Una sepoltura aristocratica della Peucezia: la tomba 77/1977 della necropoli di contrada Purgatorio a Rutigliano (Bari). Note e riflessioni preliminari

In 1977 at Rutigliano was found, during the excavation of the necropolis in contrada Purgatorio, a large tomb that belonged to a high-ranking warrior, datable to the third quarter of the 5th century BC. In addition to iron weapons and valuable bronze armours, it has yielded a considerable amount of bronze vases, but above all a very rich vascular complex recovered in the adjoining compartment, composed of more than a hundred artifacts. Particularly noteworthy are the Attic red-figure pottery, among which a colum-krater by the Hefestus Painter, an amphora by the Polignoto Painter and a lekythos by the Achilles Painter stand out, whose images express a figurative program of exaltation of the heroic deeds performed by the deceased, equivalent to those of the heroes of myth. These objects are flanked by vases with depictions that praise Dionysus and his world, namely that god who promised to overcome death and achieve the immortality of the soul, a desire reinforced by the presence of egg-shells in one of the containers. The funerary assemblage is completed by a group of beautiful glass-paste unguentari, painted with bright colors, probably imported from Rodhes, that documents the intensity and the plurality of the relationships woven by the aristocracies of Rutigliano towards the different areas of the Mediterranean during third quarter of the fifth century B.C.