Daunians

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Daunian pot, Terracotta, Subgeometric style (Daunian II), 550-400 BC

The Daunians (

Latin: Daunii) were an Iapygian tribe that inhabited northern Apulia in classical antiquity.[1] Two other Iapygian tribes, the Peucetians and the Messapians, inhabited central and southern Apulia respectively. All three tribes spoke the Messapic language, but had developed separate archaeological cultures by the seventh century BC.[2]

The Daunians lived in the Daunia region, which extended from the Daunian Mountains river in the southeast to the Gargano peninsula in the northwest.[3] This region is mostly coincident with the Province of Foggia and part of Province of Barletta-Andria-Trani today. Daunians and Oscans came into contact in northern Daunia and southern Samnite regions. Gradually, parts of northern Daunia became "Oscanized".[4][5][6]

Name

The ethnonym is connected to the name of the wolf, plausibly the totemic animal of this nation. The cult of the wolf was widespread in ancient Italy and was related to the

Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirate *dh is proper to the Illyrian languages and so is different from the corresponding Latin faunus and Oscan, which is not attested.[citation needed
]

The Messapic tribal name Daunioi/Daunii has been connected to the Dardanian Thunatae/Thunatai in the Balkans.[7]

Origins

Daunian subgeometric Kyathos, 550–440 BC

At the end of the

Bruttii, Campanians, Aequi, Samnites and Frentani. Strabo in a mythological construction to explain the foundation of Taranto, connects the Iapygians with Cretans. Strabo recounts that they were descendants of Iapyx and a Cretan woman. Archaeological material shows little contact between Iapygians and Greek colonists.[9] The retroactive ascription of a Cretan or Arkadian heritage for the Iapygians was simply constructed for political purposes of the time these sources were written.[10]

Genetics

A genetic study published in 2022 examined DNA extracted from three necropoleis: Ordona, Salapia and San Giovanni Rotondo, which during the Iron Age have been linked to the Daunian region. Most samples from Ordona and Salapia date to the Daunian period and some samples from San Giovanni Rotondo date more broadly to the Iron Age. Paternal haplogroups of seven Iron Age samples were identified. Two paternal lineages of the Iron Age samples belong to J-M241, one of them could be further processed as J-L283+. Two Iron Age samples belonged to R-M269, one further designated as Z2103+ and one to I-M223.[11]

Iron Age Daunians showed the highest autosomal affinity with Early Iron Age

Minoans/Crete and Iron Age Greeks/Arkadia are less likely. A parsimonious explanation of the Daunian's origin favors a genetic continuity between the Daunians and the population that inhabited the area prior to the historical period that was analyzed, although additional influences from Croatia (ancient Illyria) cannot be excluded, as described by the material remains and the available historical sources.[12]

Presence in ancient Italy

Table pedestal (trapezophoron) in polychrome marble with two griffins devouring a deer (from a Daunian grave of the 4th century BC).

The Daunii were similar to but also different from the Peucetii and Messapii, who settled in central and southern Puglia.[13] Having been also less influenced by the Campanian civilization, it had thus a more peculiar culture, featuring in particular the Daunian steles, a series of funerary monuments sculpted in the 7th-6th centuries BC in the plain south of Siponto, and now mostly housed in the National Archeological Museum of Manfredonia. Particularly striking is the Daunian pottery (as yet little studied) which begins with geometric patterns but which eventually includes crude human, bird and plant figures.

The main Daunian centers were

Venusia in the transboundary area between the Daunians and the Lucanians described himself as "Lucanian or Apulian". The creation of Roman colonies in southern Italy after the early 4th century BCE had a great impact in the Latinization of the area.[6]

There are numerous testimonies among ancient authors (

Rutulians who were considered Daunians: Vergil writes that Turnus' father was Daunus. Festus writes that a King Lucerus of Ardea fought along with Romulus against Titus Tatius and this is the origin of the name of the Roman Luceres.[14]

Culture

Daunian stele, limestone grave marker (?), 610-550 BC

The Iron Age Daunian material culture persisted quite different from their Italic neighbours until the region was encompassed into the Roman Republic in the 3rd century BC. This cultural distinction was due in part because of their geographical area, which was distant from the Ancient Greek centres of Magna Graecia, and in part because of their close relations with the peoples on the other coast of the Adriatic Sea with whom they retained direct contacts across the sea.[15]

Tattooing

The custom of tattooing among Daunians can be detected in Daunian stelae and in matt-painted ollae. It can also be conceivably identified on the wall of a late 4th-century tomb chamber from Arpi, in which a painting shows tattoos on the arms of the 'priestess' riding a quadriga.[16] The tattooing practice is most often found in preliterate tribal communities, with women playing the chief role, both performing the ritual of applying tattoos and wear them. Among other things the tattoos may have been a symbol of sexual maturity, ancestry and tribal affiliations, as well as religious beliefs. Forearms were the most common tattooed parts of the body among Daunians.[17]

In the

Graeco-Roman world tattooing was conceived as a barbaric custom that was used exclusively for punitive or ownership purposes, but the Daunian perception of tattooing was different, as it was a deep and long-standing cultural embodiment distinguishing them from other cultures, as occurred among Illyrians and Thracians. The writings of ancient authors like Herodotus (5th century BC) and Strabo (1st century BC) show that in the Balkans tattooing was in the purview of the elites; iconographic and literary sources reveal in particular that it was restricted to the female members of society. In the western Balkans, isolated from outside influences, the practice of tattooing continued until the early 20th century in Albania and Bosnia, regions that in antiquity were part of the area of Illyria, where Daunian groups conceivably originated from. Besides of religious beliefs, the accounts of the early 20th century reveal that the tattooing custom in the Balkans was originally connected with a fertility rite, being associated with the beginning of menstruation, thus proving that a girl had become a woman.[18]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Chi erano i Dauni ?". Infoperte (in Italian). Retrieved 2023-10-21.
  2. ^ "messàpico in Vocabolario - Treccani". www.treccani.it (in Italian). Retrieved 2023-10-21.
  3. ^ Carpenter, Lynch & Robinson 2014, p. 2, 18 and 38.
  4. ISBN 9788858113882
    .
  5. ISBN 9780888642417
    .
  6. ^ a b Torelli 1995, pp. 142–144
  7. ^ Šašel Kos 2010, p. 625.
  8. ISBN 1-4191-7384-7
  9. ^ Malkin 2003, pp. 117–18.
  10. ^ Norman 2018, p. 57.
  11. ^ Aneli et al. 2022, Supplementary Files:Data S1.
  12. ^ Aneli et al. 2022, pp. 8–11.
  13. ^ "The origins of the Daunia civilization and the early Iron Age". ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Cataklogo e la Documentazione. Archived from the original on 2011-07-22. Retrieved 2019-07-17.
  14. doi:10.3406/mefr.1974.962
    .
  15. ^ Norman 2018, p. 62.
  16. ^ Norman 2018, p. 61.
  17. ^ Norman 2018, pp. 61–62.
  18. ^ Norman 2018, pp. 63.

Sources

External links

  • Media related to Daunii at Wikimedia Commons
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