Wine Production and Exchange and the Value of Wine Consumption in Sixth-century BC Etruria

Abstract

This paper attempts to bridge the gulf between two often separate research agendas in Archaic period Etruria, one concerned with the archaeology of wine and agricultural production and redistribution, the other with figured representations of drinking and the associated symbolic visual language. It does so by examining the relationship between changing processes of production, consumption and exchange and the symbolism of drinking in the visual and material culture of sixth-century BC Tyrrhenian Etruria. In this analysis, I maintain that changing modes of agricultural production and distribution had an impact on such symbolism in elite funerary and domestic contexts, with key evidence also coming from sanctuaries. In particular, it is argued that during the seventh century BC, the visual language related to wine drinking alludes to experiences of bodily otherness; this is indicated by the symbolic correlation between accessibility to wine, the dangers of maritime travel and death. From the sixth century BC, we can trace a shift towards a visual language that centred on cultural difference or otherness: this is noticeable in the introduction of Dionysiac imagery and new mythological narratives of cross-cultural encounters, as well as a new emphasis on codified drinking and culturally differentiated drinking vessels. This shift is more or less contemporary with other changes, namely the production and distribution of 2 agricultural surplus in the Tyrrhenian region and beyond, and shifting values of objects in that exchange.

Religiöse Geheimniskommunikation in der Mittleren und Späten Römischen Republik

“…505-510;Colonna (1991);vgl. Maggiani (1997) 444; Nielsen (2015) 282 f.; Rüpke (2016a) 146;Riva (2018). Bezüglich der ‚campanischen' Belege s. zum bakchischen Heiligtum bei der Kirche S. Abbondio in Pompeii: van Andringa (Hg., 2013) Bekanntlich findet sich griechisches Kultur-und Kultgut nämlich schon in den frühesten Zeugnissen von Bau-, Text-und Bildzeugnissen aus dem stadtrömischen Gebiet, und zwar sowohl in Form direkter als auch indirekter Einflüsse.…”

The Etruscans: Setting New Agendas

“…Just as the Orientalizing period for central Italy is better understood as a phase within long-term complex multidirectional interactions (Iacono 2019 ), so we increasingly need to see the relationship between central Europe and Italy as including but not confined to the Etruscans and Greeks (e.g., Sacchetti 2016 ). As a consequence, we can clearly see multiple instances of knowledge exchange, rather than a single unitary process, and we can see visible outcomes at social, political, cultural, and economic levels (Bagnasco Gianni et al 2017 ; Bats 2014 ; Gailledrat 2015 ; Gailledrat et al 2016 ; Joncheray 2017 ; Riva 2017 ).…”

“…Even Poggio Civitate, for all its size and wealth in the Archaic period, may not have had a strong export production, although it may have had some mineral wealth (Giardino 2013 , p. 731). Riva ( 2017 ) has suggested that even the export of wine to southern France in the sixth century BC that is often seen as a sign of significant surplus production may equally be characterized as prestige exchange, as often we struggle with estimating scale of production given the problems of survival of archaeological material. Since the fifth century was a period of relative contraction—at least in the south and along parts of the coast—and the third century brought Roman conquest, it becomes difficult to identify a significant period of economic growth.…”

Spicing Wine at theSymposion:Fact or Fiction? Some Critical Thoughts on Material Aspects of Commensality in the Early Iron Age and Archaic Mediterranean World

“…The list of cheese-grater finds in Kistler (2009) is updated in Kistler (2014) 183-84 n.13. Independently of Kistler, Krapf charted the appearance of graters in Italy, from the rich princely tombs of the early Orientializing period to their spread from the Tyrrhenian coast to the centre and the Adriatic coast and their apparent disappearance in the Hellenistic period: Krapf (2009) 10 Cf., for example, Esposito (2010) 128-29, on the intersection of Phoenico-Cypriot and Greek customs of wine drinking in Italy, and Riva (2010) 145, 148, interpreting both tripod mortaria and 'Cypro-Phoenician' mortaria in Etruria as related to wine drinking and emphasizing the role of East Greek traders in their distribution, as part of a wider argument of technological innovation affecting foodways.…”

“…Note also that trapezoidal sheetbronze pendants, such as an example found in a Faliscan seventh-century BC tomb at Narce, have been interpreted as miniature bronze cheese graters: Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Museum, MS1097; Pieraccini (2014a) 818 fig. 43.7.123Sherratt (2004) 207-08.124 On women serving drink to warriors in the funerary art of Bronze and Iron Age Europe, seeRiva (2010) 101.125 As argued, for example, byRiva (2017); cf. alsoGuggisberg (2017).126 As suggested, for example, byMorgan (2012) 38-39.…”