Introduction

The study of ancient cultures and the related reconstruction of historical events is closely linked to their localisation within landscapes and regions. This also applies to the discipline of archaeology. Ancient sites and their finds are analysed both in the context of their regional characteristics and in relation to other, neighbouring regions. The units, sizes and qualities of such local classifications can be very diverse, ranging from large state structures such as the Roman Empire, to micro-regions with only a few, small settlements. These units can be geomorphological, political, administrative, cultural, religious or even ethnic, and often these aspects are inter-related. Large-scale states and administrative units, as well as their inhabitants, can usually be named quite clearly. This is the case of the Roman Empire, for which we have a large number of contemporary sources and know its chronological development, with its various expansions, quite well. It becomes more difficult, however, when we look at smaller regions and their populations. For these, too, there seem to be clear definitions and names, both in antiquity and in modern research based on written sources. However, it is important to bear in mind that these names are mostly from later periods and therefore lack contemporary definitions. Often, we do not know their chronologically correct name, nor their exact spatial extent, but have to work with labels recorded mainly in later periods.

Using the ancient region of Lucania in southern Italy as an example, I would like to show that the naming of such regions, and the communities living in them, is associated with methodological problems from both an archaeological and a historical perspective, which in this case has led to decades-long misinterpretations in research. To demonstrate this, literary and archaeological sources will be examined, placed in their respective contexts and analysed separately. This will show that any study of a particular region must be accompanied by a reflection on its naming and its geographical and chronological extent.

Mapping ancient Lucania

Located in the centre of southern Italy, the ancient region of Lucania is characterised by a massive mountainous landscape and deep, wide river valleys. Lucania is often compared to modern Basilicata in terms of its size, even though the two regions do not overlap completely (fig. 1). The central mountainous region is still named “Lucania” in Italian, and its inhabitants proudly call themselves “Lucani”. There is no doubt that this modern name derives from the ancient one. But what did this name mean in ancient times? When was it used? And how can we really define this region and its people, if at all?

The name of the ancient region of Lucania – like many other regions in Italy – is well established in classical studies. Lucania and the Lucanians are mentioned in numerous academic publications on pre-Roman Italy.¹ This term refers primarily to an area in the interior of the peninsula and to the so-called “indigenous” or “Italic” population that inhabited it. Both are normally defined in contrast to the inhabitants of the Greek apoikiai on the coasts in the second half of the 1st mill. BC, or, more precisely, the period between the 5th and 2nd c. BC. This is most evident in historical atlases, where terms such as “Lucania” or the “Lucanians” and other names of Italic populations are mentioned. A closer look reveals that these regional and ethnic names are usually used to fill an otherwise empty space on numerous maps. These atlases also raise other historical and archaeological questions, such as the so-called Greek colonisation or the Etruscan expansion in the period between the 8th and 5th c. BC, a major topic in classical archaeology. It is noticeable, for instance, that the maps usually only name a few sites in the interior, often to emphasise certain relationships or even conflicts with the Greeks on the coast, or to fill in empty spaces, so as not to make it look as if these areas were uninhabited. At the same time, however, sites are sometimes shown on the same map that do not relate to each other either in terms of their context or their chronology.² This imbalance is due to the fact that the study of ancient southern Italy in the second half of the twentieth century was mainly carried out from the perspective of the so-called Greek colonies with their monumental architecture ; the inland regions were considered to have played only a minor role in their development. This perspective has led to serious misinterpretations of the archaeological material of the inland communities of southern Italy, an aspect that will become important later in this paper. Fortunately, this perspective has changed in recent years and the focus has shifted to the Italic communities and their interactions with the other regions of Italy.³

The geographical location of the ancient region of Lucania in the centre of southern Italy is documented by ancient written sources.⁴ However, the exact position of this region is not as simple as it may appear on published maps, as the written records differ greatly in their definition. Only one example can be given here to illustrate the discussion: In the 4th century BC, Pseudo-Scylax included a number of towns along the Tyrrhenian coast, in the area of modern Campania and Calabria as part of Lucania, in particular the so-called ‘toe of the boot’ of Italy: Poseidonia, Elea, Laos, Thurioi, Hipponion and Rhegion (fig. 2).⁵ Strabo in his Geography, on the other hand, described Lucania in the first half of the 1st c. BC as follows.⁶

Strabo 6.1.4:

Leucania lies between the Tyrrhenian and Sicilian⁷ coastlines, the former coastline from the River Silaris⁸ as far as Laüs, and the latter, from Metapontium as far as Thuri.

In contrast to Scylax, Strabo explicitly includes the interior of southern Italy by naming cities on the two opposite coasts, but deliberately excludes the tip of the boot, and the region is also much smaller (fig. 3). Only the sites between Poseidonia (river Sele) and Laos are included in his definition. It is notable that he only mentions coastal towns for reference. Strabo does not specify exactly how the inland area between the two coasts can be defined. Here again we get important information from Pliny, who mentions the Roman Potentia as belonging to Lucania (fig. 4).⁹ Based on these various pieces of information, the region reconstructed today as Lucania describes the conditions in the area only in Roman times and not in the period that is usually referred to as “Lucanian”. It is unclear whether and how Lucania was perceived in the 4th and 3rd c. BC.; there seems to have been no uniform knowledge of the situation in the past.¹⁰ Since we also have no literary or significant epigraphic record of the Lucanians themselves, we cannot conclude any self-definition from the pre-Roman period. It was not until the end of the 3rd c. BC, in the context of the Hannibalic War, that coins were minted in southern Italy which, in Greek and Oscan writing, name the Lucanians.¹¹ Above all, most ancient sources mentioning Lucania or Lucanians date from the late Republican and early Imperial periods and only provide commentary or brief histories of earlier events.¹²

Although the exact boundaries of Lucania in pre-roman times cannot be determined, scholars agree that Lucania included the inland area between the coasts. In Roman times, according to the sources, the former Greek poleis on the coasts seem to have been explicitly considered part of Lucania and the ancient authors used them to define the region. However, researchers have deliberately excluded these cities from the definition of Lucania for the pre-Roman period. By locating the Lucanians in the mountainous interior, both the Roman authors and later researchers created the ideal counter-image to the superior Greeks on the coast, and later to the Romans.

The Lucanians – A warlike people of Samnite origin?

This role of the Lucanians as the “counterpart” or “enemy” to the Greeks and Romans, which became established in research and lasted for decades, especially in Germany, can be traced back to the study of different types of written and archaeological material, which, when combined, seemed to suggest a supposedly unambiguous picture. This narrative has had a decisive influence on our interpretations of the archaeological remains and finds in the region. Some of the aspects that have led to this characterisation will therefore be presented here and then placed in a context beyond these prejudices.

Written sources have made a significant contribution to the characterisation of the Lucanians. This is mainly due to Strabo’s description in the 6th book of his Geography, written in Augustan times, in which the author states the following:

Strab. 6.1.3:

The Leucani are Samnitae in race (γένος).

Strab. 6.1.2:

Before the Greeks came, however, the Leucani were as yet not even in existence, and the regions were occupied by the Chones and the Oenotri. But after the Samnitae had grown considerably in power, and had ejected the Chones and the Oenotri, and had settled a colony of Leucani in this portion of Italy, while at the same time the Greeks were holding possession of both seaboards as far as the Strait, the Greeks and the barbarians carried on war with one another for a long time.

Strab. 6.1.3:

(…) but upon mastering the Poseidoniatae and their allies in war, they (= the Lucanians) took possession of their cities.

Strabo gives us two polarising statements in his text: on the one hand, he describes the Lucanians as descendants of the Samnites who were settled in southern Italy and who drove out the original population. On the other hand, the Lucanians are said to have waged war against the Greeks and even conquered Poseidonia, which later became Paestum.

This picture of the hostile Lucanians is also corroborated by Diodorus Siculus, who lived about half a century earlier and whose Universal History not only mentions historical events in southern Italy, but also deliberately emphasises the enmity between the Greeks and the Lucanians (Leukanoi):

Diod. 14.101:¹³

(…) when the Leucanians overran the territory of Thurioi. (…). (…) For the Greek cities of Italy had an agreement among themselves to the effect that if any city’s territory was being plundered by the Leucanians (…).

Both authors give the impression that the Lucanians were a very warlike and even barbaric people. In archaeological research, this characterisation, together with the statement that the Lucanians were descended from the Samnites and had deliberately settled in southern Italy, seemed to fit perfectly with some groups of finds from southern Italy and with the architecture of settlements in the mountains. The weapons and armour found in the tombs of the region, and especially in Greek Poseidonia, which was supposedly conquered by the Lucanians, fit well into this picture. In particular, the bronze belts and the triple-disk cuirasses were considered to be Samnite ethnic markers.¹⁴ The depictions of warriors in armour consisting of a triple-disk cuirass, a broad belt and a helmet, found in the tomb paintings of Poseidonia also fit this picture.¹⁵ One of the most common motifs on these is the so-called returning warrior on horseback, presenting parts of his enemies’ weapons as trophies (fig. 5) and sometimes even carrying prisoners.¹⁶ The motif of the warrior with the characteristic broad belt can also be found in southern Italian red-figure vase painting. ¹⁷

Moreover, the settlements in the Lucanian mountains also seem to confirm these characterisations; the favoured form of settlement in the 4th and early 3rd centuries BC was the hilltop settlement surrounded by a fortification. The massive walls, monumental gates and, in some cases, towers give a strong military impression (fig. 6).¹⁸ Henning 2025. More than 80 such sites have been documented in the region, some of which are still very well preserved.¹⁹ This common feature has led researchers to believe that the fortified hilltop settlements were organised by the Lucanians in a kind of koiné, as a collective defence structure against their enemies.²⁰ Cf. also Pecci 2025. Hilltop settlements close to Greek poleis were almost automatically interpreted as Greek outposts on the edge of the chora against the belligerent Lucanians.²¹ This led to a demarcation between “Greek” and “Lucanian” that is neither archaeologically nor historically accurate. The image of the warlike Lucanians, who first took Poseidonia in a major coup in the 4th c. BC, before plundering southern Italy, had been established and persists to some extent today.²²

However, if one re-examines these different sources which seem to fit together so well, a different picture emerges for the region of ancient Lucania. This has been done in recent years at various levels and through numerous studies which help us to get a more differentiated picture of the region, and of southern Italy more broadly, in the 4th and 3rd c. BC. In these, the interpretation of the passages and the archaeological evidence mentioned above is much more complex and nuanced. For example, Strabo’s descriptions of the Lucanians can be better understood by looking at the context in which he wrote them. This is particularly well illustrated by another passage from Book 6 of his Geography:

Strab. 6.1.2:

But to-day all parts of it (= Magna Graecia), except Taras, Rhegium, and Neapolis, have become completely barbarised. (…) As for the Leucani (…), and the Brettii, and the Samnitae themselves (the progenitors of these peoples) have so utterly deteriorated that it is difficult even to distinguish their several settlements; and the reason is that no common organisation longer endures in any one of the separate tribes; and their characteristic differences in language, armour, dress, and the like, have completely disappeared; and, besides, their settlements, severally and in detail, are wholly without repute.

This passage, in the context of his description of Lucania, reveals his clear prejudices against the Italic peoples he mentions. Strabo, a historian and geographer of the Augustan period, was in fact a Greek who had travelled extensively in the ancient world. However, some of the information he used in the Geography was second-hand or not entirely accurate.²³ In his description of Italy and its regions, he seems to be addressing a Greek audience, to whom he wanted to explain Roman supremacy.²⁴ In the passages quoted here, he deliberately creates an opposition between the Italic tribes and the Romans and their differing sets of values. When Strabo wrote his texts, the deep conflicts between the Romans and the Samnites of the early 1st c. BC were still very much present in Roman society. In the Social War of 91 to 88 BC, most of the southern Italian tribes had turned against Rome, including the Samnites. They also played a major role in the civil war that followed a few years later.²⁵ It is therefore conceivable that these events and their aftermath²⁶ influenced Strabo and his historical sources, and that he transposed these conflicts into his descriptions of events that had actually taken place 200 or 300 years earlier.²⁷ The meaning and characterisation that he clearly established also serves to consciously distinguish the Romans from the Italic population, and to mark the latter as “other” and “different”.

The generalisation of the Italic people by Roman historiography is also reflected in the fasti triumphales, which also date from the Augustan period, and which list all the triumphs achieved since the founding of the capital.²⁸ Various Italic populations, including the Lucanians (Lucani), are repeatedly named as defeated.²⁹ However, it must be kept in mind that the listed triumphs were never a victory over an entire ethnic group but would have been more or less isolated events. The fasti only indicate the presumed origin of the population of a single settlement or town, not of an entire region. From the outside, however, it must have seemed to the reader as if an entire ethnic group had been defeated, which was of course the intention of the Augustan representation of Rome.

From an archaeological perspective, the particularly warlike aspects of the finds from Lucania can also be relativised. Weapons as grave goods were common in the Italic communities of southern Italy until the late 5th c. BC, but they were not limited to Lucania. As they were not carried by the deceased, but simply buried with them, and at least in some cases, only represented parade weapons, they can be more accurately understood as male elite status symbols than as an expression of actual combat.³⁰ The same applies to the bronze belts, which were also widespread in southern Italy and Sicily.³¹ The red-figure vase paintings of Italic warriors, common in southern Italy, certainly also reflect a male ideal. This ideal of the warrior and his weapons had been deeply rooted in Italic culture for generations and had become an expression of the social status of a leading group.³² However, there were quite different local variations. In Poseidonia, on the one hand, the tomb paintings depicting the arrival (or departure³³) of warriors in this specific form were a locally restricted phenomenon (fig. 5).³⁴ On the other hand, there were no Poseidonian red-figured vases representing Italian warriors as found elsewhere in southern Italy.³⁵ The social role of the warrior was thus collectively accepted in various forms and supra-regionally understood within a larger Italic community, but not a specific expression of a belligerent Lucanian entity.

Similarly, the fortifications of the hilltop settlements of Lucania are not a purely regional phenomenon of the south Italian inland but fit into a general development of military architecture on the Italian peninsula and throughout the Mediterranean. While these walls were defensive and were naturally meant to withstand attacks, they were also a highly visible expression of the strength and prosperity of the communities living within them (fig. 6), who separated themselves from their surroundings by means of the wall.³⁶ It was not a collective initiative of a Lucanian ethnos to build these fortifications, but rather the choice of numerous individual communities for whom it was important to communicate their status to the outside world. There is very little archaeological evidence of any warfare associated with these hilltop settlements.³⁷ And there is also no archaeological evidence of the warlike capture of Poseidonia, as recorded by Strabo.³⁸

Overall, there is no evidence for a particularly warlike culture in Lucania. Rather, the individual sources and material groups can be traced back either to widespread social concepts of male status roles in (southern) Italy or, as in the case of Poseidonia, to very localised forms of burial and representation that have been generalised in research. This is not to say that there were no conflicts in southern Italy in the 4th and 3rd c. BC. But how extensive they were, and what impact they had on the region as a whole, is currently the subject of much debate. Above all, we must stop thinking in terms of black and white, where the “bad guys” were the natives and the “good guys” were the Greeks. Rather, southern Italy at that time was inhabited by many different parties who shared a strong opponent, Rome.³⁹

Naming ancient Lucania – Concluding remarks

This article has highlighted the methodological difficulties of naming ancient Lucania, not only because of the difficulties in determining its geographical and chronological boundaries, but also because certain ideas and characterisations of Lucania and the Lucanians have become established in research. These are the result of an external, Roman, perspective on the Italic peoples, strongly influenced by the conflicts of the late Roman Republic. If we are not careful, this Roman perspective of a supposed ethnic unity can also influence our current research and interpretations. This raises the question of whether we can even use the term “Lucania” or other labels for the Italic regions. This problem has been increasingly recognised in recent years, especially as the so-called indigenous cultures of Italy have recently been brought back into focus in classical studies, and their role in the complex development of the Roman Empire in the late Republican and early Imperial periods has rightly been recognised.⁴⁰

Naming ancient Lucania is still difficult. A definition based on archaeological finds rather than written records, as prehistoric archaeology has sometimes done, would be too one-sided.⁴¹ In addition, we generally do not have clear boundaries, so it is impossible to say where an area began and ended, as the analysis of Lucania has clearly shown. It is questionable whether such regional borders even existed for the Italic communities in pre-Roman times, since this would also presuppose a clearly defined internal unit, or common territory. There is also the chronological aspect, since borders are never completely static, but can change as a result of various events. These uncertainties in naming and definition, are reflected in the titles of publications in recent years such as Massimo Osanna’s “Terra incognita, The rediscovery of an Italian people without a name”⁴² and Guy Bradley, Elena Isayev and Corinna Riva’s “Ancient Italy. Region without borders”.⁴³

The deliberate and over-rigid demarcation of borders, both in ancient and modern times, can even severely limit archaeological research. If one compares the reconstructed region of ancient Lucania with the modern region of Basilicata, it quickly becomes clear that they are not identical (Fig. 1). Permits for archaeological work in the ancient region are therefore not limited to the area overseen by the Superintendency of Basilicata. Moreover, the avoidance of ambiguities of responsibility can lead to the creation of “border zones” on both sides of the modern administrative boundaries, where no work is carried out and which are therefore “blank spots” on our archaeological map. As these remain unexplored, here too there is a risk of misinterpretation. It is therefore of fundamental importance to think beyond such boundaries and to imagine the cultural units of antiquity as rather fluid.

So how can we refer to the mountainous landscape of central southern Italy without resorting to imprecise terms or complicated auxiliary constructions? I think it is still possible to use the regional name “Lucania”. However, it is very important to define in advance what this name actually refers to. Does this name refer to a pure geomorphological unit with clear boundaries and in a certain chronological time frame, or does it refer to a cultural landscape with specific characteristics relating to the people who live here? Unlike “Lucania”, I think the adjective “Lucanian” should be avoided, as it is more of an ethnic characterisation than a regional name. This is valid not only for southern Italy, but also for other regions. We need to be aware of how these predefined constructions can significantly influence and limit our research. The definitions and characterisations of ancient authors must be considered and evaluated in the context of their historical origins, as they are generally not neutral definitions. Above all, it is important not only to consider archaeological artefact groups within these predefined regions, but also to look beyond such artificial boundaries and not to apply results from one site to the entire region. This is the only way to reveal the complex cultural relationships and characteristics of a region.

Tributes

I would like to thank the organisers of the Venice conference and the editors of this volume, for giving me the opportunity to present and discuss my research in this context. I am also grateful to Mariana Silva Porto who did the proofreading.