite Temple.

It can be observed that, in connection with the Aphrodite sanctuary, objects repeatedly appear that were not present at the same time in the agora settlement. These include, for instance, Attic red-figure vessels as well as the latest survivals of protohistoric Incisa pottery found in association with late Archaic red-figure wares from Athens. Evidently, goods and commodities were redistributed and used within the sanctuary that were not available at the same time in the nearby local settlement.

Monte Iato thus offers a unique opportunity to study intra-settlement divergences in patterns of consumption that apparently arose from the differing nature of the two excavated areas—on the one hand a sanctuary, and on the other the domestic buildings of a small community. However, these primarily autoptic observations made so far on Monte Iato require archaeometric verification before they can be regarded as secure.

To pursue this as systematically as possible, the research focus has been placed on identifying the “reference groups” of local pottery on Monte Iato, with the aim of capturing more precisely the reactions of local ceramic production to the new demands for pottery in an increasingly dense cultural contact zone between the 8th and 5th centuries BC.