Western Greek amphorae produced in colonial western Sicily: overview of an interdisciplinary research on the series of Himera, Selinunte, and Agrigento (mid 6th-early 4th centuries BCE)

Abstract

During their earliest settlement phases, Sicilian Greek colonies imported amphorae-born commodities from extra-regional regions, primarily from Athens, Corinth, and the Aegean area. These plausible ‘primary-content amphorae’ conceived for large-scale and long-distance trade of one major product (wine and olive oil) dominated the markets of the Archaic Sicilian citystates, which were among the most important consumption areas of the central Mediterranean. The intensive manufacture of Sicilian transport containers, that is western Greek-type vessels, did not begin until the later 6th century BCE in the colonial milieu with some forerunners from the mid-6th century BCE onwards (see ch. 2.1). There is a certain difficulty in distinguishing the Archaic amphorae productions of the western Sicilian Greek colonies based only on stylistic-formal aspects and macroscopic fabric. An ‘integrated archaeometric approach’ has proven to be an effective tool in this sense. In fact, through the contribution provided by a direct knowledge of the local geo-lithological context, by the in-depth compositional and textural characterisation of the potential clayey raw materials, it was possible to highlight some characteristic ‘markers’ functional to distinguish the individual productions. Inter alia, this paper summarises the most relevant issues of recent interdisciplinary research on amphorae production in the westernmost Sicilian Greek colonies of Himera, Selinunte, and Agrigento. It consists of a comprehensive review of the archaeometric researches issued on this topic by the authors themselves in the last five years (see ch. 2.1-2.3). It aims to concisely re-discuss the published results in a comparative way so as to offer a hands-on resource for verifying the distribution of Sicilian western Greek vessels in the Mediterranean basin.