46

Over the last few decades the notion of ethnicity has assumed a particular importance for archaeologists studying the Western Greek World in order to determine the respective roles that Greek and indigenous groups played in the formation of colonial identities. Debate has often focussed on the origins of the colonist’s wives, alternately viewed as Greek or indigene, with knock-on implications for the way in which the Western Greeks were regarded more broadly. The combined study of the grave goods (especially the metal small-finds) and anthropological data from the necropoleis of Southern Italy and Sicily suggests, however, that we need to adopt a more nuanced approach to the topic of ethnicity and rethink colonial identities so that they are no longer predicated upon polarities of opposites but rather an agglomeration of social and material cultures.