These three sites had strong contact with settlements farther north, in Etruria, which contains the greatest evidence of Phoenician material culture and contact.
Etruria
Fletcher suggests that Phoenicians were especially attracted to complex societies in their quest for metals and overseas trade (2007: 106), favoring a form of contact between equals rather than wishing to colonize new sites. If true, this is not better shown than by their contact with the Villanovan and Etruscan societies of Etruria and Latium.
More than any other area of the early first millennium bce, Etruria and Latium have been the focus for scholarly attention (from Populonia in the north to Castel di Decima in the south). This is the period known as “Orientalizing,” which principally concerns the influence of Greek or Oriental/Levantine material culture on Italian (primarily Etruscan) handicrafts and workmanship in the mid- to late eighth and seventh centuries bce (Riva and Vella 2006: 4–10). The term itself has diffusionist and colonial overtones, tending to flatten a complex period of cultural contact into binary opposites. With a rich exchange of skills, knowledge, and material culture this was indeed a fertile period for the development of local ideologies through the active re-elaboration of foreign contributions not only from Greece and the Levant but also central Europe and Sardinia. Since the evidence comes mainly from individual pieces found in wealthy graves throughout the region, it is difficult to say how far there was direct contact with Phoenician traders. In the following passages, I pick out the main evidence for contact and possibly settlement of Levantine artisans. This is not the place to discuss in detail the complex interactions and appropriations that mark the development of Etruscan society (Izzet 2007; Riva 2010). However, it is important to briefly refer to the local developments that attracted Phoenician interest to the area.
The first and second Iron Ages (ca. 950–720) saw a notable rise in the central Italian populations which consolidated in dense settlements along the upland plains of the Tyrrhenian coast, especially at Tarquinia, Veio, and Cerveteri (Riva 2010). Much of the funerary material culture of the later Iron Age shows a society strongly interested in the rituals of warrior ideology, probably as a way of marking charismatic leaders in a society that was fast becoming stratified (Iaia 2012). This complex invented tradition required high maintenance. The ostentatious display of objects formed part of the tomb rituals at the elaborate Etruscan elite graves, while the performances that took place there made use of traditions and artisanal techniques from central, western, and eastern Europe (Iaia 2008).
It is precisely in Etruria and Latium where the clearest indications of a Phoenician presence are felt, not just in the material culture but also in “soft,” more elusive evidence such as the transmission of the alphabet. Phoenician workmanship and influence from the Near East fed into the longer-term changes that form part of the “Orientalizing” period, when particular goods with a luxurious or exclusive “feel” were eagerly coveted by the local elites to display and maintain their emerging social distinctions. The seventh century bce also saw the start of trade in nonelite goods with the western Phoenician colonies of Sardinia and North Africa. As in southern Italy, most of the earliest material from the late ninth and early eighth centuries included “trinkets” and athyrmata such as scarabs, beads, and pendants, whose presence suggests tentative direct contacts by Near Eastern traders with local communities (Botto 2008a: 143, 2012: 54; Martelli 1991). If we assume Phoenician interest was focused on gaining access to Italian metal ores, it is surprising that, apart from the bronze bowl from Vetulonia (Maggiani 1973) (figure 33.1[2]), which perhaps arrived through contact with Sardinia, the earliest signs of contacts come from southern Etruria (e.g., Veio, Tarquinia), far from the metal-rich area of the Colline Metallifere. This suggests that the original Phoenician contact with the mainland followed Bronze Age, perhaps Mycenaean, trading routes around the coast from south to north.
Owing to a long tradition of excavating the rich and often highly visible Etruscan tombs, Phoenician influence can be most clearly found in the funerary evidence where exotic material was displayed in the Etruscan cemeteries of the late eighth and seventh centuries bce. Material is primarily related to specific situations of banqueting and prestige. Emblematic, especially of the second category, are a series of embossed bronze and later silver bowls found principally in male tombs, such as the one from the Poggio alla Guardia tomb at Vetulonia in north Etruria, dated to around the mid-eighth century bce. This bowl, together with the one from the Macchiabate cemetery at Francavilla Marittima, has strong stylistic similarities to examples from Nimrud, although there is no agreement as to where they were actually made (Bernardini and Botto 2015: 336–42). Other prestigious bowls come from the Bernardini and Barberini tombs in Palestrina, as well as Latium and Campania (Parasole 2012–2013; Rathje 1980) and indeed are found throughout the Mediterranean, but tellingly not at the Phoenician settlement of Carthage (on the bowls, see also chapters 23 and 24, this volume).
Such finely crafted material would have been of interest to communities that had excelled in metalworking, and it is likely that they were made specifically for export to Mediterranean clients. Several of these bowls feature warrior and fighting motifs (Pharaoh smiting an enemy, lion hunt, chariots, banqueting scenes), which would have appealed to the warrior ideologies of the Orientalizing elites (Iaia 2012: 84; Riva 2010; figure 33.1[1–2]). That the source of these bowls is difficult to identify, being neither Egyptian nor Assyrian, was one reason why they were called “Phoenician” in the first place, an ascription chosen precisely to give an origin to these prestige items made for a foreign market, whose use and designs could be adapted to local ideas and needs (Vella 2014: 30–32).
That Phoenician traders were adapting to local markets is noted from other finds from the Italian peninsula. Phoenician containers were particularly appreciated by the central Italian elites and among these stand out the “ribbed bowls” (figure 33.1[3–4]—that is, bowls with a diameter between 15 and 25 cm and characterized by between 20 and 150 ornate ribs [Sciacca 2015: 92]). These items are the “least characteristic of Phoenician material culture,” yet became the most important and widely spread oriental cup in central-south Italy (Sciacca 2015: 91). To gauge their importance, note that 300 have been found on the peninsula, the vast majority in central Italy, while in Spain, another important area for Phoenician contact, we have only two. The earliest examples from tomb 21 at Castel di Decima date to the later eighth century bce and are considered Levantine imports. In their homeland they were closely linked to rituals of drinking, limited to royal or high-ranking use, as shown in the celebrated Nineveh relief of the “Banquet under the Pergola.” They are widely spread in central Italy through to the early seventh century bce in Vetulonia, Veio, Chiusi, Vulci, Cerveteri, Palestrina, Castel di Decima, and Pontecagnano, among other places. Clearly these cups found a ready market among the Tyrrhenian elites of the late eighth and early seventh centuries bce. Some later examples in bronze and also pottery may have been made by Phoenician craftsmen living among the local Italian communities (Bernardini and Botto 2015: 334; Sciacca 2015: 105) and their large number suggests a close relationship between Phoenicia and central Italy, backed by a complex and highly responsive homeland organization (Winter 2010: 618). Their presence demonstrates that the Orientalizing period in Italy was a phase of active appropriation and selection of foreign material rather than of passive acceptance of foreign ideas and material. The importance of these bowls was multiple: they were certainly functional, although not necessarily only for drinking, but their value also resided in their fine workmanship, and in the prestigious value they had for the elites, marking visible evidence of their inclusion in Mediterranean-wide networks of alliances.
Another class of material, the three-footed ceramic tripod bowls and mortars found in Latium and Etruria, date to the first half of the seventh century bce (figure 33.1[5]) also indicate contact with the Phoenician world. These are found in Phoenician settl
ements throughout the central and western Mediterranean (Sardinia, Iberia). On the Italian peninsula, they are found from north to south with the earliest examples from Cerveteri and Veio. Their original function in the Near East was to grind spices and aromatics to add to wine-based drinks (Botto 2000; Botto 2002: 236–37), and in Italy they are often, but not always, found in relationship with the ribbed bowls. Indeed, drinking sets and the paraphernalia related to banqueting (fire dogs, spits and knives, bowls and cups) became part of the funerary set in both male and female later Iron Age tombs of central Italy, starting with Tarquinia (Iaia 2012; Riva 2010: 84–95). The presence of tripod bowls and ribbed cups in these funerary contexts has been taken as evidence of a close functional link with their original banqueting use, and their presence has suggested to some scholars an adoption of Near Eastern practices and rituals. Evidence of drinking ideologies in Italy is often related to the Phoenician influence in the Orientalizing period. In fact, it is highly likely that Phoenicians introduced wine drinking to the west in the eighth century bce. It is very possible, however, that other alcoholic beverages were consumed locally before that, and that other influences from central Europe were at play during this period (McGovern 2012; Riva 2010: 101–104). Thus, the advent of such practices need not be directly related to the arrival of Phoenicians or Greeks but, rather, the appropriation of their material culture gave added value to a local funerary ritual. For example, in three of the richest Orientalizing tombs, the Regolini-Galassi tomb at Cerveteri and the Bernardini and Barberini tombs at Palestrina, grave goods included Phoenician gilded bowls and cauldrons, often used as prestige gift exchange items throughout the eastern Mediterranean (Riva 2010: 143). Other metal items used in Italian funerary or convivial rituals with Near Eastern antecedents include basins, jugs, dippers, and tripods (figure 33.1[6]; Naso 2015; Bernardini and Botto 2015) and their appearance in this period (seventh century bce) must be related to demand by local elites for items to form part of their own rituals, not necessarily reflecting the original use. The ribbed bowls, for example, are not always found associated with drinking paraphernalia in Etruscan tombs (Sciacca 2015: 111). We should be wary, at any rate, of reading too much into this evidence; uncertainty as to how these items arrived in Italy, as well as the low numbers (apart from the ribbed cups) of Phoenician containers—there are only seven Phoenician bronze jugs in Italy—mean that, although these goods influenced local metalwork, it is difficult to gauge the roles Phoenicians played in their selection and circulation.
When considering the Phoenician presence in mainland Italy most scholarly focus has been on the evidence of exotic and metal objects from prestigious graves. On the other hand, evidence is not lacking of Levantine influence on local craftsmanship, such as ivory, gold and other metalwork, and different types of ornaments, which raises the probability of foreign artisans working alongside local ones (Naso 2012; Rathje 1979). Evidence for “everyday” Phoenician objects in Italy, however, is more difficult to find (except perhaps at Pithekoussai). Some evidence comes from the (decontextualized) early eighth-century bce singular square-cut rim jug from Tarquinia. This is the earliest western example of a Phoenician object used to anoint the body after death (Botto 2010: 154). The double-spouted lamp, plate, and olpe from the Cerri tumulus in the San Cerbone necropolis at Populonia (Romualdi 1997: 162) has also suggested an appropriation of Phoenician practices in the Etruscan aristocracy of the mid-seventh century bce (Botto 2002: 236), or even that the burial was that of an ethnic Phoenician. The plate itself is probably from Sardinia. Cerveteri, probably the richest city of Etruria and central to maritime trade in the mid-first millennium bce, is another settlement with a likely Phoenician presence (red-slip oinochoai, oil-bottle dated to the mid-seventh century bce; Rizzo 1991) and a center for the early production of bucchero, whose origin was based on the imitation of Phoenician bronze containers. Some confirmation of this comes from its nearby coastal sanctuary of Pyrgi where three famous gold laminated plaques (figure 33.1[7]) announce the dedication of a temple by the ruler of Cerveteri to both Phoenician and Etruscan goddesses (Astarte and Uni). The fact that one was written in Phoenician (the only formal Phoenician script in mainland Italy) and dedicated to a Phoenician deity is a strong indication of the close links Cerveteri maintained with the western Mediterranean Phoenician settlements, and the likely presence of Phoenicians there after the battle of Alalia in 540 bce (Serra Ridgway 1985).
Sardinia played an important role in Phoenician contact with the Italian peninsula, both in the Early Iron Age, through the Nuragic communities, and the archaic period (on Sardinia, see also chapter 34, this volume). Routes were likely to be either via the Tuscan archipelago toward Populonia and Vetulonia in the north or through a more southerly route along the eastern Sardinian coast to reach the mouth of the Tiber in the south-center (Botto 2012: 53; Cibecchini 2006). Evidence comes from the princely tombs of Latium, and the mouth of the Tiber in the late eighth through early seventh centuries bce, suggesting autonomous contact between the Sardinian Phoenician colonies and central Italy. The Tiber was an important means of transport and gave coastal access into Lazio, independently from Rome, and control of its transport was the focus of Veio in the ninth–eighth centuries bce (Bartoloni 2007). Several tombs from Castel di Decima (tombs 15, 153, 100); figure 33.1[5]), Ficana, and Acqua Acetosa Laurentina (tomb 133, 70) show evidence of this trading network, as they contained Sardinian or Carthaginian Phoenician amphorae (Botto 2007: 87–88, 2012; Docter and Niemeyer 1994: 113; Gras 1985: 287–325) that transported wine to the local communities. As in north Etruria, evidence from Latium points to local communities drawing on a variety of sources in developing their own traditions, especially in terms of ostentatious displays of drinking and banqueting. Of these the tombs, no. 153 from Castel di Decima and 70 from Acqua Acetosa stand out for their complex arrangement of international objects (tripod bowls, amphorae, bronze grater), and swords, knives, containers, and spits, showing how local aristocracies blended local and foreign material culture in their development of new forms of ostentatious consumption in the seventh century (Bartoloni 2005; Botto 2005).
Conclusion
More than evidence of Phoenician ethnicities per se, the material culture found on the Italian mainland is a visible reminder of the networks of interaction that defined the “Mediterraneanization” of the early first millennium (Morris 2005). Decisions to participate or not in these networks would have had repercussions for local communities and affected their cultural practices and institutions. Evidence of this participation can be found in the banqueting sets and rich tombs of central Italy. Ritual convivial activities of banqueting were a form of “common language” understood to a greater or lesser extent by Mediterranean communities and which signaled involvement in networks of trade and interaction. Phoenician and Italian communities perhaps found a common point of reference in these rituals. Physical spaces for these interactions were important, too, and Pithekoussai and the sanctuary at Pyrgi offer us two different examples. The rising power of Assyria under Ashurbanipal in the early seventh century bce cut off direct trade with the Near East, compensated to some extent by the rise of the Sardinian and Carthaginian Phoenician colonies in the west. The continuation of this dynamic can be inferred from the recently discovered transport-amphorae found in Calabria and Basilicata (Castiglione and Oggiano 2008) which, in the Punic period, carry on the tradition of Phoenician trade in mainland Italy that dates back to the beginning of the first millennium.
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