The Archaeology of Greek Colonisation

As we move to the western world, we are really looking at the Greek’s process of colonisation and especially, the interaction between Italic locals & Greek settlers. A previous generation of scholarship had a tendency to subsume such indigenous influences into Greek presence, and consider influences coming from native Latins or Eruscans as simply background actors. A large amount of Greek colonisation seems to have been spurred by communities coming out of Achaia in the northern Penepolese & Euboea. At least in its early phase, the bigger players in the Aegean world such as Crete & Attica don’t seem to have been as interested, which is a fascinating point of research. 

The original assumption was that the Achaian & Euboean natives were driven simply by a need to find rich agricultural land, but given recent Phonecian evidence as I discussed last episode, notions of trade & exchange also seem to be driving Greek expansion, especially into Southern Italy.

As can be expected, the original Greek sources on their own view of colonisation don’t always line up with the archaeological record. The Greek term Apoikia, applied to the colonies in the 8th, 7th & 6th centuries often gives us a skewed picture of what is actually going on. The sources give us an idea that the Greeks followed a set kind of process, usually beginning with a “Mother City” related to a particular process of colonisation or settlement from which other minor settlements spread out in a region. 

The implication being that the process of such colonisation was done within a systematic political model that was planned as an expedition, lead by an Oikistes, a kind of political expedition leader. The image the Greeks wanted to present was clearly that such movement & civilising influence was being orchestrated and spearheaded by aristocratic groups, which went on to form the core of the new settlement.

The other primary terminology the Greeks used for their colonies was Emporion. Without having a stable “Mother City”, Emporions were supposedly closer to trading outposts than independent political communities. A good example of this type of community is Pithekoussai, a small island off the west coast of southern italy. While the site was historically always considered a Greek colony, as it has been revisited in recent years we have found evidence of Etruscan inscriptions, seals and signets from the Near East all mixed with imported Greek ceramic ware. So there is a huge diversity of culture and ethnicity here that has gone overlooked.

Interestingly, Pithekoussai is also the area in which the famous Cup of Nestor was found and contains one of the earliest sources of Greek writing. 

Unfortunately, much of the settlement itself hasn’t been excavated as yet. The focus has been more on the cemeteries, which can be argued to give us a bit of a biassed look at the site. 

Another major colony to look at is the city of Metapontum, also in the south of Italy. This site is actually one of the most intensively excavated & studied sites in all of Italy & Greece and stands as a great example of just how much detail we can glean from archaeological work. We don’t only know the core site itself, but also the hinterland and village sites around it which belonged to the local population such as Incoronata. Incoronata seems to have been settled by indigenous Italians around the 8th century, who were attracted to the coast under influence of the new Greek culture. It seems to have been destroyed around 640 BC coinciding with the founding of the Greek colony at Metapontum. 

So naturally, there’s a lot of interest in looking at this small scale, indigenous site of Incoronata. Who lived here? What was their relationship with the Greek settlers? How did they influence each other? With Incoronata we’re dealing with a unique and coherent historical-archaeological situation which developed during the two centuries of occupation on the hills around it. There appears to have been a monument that was built at the beginning of the 8th century and was destroyed by the end of it, at which point it was rebuilt in the same place at the time where Metapontum, a new, mixed community of Greeks & Indigenous people was founded. The monument was destroyed again and definitively abandoned at the end of the 7th century, by the same kind of actions and logic that were employed the first time. 

With evidence like this, we have to question the Greek’s narratives of their colonisation. It clearly wasn’t as simple as just arriving and taking over or becoming the dominant force in a region because of their political superiority. There were clearly multiple waves of Greek colonisation & migration between the 8th & 6th centuries, and in that time, the colonies were trying to assert themselves and acculturate to the local environment. 

Historically, the orthodox views in Classical Archaeology relied on later written sources such as foundation decrees, re-foundations or founders’ stories to construct narratives.These often gave reasons for founding a colony such as Plato’s discussion of stasis/civil strife & stenochoria/ land-food shortage or demographic explosion which led to land shortage. This presents us with a picture of the Greek colony as a state-led enterprise with clearly defined typologies that we thought we could group into things such as a Polis, Apoikia or Emporion. 

The challenges with this narrative and approach is that different Greek colonies’ may have different stories but archaeologically look the same. Pithekoussai & Megara for example appear to have similar patterns of migration & foundation. There was also no Polis in the 8th century, which means almost all of our written sources about the founding of Greek colonies are retrojecting political propaganda and emphasising ties of the polis & apoikia that likely did not exist. With the two phases of settlements from the 8th & 7th century and from the 6th century we see a huge variety of reasons for Greeks settling further west. 

Things like opportunism, a search for fortune, and fleeing political enemies become apparent, and we can’t forget the relationship between individual enterprise & the variety of cultural background in the settlers.

So how did a colony like Metapontum establish its centrality & control once it was founded in southern italy? When we look at geomorphological maps of the region we can get an insight into the different types of landscapes that Metapontum had around it. We can then cross reference these geological biomes with the archaeological evidence for occupation to understand which kind of landscapes the colonists were drawn to and what they were doing with them. More than anything else, the main landscape the Metapontum colonists were attracted to was the fertile soil bases, indicating a large part of their intention was likely agricultural. Of course, to really know what they were up to, we need to know what the landscape looked like 2500 years ago, and that is a current area of research.

Another exciting area of research with Metapontum is Isotopic DNA analysis, primarily from Dental Records in cemeteries. It’s a niche field that is difficult to work with because our sample sizes are so small, but by comparing and contrasting the genetic evidence for the settlers with the indigenous natives of the region, we can actually get an idea of where exactly the colonists are coming from. One of the really interesting things that Rathmann et al found in 2017 was that the DNA across the settlement wasn’t uniform. The inhabitants of the Chora/rural areas of the colony for example, were different from the locals, but also different between themselves. So we’re clearly looking at a huge diversity of ethnicities and cultures in the region.

DNA evidence like this provides us with a picture that is incredibly complex and multicultural. So the old narratives of Greek colonists assimilating or destroying local populations just doesn’t stand. The archaeological evidence shows us multiple variables at play. Not only are we looking at economic exchange & the trade of material goods, but local populations are even assimilating Greek patterns and cultural behaviours. This kind of muddled picture means we can only assess colonies on a case by case basis and take literary sources about them with a strong pinch of salt. 

During the 6th century BC we see a second wave of Greek colonisation in which settlements were founded in places like northern Iberia and southern France. During this period though, the impact and influence of indigenous and local cultures is much more pronounced. In the site of Marseille for example, we see a very strong local Etruscan influence in terms of cultural styles and trade exchange. The Etrsucans seem to really like certain Greek ceramics, especially those coming from Athens, mainly for use in funerary deposits in their tombs. Funnily enough though, they also appear to be modifying those shapes to create something that better copies their own local ceramics. 

A typical example of this is the Etruscan Bucchero. They create shapes like the Carinated Kantharos, Amphora or the Kyathos. Interestingly, 20 years later it seems the style caught on at the other end of the chain because the Athenians started copying them! 

So, even though a lot of the original pottery is coming out of Attica, the Etruscan begin influencing the Athenians. In fact, what the Athenian potters appear to be doing is adapting to their markets, the main one being Etruria, and as they do, the shapes become popular in Athen itself. If we look at a map of the distribution of monumental black and red figure cups and phialai during the 6th and 5th century BC, we can see clearly that they’re huge in Etruria and central Italy but didn’t really take off elsewhere in the Aegean. The question is, who’s in charge of this? We might expect Athenian potters being the ones pushing it, or it could be a case of the local Etrurian population having enough agency to demand what they want in terms of their own imports.

This huge multinational and multicultural exchange didn’t stop in the Archaic period though. This trend continues through the Late Bronze Age into the Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods. In the Hellenistic period I already mentioned places like AI Khanoum in a previous episode, which is a central site for understanding these multicultural influences on the Greek World. Another excellent example of this trend is the Egyptian gods temple in Marathon.

Marathon had a huge importance to the Greeks in terms of its ideology & identity for the Greeks with the Persian Wars. During the Late Roman period though, around 160 CE, the Greek temple there held numerous Egyptian cults & statues, including those of Osiris & Isis. Looking at them though, the Egyptian gods are thoroughly Hellenised, being depicted in Classical fashion & sculpture. Interestingly though, despite that Classical influence, the sculptors appear to have recanted to the Archaic style of sculpture that drew from Egyptian proportional conventions. 

In general, Greek archaeology’s Grand Narratives have shifted a lot over the last decade. In particular we are tending to adopt Postcolonial Theory in our approaches which emphasises that we don’t really have powerful receivers and subjugated nations, we have something much more balanced and intermixed. The focus is on local, indigenous responses to Greek influence and vice versa. We are far more aware of bias and racist approaches in light of 19th & 20th century Philhellenism movements & Cultural Protestantism. What used to be rigid categories like Polis, Emporion & Apoika or even notions of the Hellenes and the Barbarian Other are carefully being dismantled. In general there is a nice focus on what influences came back to Greece in light of its interaction with other cultures, as much of it formed the Greece as we know it.

Sources 

Reinberger, K. L., Reitsema, L. J., Kyle, B., Vassallo, S., Kamenov, G., & Krigbaum, J. 2021: Isotopic evidence for geographic heterogeneity in Ancient Greek military forces. PLOS ONE, 16(5).

Greco, E. 2011: On the origins of the Western Greek poleis, Ancient West & East 10, 233-242

Burgers, G-J 2004: Western Greeks in their regional setting: rethinking early Greek indigenous encounters in southern Italy, Ancient West and East 3: 252-82

Gailledrat E. 2015: New perspective on emporia in the Western Mediterranean: Greeks, Etruscans and native populations at the mouth of the Lez (Hérault, France) during the sixth-fifth centuries BC in JMA 28.1, 23-50 

Hodos, T. 2009: Colonial Engagements in the Global Mediterranean Iron Age. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 19.2: 221-41.

Riva C. 2017: Wine production and exchange and the value of wine consumption in 6th-century-BC Etruria, in Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 30.2, 237-261.

Morris S. 2007: Greeks and “Barbarians” in S.E. Alcock and R. Osborne (eds) Classical Archaeology, 383-400

Peter van Dommelen. 2011: Postcolonial archaeologies between discourse and practice, World Archaeology, 43:1, 1

Rathmann, H., Saltini Semerari, G., and Harvati, K. 2017: Evidence for Migration Influx into the Ancient Greek Colony of Metaponto: A Population Genetics Approach Using Dental Nonmetric Traits. Int. J. Osteoarchaeol., 27: 453–464.

Tsingarida, A. 2020: Oversized Athenian Drinking Vessels in Context: Their Role in Etruscan Ritual Performances. American Journal of Archaeology, 124(2), 245-74.

Vita, S, Di Vito, M A, Gialanella, C, Sansivero, F. 2013: The impact of the Ischia Porto Tephra eruption (Italy) on the Greek colony of Pithekoussai. Quaternary International, Volume 303, Pages 142-152.

Gigante, M, Nava, A, Robert, P, Ivana, F, Alhaique, F, Esposito, C, Sperduti, A, Id, J, Cinquantaquattro, T, D'agostino, B, Id, L. 2021: Who was buried with Nestor's Cup? Macroscopic and microscopic analyses of the cremated remains from Tomb 168 (second half of the 8 th century BCE, Pithekoussai, Ischia Island, Italy). PLoS ONE.16:10

Alarcón, E, García, J, Padilla J. 2020: L’Incoronata (southern Italy): ceramics productions and identities in a VIIth century BC Greek-indigenous pottery workshop. Beyond the differences. Algo más que galbos y cacharros. Etnoarqueología y experimentación cerámica, 8 (4), Junta de Andalucía, pp.339-356