Tombe, iscrizioni, sacerdoti e culti nei centri messapici: aspetti peculiari tra sincronia e diacronia

This paper looks at Messapian inscriptions mentioning religious terms, such as god names and cult names and appellatives. It is divided in two parts. The first one aims at underlining the importance of quantitative analyses of the spatial and chronological distribution of those incriptions in order to can correctly infer from them useful elements of information about Messapian cultural practices, especially as regards the strong and peculiar link which seems to exist between funerary practices, epigraphical writing and cult practices, in the light of the high percentage of ‘religious’ terms that are recorded in incriptions found in funerary contexts. Thanks to those analyses, we can see that different centres and sub-regional areas of the so called ‘Messapian world’ experienced a great variety of practices in this field. The clearest example is that offered by Messapian funerary inscriptions presenting the term tabara (= priestess), employed as a hieronym or in connection with the godnames Damatra and Aprodita, both of Greek origin: their distribution, mainly in centres located in the isthmic area between Taranto and Brindisi, shows that this practice cannot be attributed to the whole of the Messapian world, as it developed essentially in the context of intercultural relations between those centres and the Greek colony of Tarentum. This suggests a radical revision of our studies on the so called ‘Messapian world’, looking firstly and mainly to peculiarities and differences in the picture offered by the archeological record of each of the different centres and sub-regional areas of the Salento peninsula. In the second part of this work I intend to recall the attention on a case study regarding the Messapian cave shrine of S. Maria d’Agnano, near Ostuni (BR), traditionally attributed, on the base of the archaeological record, to the cult of the goddess Demetra/Damatra. A recent and convincing analysis of the inscriptions found in that shrine has strongly pointed to the hypothesis of a cult tributed to a male deity, and prompts the opportunity of a stronger dialogue between archaeologists and epigraphists.