Ancient Daunia. Artisans, therapists, priestesses: the women of the stelae (FG)

di Maria Laura Leone

For several ancient and traditional societies the female theme has been the main theme in art and crafts. It also occurred in the most ancient Daunia with the stele-statues, I have already dealt with this in a previous article written in English[1], of which the present is a partial review. The close analysis of the many female stelae led me to glimpse, in the scenes that cover them, arcane and ancient situations well known also in the ethnographic field. The text that follows deals with a part of these aspects and places the women of the stelae in a broad dimension, ennobled and connected to an organized cult in which healing and the relationship with the supernatural were practised, among other things. The pharmacological use of the opium poppy juices can be deduced from some scenes. The plant is, in fact, recognizable as a symbol of "women-medicine" who intervene on specific individuals.

The Dauni, the stelae and their women

The Dauni civilization dates from the early Iron Age and the Romanization (IX-I century BC), a period during which about twenty inhabited centers arose in a wider territory than the current province of Foggia. Their anthropomorphic stelae are dated between the end of the XNUMXth and the beginning of the XNUMXth century, in the "second Iron Age", in a highly archaic and exquisitely indigenous phase, when artists, craftsmen and women, expressed themselves with great creativity. At the beginning of the sixth century BC the steles are found broken and reused, it is possible that the cult fell into a sort of iconoclasm. These slab-like works, carved in the local limestone and colored red, black and white, are the ideal finds for reconstructing different aspects of the world at the time. The narratives portray an entire social, religious, perhaps mythical structure, and in addition to the esoteric contents they report themes of daily life: a good hunt, a fruitful fishing, an armed duel. There is no shortage of scenes of possible love or marriage agreements, such as the situation in which a couple is portrayed in a probable embrace. We also recognize a hierarchy of roles: important figures seated on thrones or wearing high hats, bearers of vases, lyre players, charioteers, hunters and hoplites. On all the monuments women are well represented and the same number of female steles is significantly higher than that of male steles. By calculating the numerical difference between male steles with weapons and female steles without weapons, it appears that the latter had a higher incidence to be classified in their still unknown function[2].

Male stele and female stele portray two characters always similar to themselves, an important couple, perhaps a great warrior or a god with armor (Fig. 1), sword and shield, and a high priestess, perhaps also a goddess, dressed in cassock, adorned with necklaces and fibulae, pendant objects such as long triangular pendants from the belt in the shape of “VVVV” and large circular amulets (Fig. 2).

Among these amulets there are some quite similar to opium poppy capsules[3]. A plant that also decorates the braids of the women portrayed in the scenes (Fig. 3).

The clothing of both is rigorously decorated with geometric motifs and leaves free spaces in which there are descriptive scenes populated by animals and people. Some animals are surreal, others reflect the local lagoon fauna. Men and women are distinguished by some details: the women almost all have long hair, gathered in a braid, and wear a tunic that reaches below the knee; men have shorter dresses or even ones stopped at the waist by a belt. Almost all the finds, around 2000 pieces, are kept in the Museum of Manfredonia[4] and they come from the two ancient centers of Cupola-Beccarini and Salapia (also called Salpe), once overlooking the shores of a luxuriant lagoon now reduced to a few lakes and salt basins. The discoveries took place through the collection of surfaces and no stele was found in a secure relationship with its own tomb. They have no secure contemporary context and considering that some stelae are very small, only 25 cm high, it is conceivable that the intended use was not that of sepulchral stones, more likely propitiatory simulacra, votive offerings or acts of prayer intended for the couple : warrior and priestess. Several scenes refer to this and show the presence of a predominantly female priestly elite. It is clear, in fact, that the monuments have characters and stories associated with a large presence of women. However, those dedicated to warriors mainly depict men engaged in fighting and hunting, while women are mostly engaged in ritual activities.

On the steles that refer to the priestess, women appear above all while they carry out courtly actions and attend to the affairs of men, converse with them, and often carry olla-pots with very wide lips balanced on their heads (Fig. 3 A and B), sometimes they parade in procession led by the sound of a lyre which is in the hands of a musician (Fig. 4).

In other scenes they talk to each other, practice therapeutic and possibly oracular sessions. Such mediation with the supernatural could be in a scene that repeats itself, where a woman of larger dimensions than the adept who is in front of her is on a throne and is weaving on a loom, her mouth is ajar and she addresses the adept who seems hang from his lips (Fig. 5 A).

Maybe conjure a prophecy, pronounce a magic formula, sing a hymn or narrate a myth. We won't know! But these are the situations in which women seem to act in the sacred sphere[5].

The segments in the shape of “VVVV” and the feminine gender

Armed stele and unarmed stele have many elements in common, the clothing is practically identical and the scenes both have repeating themes, but there are some attributes that clearly distinguish them, for example the weapons refer to a warrior but the attributes to form of "VVVV", connected to the basin of the stele with ornaments are, in my opinion, a clear feminine indicator[6]. This detail is of paramount importance for recognizing female gender stelae as they have an analogy with the single or multiple pubic triangles that appear on statuettes, stones, wall art and pottery. These triangles on the stelae are sublimated, elongated, and are sometimes combined with small circles comparable to drops, possible metaphors of the woman's monthly blood flow; the Chiusazza vase seems to be a good example (Fig. 5 B, E)[7]. The number of triangles, from three to six, can indicate the days of the cycle, the "monthly break" which various ethnic cultures interpret as the female moment of high sensory perception. We can only deduce what the Daunis meant by this symbology. It is possible that the reference to the monthly cycle is to be understood as a status of courtly virginity. At the same time, the large fibulae engraved on the chest of the monument would indicate the "firm" of the breast role. All of this can be superimposed on a woman who holds a curial status; therefore, the female stele would not portray a simple high-ranking deceased but a solemn figure and the women who are portrayed on her body would be her acolytes.

Maria Luisa Nava, as well as Silvio Ferri previously[8], attributes a funerary function to the Daunian steles. According to the author, they are semata sepulchrals of an elite class made up of warriors and notables and the female stelae, included in the group with ornaments, would be only those combed with a ponytail that descends over the shoulder. Based on this the author calculates[9] that out of a sample of 187 finds, well preserved and legible, 4 have pigtails, 23 are of uncertain attribution, 56 are of warriors and 103 are of notables. In total, 159 stelae are of deceased males, covering the role of notables and warriors, and just 4 stelae are of women, i.e. 2,12%. However, this percentage raises perplexity and questions. Why are the notables dressed, adorned and decorated, exactly like women with pigtails? What meaning would the triangles in the shape of "VVVV" have on the pelvis of notable males and what would be the meaning of the presence of so many women on all the steles? Nava's dissertations do not clarify these or other doubts, such as why from the first twenty-five years of the sixth century up to the third century BC. C. the steles are found broken and reused in tombs and homes. Who would ever have destroyed the tombstones of the ancestors, not respecting the sacred cult of the ancestors and the deceased? Instead, an iconoclasm resulting from the overthrow of a clerical class, now uncomfortable and inefficient, or the entry of new religious orders, would explain such a destruction.

According to Camilla Norman, an Australian scholar who embraces the theory of funerary destination, the "VVVV" motifs constitute a symbolic apron to refer to fertile women ready to marry, also due to the presence of weavers at the loom[10]. She too recognizes in the steles the reflection of a society in which women have a significant presence[11] but it doesn't explain why so many deceased women and few deceased warriors. Once again it doesn't add up. According to a personal analysis, the "VVVV" signs, possible symbolic "aprons" of fertility, as reported by Norman, are to be declined in a cultic key and it is from this point of view that weaving should also be understood; such as the creation of a fabric to be destined for the high priestess and/or for women dressed like her. In Athens, in a period close to the stelae of the Dauni, the Ergastinai virgins also wove the peplos for the virgin goddess Athena Partenos. Therefore, weaving should be understood as a liturgical act in which bird-spirits participated, acolytes carrying ollas full of precious content, and weavers who, similar to "enthroned majesty", sang or evoked myths and magical formulas. In this liturgy the period of the cycle of a sacred virgin must be inserted, connected to the importance of the poppy plant, very precious to cure and soothe pain. Thus the stele reveals itself as the simulacrum of a hierobotanic cult and its poppies, hooked to the belt and turned downwards (Fig. 2), would represent a ritual sowing which evidently took place through a virgin with the sky.

Vase ceramics

From the foregoing it emerges that in the most archaic Daunia esotericism and medicine required the participation of women, perhaps the same protagonists painted on a rare repertoire of figurative vases[12]. They are not contemporary vases to the steles, they range from the XNUMXth to the XNUMXrd century BC, but they have themes comparable to them and perhaps they are a continuation of them. Also on these appears a sacred couple portrayed while exchanging an important but yet to be identified plant[13]. Usually it is the man who receives it, but on the vase of the Tardivat Collection in Geneva both eat it and the man squeezes a lyre from which a poppy capsule is hung, mistakenly interpreted as the plectrum of his musical instrument (Fig. 6 A,B)[14].

On the same vase there are decorative capsules on the surface, similar to those present on jug no. 63 and on the filter pot n. 35. Excluding this small repertoire, Daunia ceramics have a geometric decoration. The decorations are colored red and brown and the vascular shapes are peculiar; such as the duck-shaped askoi, the ladles and filter-vases rich in suggestive protomes, enriched by hands, feet, zoomorphic faces, birds, wolf-dogs, bucranium handles, or anthropomorphic figures with open arms and rings instead of hands[15]. The protome of a woman with fibulae, jewels, long braids and a polos headdress often appears on the filter-vases, already defined as a priestess[16], or even a shaman, connected to the effectiveness of the medicinal infusion or magical preparation of the vessel itself. These are symbolic additions that reflect strong magical and superstitious thinking.

The ancient sources

Between the fourth and third centuries. to. C. some sources mention Daune women[17]. Timaeus of Taormina describes them in dark clothes, girded in wide bands, with high shoes, their faces colored in fiery red and a stick in their hands. To the Greeks they remind the Erinyes. It is clear that the author describes uncommon women, intimidating and perhaps not accessible women. But the broadest information comes from Licofrone in the work Alessandra and from Scholia themselves. Lycophron describes in detail what Daunian girls who do not want to get married do: they take refuge in the temple of the virgin Cassandra, the prophetess priestess whose cult would have been introduced by Diomene in Salapia, and they embrace her statue. They dress in black like the Erinyes, they dye their faces with the juice of evil herbs and they carry a stick. In the temple located near the swamp of Salpe (Salapia) – the indication of Salpe is from the Byzantine scholiast – Cassandra will welcome them and guarantee their virginity[18]. It is surprising how this description corresponds to a priesthood of virgins and how much the staff recalls the giant poppy. In fact, the plant can reach one and a half meters in height, it is similar to a mace or scepter when held in the hands and can be harmful if one exaggerates with the doses of its juice: opium. In addition to these hints of folklore, the Lycophron passage also shows us an uncommon female freedom for the time, inherent in the choice not to marry unwanted men. A choice that can be interpreted, like a "religious" devotion to a deified prophetess.

Artists and craftsmen

The Daunian stelae seem to testify to this freedom together with a centrality of gender, evidently, which survived the impact of Indo-European cultures[19]. It is possible that women in ancient Daunia enjoyed some prestige like the contemporary Etruscans who lived in a sort of "pocket of resistance to patriarchy", an oasis of the feminine reported in some sources. It seems that in Etruria the ladies were not subjected to the guardianship of their father or husband as, instead, happened in Greece and Rome, they participated in banquets and public events, they entertained themselves to talk with the guests, they made up and dressed without constraints[20]. From the steles we deduce that the Daunes were also active in textile craftsmanship but it is not excluded that they also made vases or that they had a role in the conception-design of the anthropomorphic steles on which they are protagonists. These are deductions, but it is widely testified that in some tribal populations the transmission of magical-symbolic baggage is an exclusive female domain. This is confirmed by the studies of the researcher Makilam, the North African scholar who gave a voice to the Kabile Berber women, skilled craftsmen who decorate carpets, ceramics, huts and tattoos[21].

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Footnotes
[1] Leo 2020 ab.
[2] The calculation results from the finds in the catalogue: Nava 1980a.
[3] Leone 1990, 1992, 1995, 1996a, 1996c, 2000a, 2000b, 2002a, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2020a, 2020b.
[4] Of this set, 1210 well photographed and documented specimens are collected in a corpus: Nava 1980a.
[5] For a dissertation on the female relationship with the sphere of the sacred, in the Orientalizing era, see: Von Else, 2008.
[6] Leo 1996 p. 57.
[7] It is an Eneolithic vase decorated with pendulous triangles alternating with tremulus or oriole motifs: Gimbutas 2008, p. 243, fig. 379.
[8] An exhaustive collection of Silvio Ferri's studies is in Nava 1988.
[9] Nava 2014, p. 159.
[10] Norman 2018.
[11] Norman 2011. The analogy between some scenes on the steles and the procession of the Panathenaics is interesting, with the animals for sacrifices, the bearers of offerings, the musicians and the canephors: the bearers of baskets full of gifts, who wore the peplos and vessels for libations.
[12] DeJuliis 2009.
[13] Leone 1995, 1996abc, 2000, 2007.
[14] Chamay 1994, p. 256-257; Chamay and Coutois 2003, pp. 128-129; DeJuliis 2009, p. 112.
[15] Mayer 1914; DeJuliis 1977; Yntema 1985.
[16] Maes 1975.
[17] A complete and reasoned collection of the sources that speak of the Dauni is in Notarangelo 2008.
[18] Lycophron Alexandra, 126/141; Notarangelo 2008, p. 38/44.
[19] Gimbutas 1989; Percovich 2007, 2009.
[20] Rallo 1989.
[21] Makilan 2007. http://convegni.associazionelaima.it/blog/estratto-da-simboli-e-magia-nelle-arti-delle-donne-kabyle-di-makilam/ (accessed on 07/01/2021).

Maria Laura Leone – December 2021

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