A Mediterranean Mosaic: The Archaeological Evidence for Ethnic Diversity at Pithekoussai

tions are often difficult to identify in the archaeological record; however, Pithekoussai has yielded a variety of evidence which not only indicates relationships between the Greek colonists and the Italic natives, but with other Mediterranean peoples as well.Far from being a homogeneous Greek city-state, Pithekoussai seems to have been a hub of commercial activity for much of the Mediterranean, creating an East-West crossroads and being home to diverse ethnic groups including Euboean and Corinthian Greeks, indigenous Italic peoples, and Phoenicians or Levantines.By investigating the available ceramic evidence, fibulae types, burial traditions, imported goods, and various written sources, it is possible to shed light on "the international community of merchants and craftsmen resident at Pithekoussai", and try to understand how cultural identities affected commercial relations in the Archaic Mediterranean (Ridgway 121). I. Bronze Age Interactions: Mycenaeans in the WestIn order to discuss Greek contact with the Western Mediterranean in a comprehensive way, it is important to begin many centuries prior to the foundation of Magna Graecia's colonies, and even before early Archaic Pithekoussai.The Mycenaean Greeks and perhaps other Bronze Age peoples of the Aegean islands were in fact the first Greeks to make contact and establish trade with their contemporary populations in the Italian peninsula (Smith 5).Although much debate continues to surround the issue of permanent Greek settlement in Italy at this time, the influence of their presence is undeniable, particularly in the ceramic evidence.While some scholars speculate that contact between Italy and the Aegean may in fact have begun in the 3rd millennium BCE, the period from 1400 to 1200 BCE (LHIIIA and LH IIIB) has been identified as the time when the Aegean saw the greatest expansion in trade.Contemporaneous pottery of the type produced by the Mycenaeans, a Late Bronze Age peoples originating from the Greek Mainland, has been found in Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt, and forty-five sites in Italy and its adjacent islands, providing evidence for a large, pan-Mediterranean trade network in this period (Smith 5-6).It is difficult to tell, however, if Mycenaean traders themselves were sailing throughout the Mediterranean, stopping from port to port to exchange goods; if these traders were in fact living amongst foreign locals for periods of time; or if, rather than conducting trade directly, they collaborated with other Mediterranean peoples in order to establish a complex, multi-ethnic trade network.Gert Jan van Wijngaarden, for instance, has assumed the viewpoint that there was a "conditioned coexistence" in the LH IIIA and LH IIIB Mediterranean, in which thalassocracies did not exist.Instead, trade was likely conducted between many different cultures, as demonstrated by the Uluburun shipwreck and its 'international' cargo (van

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