Death is not for me. Funerary contexts of warrior-chiefs from preroman Apulia

The discoveries of the last thirty years in Apulia have highlighted the leading role of this region, and especially ancient Peucetia, in the evolution of Lucanian and Apulian red-figured pottery. In fact, from the last decades of the fifth century BC onwards the aristocratic classes of Apulia (in the fourth century also those of the Daunian district) were the main patrons and consumers of the products of Italic workshops. As the most complex elements of the funerary assemblage there was a specific demand for those objects. They were entrusted with the ideological messages and representative needs of the deceased, displaying their wealth, the social role they played in life, and their adoption of cultural and ideological models of Hellenic origin. They also refer to the deceased's forms of religiosity and to their adherence to and participation in beliefs of 'salvific type', albeit filtered through their own cultural values and ideologies. In fact, it is highly likely that the needs of such a rarefied patronage influenced Italic figured production from the beginning their specific requests governed the selection of themes and compositions.