This interdisciplinary volume originated as a Semple Symposium at the University of Cincinnati (2009). It illustrates different approaches to the study of Apulian and Lucanian red-figure pottery, the collective goal of which is to understand better the cultural identity of some of its consumers and sometimes its producers – the Italic inhabitants of Apulia and the wider picture of their interrelationships with mainland and colonial Greeks. The book aims to introduce the English-speaking audience to the results of excavations and research recently carried out in southern Italy. Divided into five sections (history and geography; red-figure production; Italic contexts; approaches to pottery studies; pottery in art collections), it is enhanced by detailed indexes, a useful collection of ancient sources (Chapter 2) and further colour images published online with a handy zoom-in utility.

The first section, in solid chapters by A. Small (Chapter 1) and M. Lombardo (Chapter 2), draws a synthetic picture of Apulia and its cultures based on geography, material evidence, literary and epigraphic sources. The authors describe the Iapygians and their mutual interactions with mainland and colonial Greeks over time, rejecting the old monolithic concept of ‘Hellenisation’. The local cultures indeed adopted some Hellenising behaviours (such as the Greek alphabet, Greek and Italiote vessels and the inhumation practice), but reinterpreted and integrated these customs according to their needs. Significantly the map of Apulia (fig. 1.1) does not feature neat boundaries between the native populations of Daunians, Peucetians and Messapians, no doubt because clear frontiers did not exist. Instead open limits changed over time together with interactive areas where cross-cultural encounters took place.

Part 2 investigates pottery production through three significant papers, all characterised by technical precision and innovative ideas. D. Fontannaz (Chapter 3) provides a valuable synthesis of Tarentine contexts of asty and chora that yielded red-figure pottery (most of it as yet unpublished), with special attention to evidence for production. Red-figure pottery was manufactured in Taranto from about 450 to 270 b.c. by both Apulian workshops (Painters of the Berlin Dancing Girl and of the Birth of Dionysus, Hearst and Sisyphus Painters, Hoppin, Lecce and Sarpedon Painters) and early Lucanian painters (such as the Arnò and Palermo Painters, and part of the Intermediate Group) who worked in the city at least for a while. F. Silvestrelli (Chapter 4) illustrates unpublished materials from recent excavations at Metaponto and the local consumption of red-figured pottery manufactured in the city between the fifth and fourth century b.c. Silvestrelli shows the original reinterpretation of Attic models by Metapontine workshops and draws interesting connections between Apulian and Lucanian productions. By combining stylistic analysis and research on provenance, M. Denoyelle (Chapter 5) suggests an accurate redefinition of the Amykos Painter's workshop and better delineates his visual language, derived from his personal reinterpretation of Attic models.

Part 3 focuses on well-studied contexts to investigate the cultural identity of Daunians (Corrente), Peucetians (Riccardi, Ciancio) and Messapians (Giannotta). The analysis of pottery, contexts, funerary rites and assemblages reveal much about the ideologies and social structure of the communities, as well as cultural and commercial relationships with other peoples. Despite the difficulties in interpreting Apulian funerary customs (due first to the reuse of burials and funerary goods for more than one deposition), the authors demonstrate that the Italic peoples operated careful selections of vases with specific shapes and iconographies related to the representation of the deceased, his/her gender, age and social role. The territory enjoyed a wide circulation of goods and people. Different themes and painters prevailed at each site especially among the elites, while a consumption increase in the advanced fourth century, connected to the development of the middle social class, nourished the Late Apulian craft production for the masses with a consequent simplification of the iconographies. The authors also tackle the difficult question of pottery function: M. Corrente (Chapter 8) offers a new reading of its use in funerary rituals and assemblages, while M.T. Giannotta (Chapter 9) remarks that the Messapians used figured pottery exclusively for funerary or sacred purposes.

The fourth section about new approaches in pottery studies opens with the exemplary work by F. Colivicchi (Chapter 10) based on sources and archaeological evidence. Colivicchi stresses the strong impact of the needs of the native consumers on Attic, Lucanian and Apulian red-figure productions. Some Italiote vase shapes (kantharoid, nestoris, column-krater, Apulian kantharos, round-mouthed oinochoe, askos and, one would add, volute krater) were produced almost exclusively for Italic consumption and in some cases even replaced local shapes. Special commissions of kantharoids and nestorides (perhaps marriage gifts) imitated the distinctive Italic ‘kantharoid shape’, which carried a ritual function and was likely used for the consumption of indigenous wine, a custom different from the Greek one.

E.G.D. Robinson (Chapter 11) faces the hard questions of production through archaeometric analyses and study of distribution patterns. Chemical analyses reveal the existence of four fabrics among the Apulian red-figured vases in the Nicholson Museum (Sydney). From early on, Taranto in all probability produced pottery with two different fabrics. A third group of vases is likely to have been manufactured in north-central Apulia (Canosa/Ruvo area), while a fourth one perhaps in southern Peucetia. From a chemical perspective, Lucanian fabrics are indistinguishable from the Apulian iron-rich clays.

T.H. Carpenter (Chapter 12) argues that the images on red-figure vessels from Peucetia suggest that both painters and customers were familiar with theatre and myths shaped by Greek tragedians. This knowledge derived directly from performances instead of from texts, as some scholars have suggested. Athenian tragedies and comedies were performed in Magna Graecia from the late-fifth century b.c. and, according to Carpenter, perhaps also in Apulian settlements shortly after. His challenging argument that Greek actors performed tragedies and comic plays at Ruvo in a permanent theatre in the first half of the fourth century b.c., however, is based exclusively on restricted pottery evidence (a provenance given as Ruvo is sometimes uncertain). One might suggest a low interest in theatre among the Peucetians, apart from the upper classes, because of the extreme rarity of terracottas with theatrical subjects and of masks painted on local and imported Gnathia pottery (evidence which is instead widespread in Messapia and Taranto).

M.E. Masci (Chapter 13) draws a detailed picture of the early stages of ancient pottery collecting, that reveals a shift in Italian collectors' taste from Apulian to Attic pottery in the late-eighteenth century. Taking into account the areas known (or presumed) to have been excavated at that time, Masci bravely hypothesises find-spots for unprovenanced Apulian and Lucanian vases in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century collections on the risky basis of their attributions. The lost or unidentified vases (55 out of 141 examples) are even attributed on the misleading basis of old drawings. The vases are then compared with examples ascribed to the same workshops, for which a provenance is known or, too often, presumed (a vase in a collection said to be from a certain site). The fascinating theory that the association of painters in a historical collection might reflect analogous associations in known archaeological contexts is risky, since the dynamics of antiquities collecting are quite complex and vases that entered a collection at the same time might still have come from different find-spots.

The volume is a valuable contribution to the better understanding of archaeological evidence from southern Italy, providing updated information and further food for thought, with innovative theories, sometimes perhaps pushed a little too far, but still stimulating. Less adherence to the symposium's formal organisation in the book, focusing as it does on specific case studies, might have given the reader a broader picture of these fascinating and important questions.