Abstract
Cremation 168 from the second half of the 8th century BCE (Pithekoussai’s necropolis, Ischia Island, Italy), better known as the Tomb of Nestor’s Cup, is widely considered as one of the most intriguing discoveries in the Mediterranean Pre-Classic archaeology. A drinking cup, from which the Tomb’s name derives, bears one of the earliest surviving examples of written Greek, representing the oldest Homeric poetry ever recovered. According to previous osteological analyses, the Cup is associated with the cremated remains of a juvenile, aged approximately 10–14 years at death. Since then, a vast body of literature has attempted to explain the unique association between the exceptionality of the grave good complex, the symposiac and erotic evocation of the Nestor’s Cup inscription with the young age of the individual buried with it. This paper reconsiders previous assessments of the remains by combining gross morphology with qualitative histology and histomorphometric analyses of the burnt bone fragments. This work reveals the commingled nature of the bone assemblage, identifying for the first time, more than one human individual mixed with faunal remains. These outcomes dramatically change previous reconstructions of the cremation deposit, rewriting the answer to the question: who was buried with Nestor’s Cup?.
Highlights
The Pithekoussai ancient settlement and necropolis are situated on Ischia Island, in the Bay of Naples, Italy (Fig 1)
Pithekoussai ancient settlement was founded by Greeks from Euboea, the large island east of the Attic Peninsula, in the 8th century BCE like Cumae, a city located a short distance from Naples, in South Italy (Strabo, Geographia, V, 4, 9; Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, VIII, 22)
Results of the human Osteon Population Density (OPD) values show that humeral specimens are distributed in two out of three OPD clusters: HIS-F(1) and HIS-G(1), fall in the first OPD cluster, whereas the humeral specimen HIS-B(1), with the highest OPD value, falls in the third OPD cluster
Summary
The Pithekoussai ancient settlement and necropolis are situated on Ischia Island, in the Bay of Naples, Italy (Fig 1). The site is the earliest Greek outpost in the West Mediterranean [1]. Pithekoussai ancient settlement was founded by Greeks from Euboea, the large island east of the Attic Peninsula, in the 8th century BCE like Cumae, a city located a short distance from Naples, in South Italy (Strabo, Geographia, V, 4, 9; Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, VIII, 22). A substantial portion of published research for Pithekoussai has focused on identifying the role the site played in the early stages of the Iron Age Greek colonization of the West. Excavations revealed that the necropolis extended across San Montano’s valley, on the northwestern corner of the Ischia Island (Fig 2)
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