ABSTRACT
Oriente lux frameworks, wherein presumably less complex or ‘backward’ societies are taught to live a more civilised, urban lifestyle by superior, complex societies originating in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean (Chapman 1985: 115; Dyson and Rowland 2007: 54). While few scholars would postulate a settled foreign presence in Sardinia before the first millennium , this idea of active, advanced, eastern traders still influences models of interaction with Nuragic peoples, who are largely portrayed
as passive, stationary recipients of higher culture. Interpretations that insist upon an Aegean presence in Sardinia are based on outdated colonialist models which posit some ill-defined ‘thalasso-phobia’ for indigenous populations (Leighton 1999: 208) and do not allow mobility or agency for islanders and island societies. Whereas in traditional interpretations an Aegean object demands an Aegean pres-
ence, here I argue that when certain material forms become popular, such as Late Helladic (LH) III pottery, their spread may only be indicative of an original, symbolic homeland. An object’s diaspora involves the movement of styles, technologies and practices, in conjunction with the development of local tastes (Harding 1984: 229). In such a spread, the identities of manufacturers, transporters and traders stand distinct from each other. In order to assess the capacity of foreign, in this case eastern Mediterranean,
contacts to promote and entrench the social elites of Sardinian society, this study first examines the distribution of eastern materials to see if there is any spatial relationship between the findspots of such objects and the location of the most ‘complex’ Nuragic towers. ˆis scenario presupposes that the most entrenched, politically powerful elites were those who lived in complexes that required the greatest wealth and labour input to construct and maintain. Such a distributional analysis will show that there is no clear relationship between what we presume to be the most powerful elites in Sardinian society and their level of contact with the eastern Mediterranean world. Rather, their wealth and territorial control seem to be rooted in local phenomena, such as agricultural potential, diversified landscapes and access to labour. Should we dismiss any and all influence of eastern materials upon Sardinian Late
Bronze Age society? Although such materials represent but a small fraction of the total material assemblage at Nuragic sites, certainly they are widespread enough for us to assume that these objects, and the contacts represented by them, were not circumscribed. By looking at such material in context, from a local and consumption-based perspective, it is possible to infer material influences upon social practices that, while they may have had limited impact from a geographic (or diachronic) standpoint, nonetheless suggest the negotiation of elite status within their specific, local context. In the case study provided – investigating the consumption of Aegean-looking pottery at nuraghe Antigori – it is argued that while the assumption of an Aegean presence may be ill-founded, LH III pottery did influence ceramic production, at least for awhile, and it may have influenced elite practice as well, at least with respect to this site and its immediate hinterland during the Late Bronze Age. Following a brief outline of the varying types of Nuragic settlements, based on
Webster’s three-class system (Webster 1996: 111-17; see Figure 6.1, B-D) and an assessment of some of the social and structure implications of this apparent hierarchy of sites, I provide a review of the evidence for foreign contacts, and the distributional relationship this material has to the more complex nuraghi. I then consider the ways in which developing elites in Sardinia may have used traditional Nuragic features in order to legitimise and promote their identity before comparing the Nuragic situation with that in Late Bronze Age Sicily, and the foreign materials found there. Finally, a close look at the materiality of ‘Aegean-style’ pottery at nuraghe Antigori
shows that it is necessary to look even farther afield, at the Italian peninsula, in order to reconstruct the specific material connection represented by these wares, and the patterns of mobility engendered therein.
