Aspects of being a girl in Francavilla Marittima-Lagaria (Calabria) in the eighth century BC:a reconstruction based on terracotta figurines and their archaeological contexts

In this article, terracotta figurines from four burials of girls of an Italic-Chonian community at Macchiabate, together with terracotta figurines from ritual assemblages of the Athenaion at Timpone della Motta, are studied using concepts of archaeological “agency” and “personhood” theory. These approaches are different from the commonly used in Italian mortuary and sanctuary archaeology, which, by focusing on what may be called symbolic reading, regard grave- and votive-goods as attributes of the buried individuals and thus as straightforward presentations of status. The explanation current in agency and personhood theory, however, by focusing on active reading, prefers to see individuals and objects as producing social order and not merely reflecting it. Terracotta figurines, unearthed in the Macchiabate necropolis near the Calabrian village of Francavilla Marittima, and figurines excavated in the sanctuary on the Timpone della Motta near that same Francavilla Marittima, provide interesting cases of objects functioning as key actors in processes of personal and social change. The figurines from the eighth and the first quarter of the seventh centuries BC were made and used to act as intermediates between the natural and the supernatural worlds on behalf of girls and their parents in transitional situations. In the presented cases the figurines and the girls are, moreover, related to “Middle Ground” situations of social change in operation with indigenous Italic-Chonian inhabitants and new settlers from the Eastern Mediterranean (likely Euboia, Samos and the Cycladic islands) in the pre-urban coastal area of Ionian Calabria.