Italo-Mycenaean and other Aegean-influenced pottery in Late Bronze Age Italy: the case for regional production

Abstract

Decorated Italo-Mycenaean (IM) pottery, a high-status class found and made over three centuries from the Italian Late Middle Bronze Age onwards, was the subject of a large archaeological and archaeometric enquiry published by the present authors in 2014. The present paper focuses on identifying IM’s centres of production. The results of chemical analysis of IM using mainly ICP-ES make a strong case for regional production, irrespective of findspots in several parts of Italy. This accords well with the relative stylistic individuality of IM observed among the finds of IM across many parts of Italy, suggesting that IM is a powerful archaeological indicator of the way local communities were constructing and negotiating their identities at this crucial time of social and economic change at the end of the Bronze Age. A picture of more dispersed intra-regional production emerges from the combined chemical and petrographic analysis of two other pottery classes displaying Aegean influence: wheel-made Grey ware and decorated Final Bronze Age/Early Iron Age (FBA/EIA) pottery from sites in present-day Apulia and from Broglio di Trebisacce in Calabria. Potters manufacturing the former applied their knowledge of the wheel and kiln firing to handmade impasto shapes which were largely shared by local communities within a region. The results obtained for the latter reflect demands of the new elites of the emerging FBA/EIA in southern Italy to create symbols expressing a new cultural identity: this pottery’s style, especially of Protogeometric, was uniform but its production was localised.