Shaping Gender: Apulian Red-Figure Pottery and the Gender Expression of Ancient Italic Peoples

Abstract

This thesis investigates how certain shapes of Apulian red-figure pottery produced in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, may have been associated with a specific gender and used to express aspects of gender in burial by Italic peoples. Until recent decades, the study of Apulian ceramics has taken a backseat to the scholarship of Attic vessels and has primarily focused on attribution and representations of theatre. As a result, the iconography on Apulian red-figure is not as generally well understood and, to date, there has been no wide-ranging and systematic study that has attempted to categorise its scene types to further an understanding. This thesis strives to develop a deeper knowledge of the Italic peoples of Apulia through an examination of the iconography on Apulian red-figure ceramics which were made almost exclusively for Italic burials. As an extension, it hopes to identify aspects of the relationships between Italic peoples and their Greek-speaking neighbours in South Italy, through an exploration of how Italic peoples may have adopted or appropriated elements of Greek culture. Four shapes of Apulian red-figure, which had traditional gendered associations within Attic production, were chosen to determine if these same associations continued to exist in South Italy. Through the examination of the iconography, it was possible to identify patterns in scene types and iconographic motifs which suggest the strong possibility that gendered links to vase shape had existed. However, the interesting results revealed that links were not entirely exclusive. Rather the images on the vases departed from Attic imagery in ways that strongly support the notion that Italic people established their own customs, rituals and modes of representation in regard to these vessels. Overall, this study highlights the merits of categorising image and shape and analysing them in relation to vase context as a means for examining the lives of the Italic peoples of South Italy.