#daunian

[venomspecs]

I know you like Daunian stuff but I know next to nothing about it. What is cool about the Daunian people for beginners?

Oooo glad you asked!

Since we don't have any surviving texts from Daunia until Hellenistic times most of what we know about them comes from their stelae and unique pottery. Here's some resources that provide a pretty good base in my opinion:

Camilla Norman's "People of Ancient Daunia: Voicing the Statue-Stelae" is a book dedicated entirely to examining these unique monuments. Though it's not fully available online, the first stretch of the book (5 chapters) can be accessed through Google Books, and it gives a pretty good rundown of the origins of the Daunians and their art, as well as typologies, artistic parallels, a history of scholarship... It's jam-packed with information. It's also one the most recent resources linked here (2024), so if you want to be up to date fast this is the way to go.

Norman also has a website where you can access an archive of every known stela and filter by type, represented figures/scenes... Also a really awesome resource for visual reference.

Here's a couple papers by Norman worth checking out:

The tribal tattooing of Daunian Women

Illyrian Vestiges in Daunian Costume: tattoos, string aprons and a helmet

Maria Luisa Nava is one of the pioneers of Daunian research so her papers are also worth checking out. Here's some I'd reccommend (these are in Italian):

Le stele della Daunia nel quadro del megalitismo mediterraneo

Le gesta degli uomini, dei cavalieri e degli eroi nellla vita e nel mito sulle stele daunie

Lastly, I have to mention Maria Laura Leone, who has published on the Daunians as well, with a special interest in their attested use of opium, such as "Daunian opium and the concepts revealed by images", as well as these two papers on the iconography on the stelae by other researchers (I tried to use as much recent research as possible but these two are a bit older. Also only in Italian.): Iconografie greche nel mondo indigeno della Daunia, Il repertorio figurato delle stele della Daunia

Do keep in mind that this is a relatively young discipline of study so there's still a whole lot of uncertainties about the Daunians (especially compared to the other Iapygian peoples they neighboured, who did leave inscriptions and came in contact with the Greeks much earlier), so there's not much we definitively know about their beliefs for example, and things like the classification of stelae will differ drastically between Norman and Nava. That being said, the Daunians have left behind a large amount of absolutely fascinating material culture to study and they are very underappreciated, so I hope these resources spark some interest!

Thanks for asking and if you need anything more specific do let me know!

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Jug with Strap Handle. Date: ca. 500–400 B.C. Culture: Daunian (East-central Italy) Medium: Terracotta with polychrome

[venomspecs]

Anyone know any good reference for the clothing/general depictions of indigenous Apulian tribes? Especially the ones farther from the Hellenic area of influence. Specifically interested in the Daunians, since their art is really abstract (very lovely tho) and we have some idea of what the other two Iapygian tribes would've worn (dancer fresco for the Peucetian women, for example)

Closest thing I have been able to find are these Greek vases depicting what the MET describes as Oscans, which were present in a large area of the South of Italy including northern Puglia, aka Daunia, so I assume the Daunians (particularly the men, the women in these vases are not identified as Oscans and might just be Messapians/ Apulian Greeks) may have worn something similar.

The second image is particularly interesting to me because the headdresses they're wearing are reminiscent of the ones featured on some Daunian stelae, so I wonder if that's what they're meant to depict and thus if this was assimilated by the Daunians from Oscan culture (though if I'm remembering correctly the stelae with this headress have all been identified as female (don't quote me on that lol), while the vases show this headress on male figures only). These vases are however from the 4th century BC, while the stelae date from the 8th to the 6th, so I'm not sure they can be trusted as accurate representations of Oscan clothing in the 8th and 6th centuries, much less for Daunian clothing, since the connection between the Oscans in these vases and the Daunians is merely speculation

Then of course we have the tattooed arms of Daunian women (really interesting subject btw), both from the stelae and this tomb fresco in Arpi, which also gives a tiny and fragmentary glimpse at the clothing:

As well as this really frequent hairstyle from the stelae, which has been interpreted by some as a long braid with a dried poppy plant tied to it, given the abundance of poppy imagery in Daunian art.

As far as clothing goes though, the actually Daunian-made representations are either really abstract like in the stelae or pottery, or fragmentary like the Arpi fresco, so any details on the shape, color, material and so on are really hard to interpret, so if you know any other, more complete depiction, or alternatively a paper on the subject feel free to drop it in the comments/reblogs/whatever you see fit lol

[venomspecs]

Mother sent apulian pottery pics yippeee! I recognize the Talos vase, and the first one seems like a judgement of Paris ? The second one seems to have a fury but due to the angle I have no idea what scene it represents lol

THE CAT VASE :O

also a Daunian olla! and I think the black ones are also Daunian? but certainly with some Greek influence

[venomspecs]

re: my last post on Daunian dress, I found this site with a (holistic ?) high-quality photo collection of Daunian stelae, both complete and fragmentary and classified by subject matter, type, etc.

[via-appia]

Trapezophoron (table pedestal) depicting two griffins devouring a deer.

Daunian, 4th century BC

[archaicwonder]

Daunian Terracotta Olla with Hands, 5th Century BC

About Daunian pottery...

Daunian pottery is a genus of Dauni ceramic produced in today's Italian provinces of Bari and Foggia. The pottery was created by the Dauni, a tribe of the Iapygian civilization who came from Illyria. Daunian pottery was mainly produced in the regional production centers of Ordona and Canosa di Puglia, being produced since around 700 BC. The early paintings on the pottery show the vessels with geometric patterns. The ceramics were hand-formed. They consisted of red, brown or black earth color applied with the decor. Diamonds, triangles, circles, crosses, squares, arcs, swastika and other forms of art were painted on them. The development of Daunian pottery forms is independent of the first Greek ceramics. Typical Daunian pottery include the Askos, hopper vessels and bowls with loop handles. Striking are often manual, or anthropomorphic Protomen to the sides and handles of the ceramics attached to or reproduced graphically. From the 5th century BC, Daunian pottery is influenced by the Greek forms to an extent that crude human, bird and plant figures are depicted on the pottery. From 350 BC-250 BC the decorative forms change even further.

[heracliteanfire]

Pottery askos. Painted on a pink ground are two winged marine horses flying over a brown sea. Three terracotta Nikai are attached to the false spouts and the handle, and the foreparts of two horses to the wall. Reliefs showing the head of Medusa and a dancing maenad have also been applied. Daunian/Apulian, Canosa di Puglia, 270-200BC. (via British Museum)