From Micro to Macro and Vice Versa: Technology Studies and Network Analysis on Red-figured Vase Production between Sicily and Campania

Abstract: This chapter aims to present some of the main results from the A.G.A.T.H.O.C.L.E.S. project. With a highly interdisciplinary approach, some figurative traditions active between the end of the !th and the first half of the "th century B.C. in Sicily (Himera and the area of Syracuse) and along the Tyrrhenian coast (primarily Lipari and Campania) have been analyzed in depth. Technological features were explored through the support of computational imaging. Data come from multiscale perspectives. By using a microscale and a midscale perspective, it is possible to detect technological details related to the ancient painters’ gestures (e.g., images coming from Reflectance Transformation Imaging – RTI), especially concerning idiosyncratic ways of drawing preliminary sketches and the differing sequences of applying relief-lines and added colors. Moreover, the combination of these data with those from the experimental archaeological sessions was crucial to better test various technological aspects, creating analogies with ancient technological procedures, tools, and gestures. Finally, using a macroscale perspective through the application of Social-Network Analysis (SNA) allows us to reconstruct a wider historical overview of these artisanal networks, expressed with nodes and edges. This network approach, based on the raw Big Data from the seminal volumes by A.#D. Trendall and A. Cambitoglou, helps us to visualize in new and innovative ways the — sometimes elusive — possible collaborations and relationships between different# South Italian workshops and to explore interesting links suggestive of movements and migrations of artists between Sicily and Magna Graecia.