L'immagine dei Dioscuri nella ceramografia apula

A recent re-examination of the votive depots in Taranto containing pinakes portraying subjects related to the Dioscuri has suggested that they might refer to a period of ritual innovation in Taranto, under the influence of the motherland, Sparta, characterized by celebration of the Theoxenia rites during collective rituals regarding the management of war. The representations, probably of Dioscuri, in figured Apulian ceramics produced and used in the same territory although with a different production process, have been studied to verify and compare the proposals put forward relative to the votive terracottas.
The aim is to gain a better understanding of the social and cultural uses of the subjects, as well as contributing to analysis of figurative communication as a whole. On the evidence of analysis of the ceramic representations of the Dioscuri, identified by examining thousands of Apulian vases, it has been possible to distinguish them from fictile pinakes in that their traditions of reference, meanings and uses differ. The Dioscuri depicted on the Apulian vases, following models of Attic ceramography, seem to have been used by individuals or families to transmit ethical and ideological messages on prominent public occasions such as banquets or funeral rites, unlike the collective and ritual behavior related to the fictile votives. Thus the figurative language adopted by the city, in which diverse productions seem to have developed autonomously and without apparent forms of interchange, specializing for various different ends, displays a complex framework of references, functions and meanings.