Drunken Women with Spears? Funerary Practices and Female Identity in pre-Roman Apulia

Before the Roman conquest, Central Apulia was inhabited by a
population traditionally known as the Peucetians. Although the
Peucetians have left no written records and were largely ignored by
ancient sources, the thousands of tombs excavated in Central Apulia
speak of a society with a complex social hierarchy and long-range
commercial contacts with Etruria, Greece, and other parts of Southern
Italy.
Perhaps unexpectedly, these graves also show that in the Classical and
Hellenistic periods, Peucetian women enjoyed a more emancipated
existence than their Athenian counterparts. Besides objects related to
what are traditionally understood as female roles (e.g., weaving, child
rearing, performing libations) funerary assemblages dated between the
6th and 4th century BCE also included full banqueting sets, virtually
identical to those found in male tombs. A few older women were even
buried with spears, maybe to indicate their exceptional role in the
community. This talk explores the relationship between the consumption
of artifacts and the lives of Peucetian women in antiquity and discusses
more broadly about how our modern ideas about “female assemblages”
are often in contrast with the reality of the archaeological record.