- chapter 16: Etruscans in Campania –
Between the second and third quarters of the eighth century bc, the advanced
restructuring of endogenous social dynamics and the process of concentration of
resources in the hands of a few groups are enhanced by the opening of new contacts
with the Greek world. Early ceremonial exchanges are attested with the Euboean-
Cycladic navigators of the “pre-colonial” phases: from the beginning, Pontecagnano
plays a privileged role as attested by the concentration there of Greek ceramics; fi rst
the cups with pendant semicircles are present in the Picentine center in quantities
unknown anywhere else, then the chevron cups and bird-bowls and the other ceramic
types of this period (D’Agostino 2006; 2011a; Cerchiai 2010). With the settlement
of Pithekoussai, between the middle and third quarter of the eighth century bc, and
especially with the foundation of Cumae in the last quarter of the century, the relations
between Greeks and the Tyrrhenian centers change profoundly. It remains now to assess
the complex implications of its character and the signifi cance of the results of the most
recent excavations in the ager picentinus territory, in particular of the settlement of Monte
Vetrano at the mouth of the River Picentino. This outpost, separated from the main
center and controlling a port, has furnished for the moment of transition from First
Iron Age to the Orientalizing phase some tombs of exceptional wealth and especially
characterized by an extraordinary concentration of imports, signs of intense relations
with Greek and Near Eastern components as well as with Etruria and Pithekoussai in
whose sphere are indicated a Near Eastern bronze cup of the type “of the bulls” (“dei
tori”), a Nuragic boat model and a scarab of the Lyre Player Group (Cerchiai-Nava 2009;
Campanelli 2011). The site disappears in the sweeping territorial transformations that
signal the transition to the Orientalizing period.
THE ORIENTALIZING PERIODThe passage to the Orientalizing period is confi gured in the necropoleis of Pontecagnano
by the funerary representation of a true and proper “reinvention of tradition” (Cuozzo
2003), implying profound transformations of the symbolic and ideological heritage: the
protagonists are the hereditary aristocracies, comparable to the powerful gentes (“clans”) of
which the literary sources speak for Latium and Etruria, associated with the assertion of
a pyramidal social structure at the apex of which are found the “princes” who centralize
in their own persons the political, military and religious power and the guarantee of the
system of relationships within the group and the control of the ritual fi eld (D’Agostino
1977; 1999). Integral parts of this social structure are the new forms of funerary ideology
based on an accentuated and intentional discontinuity with the First Iron Age, with the
abandonment of the oldest burial grounds – following a behavior attested in the main
southern Etruscan centers – and the construction of an apparatus of new symbols and
new behaviors. The full representation and visibility of the burials of children in the
necropoleis, a category under-represented or marginalized in other cultural areas of the
peninsula, demonstrates the affi rmation of a renewed perception of the central importance
of kinship and of the continuity of the clan groups that appears to open up new fi elds
of symbolism. Such ideological dynamics seem connected to a decisive stage in the long
process of urban formation. Of special importance, there now appear the fi rst testimonies
found of the settlement in the zone where, in the Archaic-Classical period, there would
arise the sanctuary of Apollo; and the traces of a territorial reorganization with extensive
reclamation of farmland (Fig. 16.4.2; Cerchiai 2010).