Peucetian Sanctuaries
The Sanctuary at Madonna delle Grazie
The absence of loom weights in deposits of the Sanctuary at Madonna delle Grazie (near Rutigliano),[1] the single known sanctuary in Peucetia, is consistent with the relative scarcity of loom weights in the burials, and it may indicate that they were not charged with cultic significance. At several other sites in southern Italy, the practice of weaving and transhumance has been connected to religious cults and sanctuaries where loom weights have been found. There is debate about the function of loom weights in sanctuaries. In some contexts they appear to have been votive gifts, or used to designate woven cloth, intended as an offering.[2] When found in the hundreds, they are interpreted as evidence of sacred weaving that took place on site to produce sacred garments for a deity or for the inhabitants of the sanctuary.[3] To the best of my knowledge, virtually no loom weights are recorded in the deposits associated with the sanctuary.[4] While this may be an accident of discovery, it would not be inconsistent with the equivocal contexts of loom weights in the burials. If, as weaving artefacts, loom weights were female votive offerings, they would presumably occur in greater numbers in sanctuaries as gifts to a deity, as they typically do in in sanctuaries at other sites in the Greek world. Unfortunately since little is known about Peucetian religion, or the sanctuary itself, its plan and the deity to whom it was consecrated, this point is somewhat circular. It is enough to reiterate the point that if the evidence for the ambiguity of loom weights in the tomb groups is any indication, it is perhaps not surprising that they are not well represented in the Sanctuary at Madonna delle Grazie.
The material in the later sanctuary deposits is marked by changes, which are also reflected in the later burials, and associated with changing internal social structures and external pressure imposed by Rome at the end of the 4th and the 3rd centuries BCE. The material in the earliest deposits, which dates the establishment of the sanctuary, reflects social stratification, wealth accumulation and increased contact with neighbouring Greek colonies. Like the earlier burials, it includes banqueting equipment, the full repertoire of matt painted drinking vessels and Greek imports, the latter indicative of trade with these communities.[5] However, like the later burials, the material in the later sanctuary deposits of the 3rd century BCE is inferior, and consists mostly of locally produced, low-quality pottery, with none of the fine wares imported from Greek colonies in Apulia and from Athens, prevalent in the earlier deposits. It is generally assumed that in broader terms, this shift in material culture is associated with the process of assimilation by the Romans, of both Greek and Italic populations in southern Italy at this time. However the tomb assemblages, which are no longer marked by communal feasting, the typical features of Peucetian ethnicity, also signal the emergence of a new elite, and a changing social structure that favoured family over communal roles, and expressed status in ways that presumably are not found in the burials. It has been argued that it is these internal changes, involving the growth of towns and more urbanization (where large towns absorbed smaller settlements), that were more formative in the disappearance of the Peucetians than conquest by the mighty Romans. In short, as Peucetian communities were subsumed by Rome, they evince a new elite class that by the end of the 3rd century BCE expressed status and societal roles in new contexts and venues.[6]
Notes
[1] Peruzzi 2016, 18-19; Ciancio and Radina, 7-61.
[2] Gleba 2008, 183-187; Gleba 2008b, 70-74; other votive contexts, 74 -76.
[3] M. Gleba 2008b, 71-72; 81; Sofroniew 2011, 191-194.
[4] Cianco and Radina (1983) one recorded at 15.
[5] Peruzzi 2016 18-19 and note 40.
[6] Peruzzi 2014, 37-41; 2016, 206-209, 274-278; whereas from the 6th to middle of the 4th century BCE the burial kits underlined communal activities (banqueting) and a distinct indigenous warrior ideal, the tomb assemblages of the 3rd century BCE had no weapons, no figured vases, and they did not include vases that would have been used in the funeral banquet; as Peruzzi has observed, the development is gradual: at first (in the first half of the 3rd century) many vessel types associated with banqueting (kraters) evoke the idea of communal drinking, but are no longer functional, and are more like props, unusable because they are not waterproof and do not have bottoms; in the second half of the third century the weapons, and the vessels associated with communal drinking disappear, to be replaced by new, smaller shapes, suggesting that the ritual of drinking and its pairing with the warrior ideal had ceased to be meaningful, and both communal roles and individual status were no longer expressed in the burials.