Iconographical Representations of Musical Instruments in Apulian Vase-Painting as Ethnical Signs: Intercultural Greek-Indigenous Relations in Magna Graecia (5th and 4th Centuries B.C.)

Abstract

The paper deals with the representation of musical instruments on Apulian pottery. I shall sketch a general account of the red-figured pottery produced in Apulia and its development between the late fifth and the early third centuries, discussing the iconographical trends in its different phases. Secondly, I shall offer a brief survey of the musical instruments: the instruments belonging to Greek tradition (lyra, kithara, aulos) as well as those belonging to local tradition (rectangular cithara, rectangular sistrum), and those that result from local developments of instruments received from the Greek continental tradition (tympanon, pektis). Morphological and contextual analysis of the representation of such instruments will allow us to sustain our inferences about the intercultural processes of hybridization between local, Greek and oriental organological traditions, pointing to a scenario of multiple and negotiated identities in the colonial world of Magna Graecia.