Bice Peruzzi, Assistant Professor, Rutgers University

In lack of secure information about biological sex, archaeologists have traditionally used grave assemblages to distinguish “male” and “female” tombs. Yet, the increasing use of osteological analysis in Mediterranean archaeology in the last few decades has shown the pitfalls of this approach, demonstrating that many long held assumptions about gender representation in antiquity are based on false constructs, and there was much more variability than we had imagined. This is particularly important for pre-Roman societies where the absence of emic information about how objects were used, paired with the presence of Greek vases in tombs has favored an hellenocentric reading of these objects. However, the study of the necropoleis of Central Apulia shows that communities were using Greek vases very differently from their Athenian contemporaries; this is illustrated, for example, by the presence of sympotic sets in female tombs, or of vessels traditionally connected with the “female sphere” (e.g., kalathoi, hydriai, lekanides) in male ones.

This paper analyzes the presence of hydriai in Central Apulian tombs dated to the 5th-4th century BCE, as means to investigate the relationship between the consumption of specific objects and the construction of identity in antiquity. This shape was relatively rare until the middle of the 4th century BCE, but it is often found in high expenditure tombs of adult men, even when the pots were decorated with genre scenes that featured multiple female characters. Furthermore, hydriai might have had a specific role in the funerary rituals, as they were often depicted on other vases as tomb offerings. Adopting a context-based approach, this study discusses how these vases were appropriated by the local populations and imbued of new meanings, to reflect the complex nexus of personal, social, and cultural identities that the deceased had maintained in life.

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