• 1 While using a cylinder matrix, and thus not a stamp in the traditional sense of the term, the phras (...)
• 2 Kekulé 1884, 46–50.
• 3 Transculturality is used here in the sense promoted by Fernando Ortiz and championed by Monic Junej (...)

1Despite the crucial role played by the movement of objects and artists in the crosscultural exchange so characteristic of the Iron Age Mediterranean, modeling these networks has proven difficult. West-central Sicily, a territory roughly separated from the eastern portion of the island by the Imera meridionale, is an ideal case study thanks to the proximity of independent indigenous (Elymian and Sikan) and migrant (Greek and Phoenician) polities. Whereas previous network analyses utilizing ceramics contend with unwieldly large samples, and sculptural or architectural exchange is often limited to the anecdotal, an ideal yet underutilized corpus is the region’s “cylinder stamped” terracottas (Fig. 1).1 Noted as a characteristic feature of the region’s terracotta production already in 1884,2 examples brought to light in excavations have since demonstrated that the technique was popular and readily adapted outside of the major Greek apoikiai of Selinus, Akragas, Gela, and Himera. In a dissertation-in-progress, I argue that careful analysis of the reliefs themselves and the archaeological assemblages of the terracottas on which they are found across western and central Sicily offers an unparalleled opportunity to track transcultural mobility and local appropriation.3 Through this, we may begin to move beyond anacronistic theories and develop a more nuanced understanding of how communities in “colonial” areas were connected through sub-elite mobility and exchange.

• 4 Thucydides 6.2; Asheri 1992, 603.

2Despite the complexity of this contact zone, the prominence of the Greco-Roman classical tradition skewed study of ancient Sicily decidedly towards the Greek apoikiai. For the Phoenician and indigenous peoples of Sicily, Thucydides’ simplifying account of the island’s pre-Greek peoples remained the primary frame of reference; the author’s definition of these groups only by their relation to the Greeks has persisted in modern scholarship.4

• 5 Tusa 1962; Sjöqvist 1973; Loomba 1998; van Dommelen 1997, 305–323.

3The resultant narrative is now familiar. As Greek identity — and modern concepts of ethnic superiority — were integrated into various European national debates, the attendant popularity of Orientalism and Imperialism further distanced the Phoenician and indigenous “other.” Greeks were the benefactors of the benighted indigenous and Phoenician populations through the process of Hellenization. An intellectual reassessment began with the collapse of European colonies across the world, with classical archaeologists and art historians beginning to argue that the preceding model was a figment of the imperial imagination. The postcolonial approach that developed saw multicultural regions such as west-central Sicily as a place of contested meaning and hybridization.5

• 6 Zuchtriegel 2017
• 7 De Angelis 2003, 145.

4Postcolonialism is still very much thought of as new theory for the field, as indicated by recent publications like Gabriel Zuchtriegel’s Colonization and Subalternity in Classical Greece.6 In reality, both Hellenization and Postocolonialism suffer from the same fundamental issue, subscribing to what has been described as “colonial dualism.”7 While postcolonialism recognizes alterity, it still assumes originally homogenous cultural groups. Even as it acknowledges hybridity, the theory assumes that there is some original pure “Greek,” “indigenous,” and “Phoenician” identity from which heterogeneity may arise.

• 8 Horden and Purcell 1999; Malkin 2013a; Malkin 2013b. For discussion of the dangers of suppressing r (...)

5The globalist turn has similarly flattened our discussion of regional dynamics. Network theory from Horden and Purcell’s now influential volume to Irad Malkin’s A Small Greek World promote concepts of Mediterraneanization and Glocalization that preference global phenomena over local specificity.8

• 9 The term “terracotta furniture” is used here specifically, but the corpus is also referred to as “t (...)

8Rather than formal typology, this dissertation focuses on surface, and specifically the use of cylinder stamps across west-central Sicily. Cylinder matrices (Fig. 2), used by craftspeople to create continuous friezes across the terracotta surfaces, were especially popular in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E. Large terracottas with such reliefs were traded and adapted irrespective of cultural boundaries in Greek, Elymian, Sican, and Phoenician communities. The stamps, with figural, vegetal, and abstract iconographies, were used on the surfaces of what might be considered “terracotta furniture,”9 ranging from the common footed basins to altars, trapeza, pithoi, wellheads, and sarcophagi.

• 10 Examples of these relief fragments can be found within the display of Sicilian materials at the Bri (...)
• 11 Sorge 2010, 82.

9Whether inspired by Corinthian or Cretan production, the continuous reliefs across the region conform to a distinct style. mpressed terracotta fragments appear prominently in the collections of major international museums and the galleries of regional museums.10 Their regional specificity was such that, when Paolo Orsi sent characteristically Sicilian material to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Firenze, he included five fragmentary terracottas impressed with the most common cylinder frieze iconographies.11 Despite this popularity, and dozens of newly discovered fragments, scholars still largely rely on a single article by Nunzio Allegro from 1982.

• 12 The term “louteria” is used here in its most neutral sense. For a discussion of the terminology and (...)
• 13 Allegro 1982, 135.

11For brevity’s sake this notice summarizes the results of analysis only in terms of cylinder reliefs found on terracotta “louteria.”12 The variety of subject matter for these reliefs is strikingly homogenous, and may be broken into more than twenty categories ranging from the quadriga and Nike composition with dozens of distinct series to the surprisingly infrequent depiction of Herakles. These impressed basins were traditionally thought to have been produced in the major production centers of Selinunte and Agrigento, with more limited production at Imera and Gela. This production would then be distributed into the hinterland, where it might be reproduced in occasionally barbarized styles.13

• 14 For the popularity of deer-hunting and aristocratic hunting in Sicily across cultural boundaries, s (...)
• 15 For a brief reference to some fragments, see Vassallo 2015.

14A survey of the available unpublished and published relief fragments from the island’s interior reasserts the prominence of centers like Vassallaggi and Terravecchia di Cuti in distribution networks independent from the major coastal urban centers. At Vassallaggi, imported series from multiple Greek centers is found alongside locally produced iconographies in styles both consistent with and divergent from those imports (Fig. 7). Vassallaggian series are found at many nearby indigenous sites as well. They reproduce iconographies that would resonate with this audience, with the representation of aristocratic deer hunts especially popular (Fig. 8).14 Terravecchia di Cuti to the north seems to have played a similar role as a central node in interior distribution networks.15

• 16 There are several iconographical parallels for the rearing lion and smiting figure in the wider Pho (...)

15That Phoenician Mozia imported impressed louteria by the dozen from both Selinunte and Agrigento is well known, but we may also note examples of local production including the aforementioned quadriga series, as well as a lion-smiting scene whose closest parallels are in Phoenician depictions of Melqart (Fig. 9).16

• 17 Orlandini 1998–1999, 309–310.

18Analysis of the available contextual information from the Greek apoikiai supports this theory, although earlier in the sixth century basins are found almost exclusively in ritual contexts before being found across sacred and domestic contexts in the fifth century. Contextual analysis in “non-Greek” communities is essential, as the assemblages that louteria are found in suggests that these “Greek” objects were transformed and translated to conform to local practice, just as the reliefs on their surfaces were adapted. The earliest impressed louteria are found in indigenous-style house shrines, as at Monte Saraceno and Sabucina, where they stood in for traditional basin forms (Fig. 10). They could also appear in novel contexts as in Vassallaggian grave assemblages.17

• 18 This hypothesis was first proposed by Ettore Gabrici in a seminal 1946 article (Gabrici 1946, 5–29) (...)

19At Mozia, relief-impressed basins appear in the most distinctly Phoenician ritual site — the tophet — as well as part of assemblages in the Kothon sanctuary recently excavated by La Sapienza, and in large numbers around the shrines marking the entrance to the settlement at Porta Nord. The importance of water in Phoenician ritual is well known, but the appearance of burning on fragments, not only at Mozia, but also at several sites across the region, suggests alternative uses for these large terracottas.18

• 19 Banerjee, Carlin, and Gelfand 2004.
• 20 Walsh 2014, 134 ff.

20Traditional analysis and the digital humanities Combining formal and iconographical analysis with a more archaeological approach allows for these terracottas so characteristic of the region to be seen in a new light. Rather than being “Greek” objects, whose distribution across the island can be used as a metric for Hellenization, hybridization, or another modern term, these terracottas and their reliefs are markers of a diverse web of relations. Understanding the full extent and variability of these networks is difficult, and the relatively large dataset invites analysis with modern digital techniques. To understand the full extent of the distribution, a kriging analysis of our data sample modeled through a global information systems (GIS) was performed. Using the Geostatistical Analysis plug-in in QGIS’s ArcMap software,19 a map is developed that indicates that cylinder-stamps were distributed and adapted across western Sicily in what indeed appears to be a multimodal network. Studies of Greek imports in other regions have utilized this approach to great success, best exemplified by Justin Walsh’s reconstruction of Attic fine wares in France and Spain.20 The resultant maps show not only how distribution in certain areas of the interior followed major topographical features like river valleys, but also highlights the disparity between the high production and consumption in the interior east of the Monti Sicani and the areas of the Belice valley traditionally associated with the Elymians.

• 21 Walsh, 102 ff.
• 22 Watts and Strogatz 1998, 440–442.

21Statistical and graphic means of visualizing the dataset can produce similarly provocative results. Simpson’s Index of Diversity has proven to be especially efficacious in the comparison of variation at many sites concurrently,21 and while our dataset at slightly less than one thousand attestations is on the smaller side we may conclude from the preliminary results that production was diverse at both major centers like Agrigento and Selinunte and secondary centers like Gela and Vassallaggi. Graphically, the complexities of the network work particularly well with Small-world analysis,22 and allow us to visualize the multi-nodal nature of west-central Sicilian production, as opposed to binary colonizer-colonized relationships predicated on the assumed power of Greek “spheres of influence.