Magna Graecia. The Greek colonisation of South Italy and Sicily

The colonisation of South Italy did not take place in a terra incognita to Greek seafarers. Finds of Mycenaean pottery attest that during the 14th and 13th centuries BC Mycenaean merchants had created a narrow network of contacts with local Late Bronze Age communities. These pioneers focused their interest on lower Iapygia (Apulia-Puglia), the Adriatic Sea and the upper reaches of the Ionian Sea (Gulf of Taras). Another long voyage in order to acquire raw material, copper, aimed at setting up trading posts in Sicily and also at sites dispersed along the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea, as well as on the islands of Lipara (Lipari) and Sardinia. After a long interruption, in the 8th century BC, shortly before the colonisation commenced, the presence of geometric pottery of Euboia and the Cyclades confirms the revival of part of the western sea route which, with ports of call in the west Ionian Sea and eastern Sicily, aimed ultimately at exploiting the iron-ore mines on the small islands lying off the Tyrrhenian coast of Etruria. The principal trading post was the island of Pithekoussai (Ischia), which was founded by Chalkidians and Eretrians (ca 760 BC) and peopled by merchants and artisans specialised in processing iron and precious metals. This early trading experience opened the way for the colonisation of Magna Graecia, in which the island of Euboia led the field.