Materielle Kultur und kulturelle Identität Eleas

How to recognize and define different cultural identities by material culture is a central problem for all archaeologies. It was the aim of this book to create a new basis for the discussion of the cultural identity of Elea, a Greek town of the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy, by presenting a large and important complex of finds found in the living quarters of the town according to its context. The first part contains ceramic vessels and architectural terracottas from the mud-brick houses in the lower town of Elea and, for the first time, allows a better knowledge of everyday life at Elea in the first half of the 5th century BC. Archeometric analyses of all groups of ware allow new insights into the structures of production and imports in an archaic town in Magna Grecia. The second part gives a critical examination of the ethnic interpretation of the material culture of Elea and tries to draw a new picture of its cultural identity using the new finds as well as the well known testimonies of its public and religious monuments, of its architecture and of everyday life. The problem of the western mediterranean amphoras is discusses in a separate chapter. First they have been thought to be a kind of index-fossil of the Phocean colonisation but are now recognized as independent creations of Magna Grecia.