Play, Game, Gender and Sociability on Italiote Vase Painting

On South italian vase painting, as on attic red figure vases, images seem to be read as reflecting the social and religious dynamics of ancient communities, especially in their gendered dimension. Many vases present generic iconographies involving different groups of mortals, sometimes watched by a winged figure, often identified as Eros. Their interactions are displayed by different kinds of circular elements – phiale or patera, tympanon, fruit, ball or undefined decorative pattern – in various positions, handled or placed in the field. Because of the allusive dimension of iconography depicted on South Italian pottery with interchangeable attributes – meaningful or symbolic –, these evocative images (as play, rite, gift for lovers, aso) are uneasy to interpret. The study of the identity of the protagonists, according to age, gender, social status, as well as of the type of contexts (domestic, public, sacred, and funerary) and of shapes, allows us to grasp a representation of the dynamics of sociability through games in metaphorical spaces.