Tag: culture

Riace, Archeological star

29.6.2023

Riace is certainly a fascinating village, as it bears all the legacy of the complex mix of languages and peoples that gave life to Calabria and Mediterranean Europe. According to some theories, in fact, the toponym could derive from Middle Eastern languages, brought to the extreme Italian peninsula during the third millennium before Christ. Like Reggio and Roghudi, Riace would have its root in the Amharic ruha (breath, wind) followed by a suffix indicative of locality ( -ake , -adi ). Riace could be read as “Ruha-ake“, the place of the wind. Strabo (Geography VI, 7) explained the denomination of nearby localities (the promontory Zefirio, Capo Spartivento, and the ancient attribute of Locri, Epizefiria) with the frequent westerly wind (zephyr) which characterizes these localities, very relevant for a people of sailors.

The village

RIACE TODAY: TRADITION AND HOSPITALITY

Riacese culture is closely linked to the Greek and Aegean basin, both because it was founded by Greek colonists and because it was for a long time linked to the inheritance of the Basilian monks. Today, the feast of the Greek Orthodox saints, the two doctors Cosma and Damiano, celebrated on 25, 26 and 27 September, bears witness to this. Devotees who come from neighboring countries (and beyond) have the custom of reaching the sanctuary on foot, as a sign of their fidelity, and they thank the saints each time with gifts, songs and dances. The arm of San Cosma is also celebrated on the second Sunday of May.

Hill sight

Riace is also a completely modern symbol of endless migrations, which in our times see the peoples of the entire Mediterranean basin fleeing poverty, wars, terrorism and barbarism to crowd into very risky journeys towards the Calabrian coasts. Precisely for this reason, from 2004 to 2018 the Calabrian town also gained international fame thanks to its reception program for refugees and migrants, promoted in particular by Domenico Lucano, an activist elected mayor of Riace three times.

Lucano, former major of Riace

The reception system in force in the municipality during these fifteen years, journalistically defined as the Riace model, was divided into various actions, before being the object of criticism, controversy and finally, unfortunately, legal disputes: 1) obtaining regional funds or mortgages aimed at restructuring abandoned houses, 2) offering hospitality to migrants and asylum seekers and 3) employing them in artisan workshops of weaving, glass processing and jam.

Vernacular architecture

Also noteworthy is the creation of the “Riace euro”, a local currency in denominations of 1, 2, 10, 20, 50 and 100 euros which can also be used by tourists.

In 2017 there were 550 migrants hosted in Riace, but it has been estimated that at least 6,000 passed through the town.

Archeologica star

RIACE AS SYNONYMOUS WITH MEDITERRANEAN ARCHEOLOGY

However, Riace is universally known for the discovery in the marine waters in front of two bronze masterpieces of ancient Greek art: the two sculptures of the so-called Riace Bronzes.

The definitive interpretation of the role of the Riace Bronzes in Greek art is a mystery that still endures, but since 1972, the year of the discovery, to date the two bronze statues have written a chapter of world art.

B-Statue

The two bronze statues were found in Porto Forticchio di Riace Marina in Calabria. The recovery of the two statues did not influence the importance of the historical find, and was in fact carried out with inappropriate means. And yet, despite all the limitations of the initial recovery, the Riace bronzes constitute the most important archaeological find of the twentieth century.

The first statue, called statue A, is a 1.98-meter-high sculpture representing a strong young man in a stable position.

Magnificent artwork

The statue has a natural, non-rigid pose; the head is slightly bent to the right side. The entire muscular system is toned and taut, represented in the moment of contraction. The head and the face were made with many details. Statue B, on the other hand, is 1 cm lower than the first. The structure and position of the body follow in all respects that of statue A. But the head has some differences: the skull cap is smooth, not modeled, and the mouth is closed (the teeth cannot be seen).

The Riace bronzes are the representation of two hoplites, two heavy infantry warriors of ancient Greece.

A-Statue profile

However, they are not just any soldier, because the representation of nudity in ancient Greece has always been reserved for divinities, which is why it is possible that they are two heroes. Both statues were made with the bronze sculpting technique, one of the most complex. Bronze offers the artist the possibility of modeling, thus creating ever more subtle details.

All scholars agree in placing the Riace bronzes in the late style, i.e., the phase of Greek sculpture that can be placed in the period from 400 to 450 BC, which presented a more mature anatomical knowledge compared to the archaic style.

B-Statue, details of beard

Today there is also agreement that the two bronzes were produced by two different workshops, a belief reinforced by the difference in the type of copper used in the details. As far as the authors are concerned, it is not yet known who actually created the Riace bronzes, but there are various hypotheses: one of these is that they were created by Pythagoras of Reggio, an important bronzesmith active in those years. There are also doubts that they were made by the same author and, to date, it is not possible to have certain names about him.

THE ORIGIN OF THE RIACE BRONZES

Nothing is known about why they were in that precise archaeological site, nor about the journey they took to get there. Initially, in fact, it was thought that the two Riace bronzes were part of the same monument, even if it is difficult to establish exactly where they were. One of the most discussed hypotheses is that it was a monument dedicated to the enterprise of the Seven against Thebes, which was located in the Agora of Argos, and of which the remains have actually been identified.

A-Statue, details of the face

Although the research has been important, there are still too many open questions to provide a univocal and exhaustive reading of the Riace bronzes. One of the most urgent questions seems to be the actual number of existing bronzes, which is supported by some hypotheses. The other question concerns the journey of the bronzes, so we don’t know if they were transported as war booty or were destined for a collectors’ market, therefore for commercial reasons.

Calabrian Wine: metagenomics and archeology

3.3.2023

Wine is a crop for which the Calabrian terroir effect has been demonstrated.

The ‘‘terroir concept’’ has become popular in many parts of world. Originally developed for wine, it is now applied to many other quality crops, but surely mainly for wine. Although it is well recognized that vineyard soil is one of the main factors characterizing terroir, it is also well known that soil properties can vary markedly even within a single field, so that a vineyard, for instance, can produce two or more contrasting types of wine. The optimization of agricultural husbandry in relation to soil characteristics is the main focus of Agriculture in Calabria.

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METAGENOMICS OF CALABRIAN WINE

In Calabria, a considerable proportion of typical foods, such as dairy products, olive oil, wine, fruits and vegetables, and cereals are of so called “Mediterranean origin”. They are protected by
a ‘denomination of origin’ and the analytical methodologies used for the geographical identification of food products are numerous and for the most part experimental. The most important are DNA analysis and the
chromatographic, spectroscopic, and mass spectrometry techniques.
DNA analysis, using the DNA-barcoding methodology, allows a fingerprint for every product to be identified, guaranteeing its origin and quality.

Another very important perspective for Mediterranean wine and Calabrian one, particularly, is the “environmental” DNA sequences, unique to every species or subspecies, to be utilized like a ‘‘bar code’’ to identify a product by comparing them with a database containing the sequences of all known species. This approach is called “Metagenomics of Wine”

In 2009 a metagenomic experiment was conducted in Sila about potatoes (three types of soil were identified and their related metagenomic markers), the extension of the method to wine is still only a future persepctive. The process is the identification of so-called molecular markers for the traceability of the agricultural food chain, and it can become a new challenge for the protection of high-quality products.

In the world, instead, the last 2 decades have been characterized by an important change in the approaches used for microbial examination, due to the introduction of DNA-based community fingerprinting methods such as DGGE, SSCP, T-RFLP, and ARISA. These approaches allowed for the exploration of microbial community structures without the need to cultivate, and have been extensively applied to decipher the microbial populations associated with the grapevine as well as the microbial dynamics throughout grape berry ripening and wine fermentation.

These techniques are well-established for the rapid more sensitive profiling of microbial communities and these metagenomics approaches to vineyard microbial ecology especially unravel the influence of vineyard management practices on microbial diversity.

ARCHEOLOGY OF WINE AND MEDITERRANEAN WINE-MAKING

A very important attempt to identify the metagenomic origin of wine of rice was done by some Chinese scientists (we are citing the well known article “Metagenomic sequencing reveals the relationship between microbiota composition and quality of Chinese Rice Wine”, Xutao Hong, Jing Chen, Lin Liu, Huan Wu, Haiqin Tan, Guangfa Xie, Qian Xu, Huijun Zou, Wenjing Yu, Lan Wang & Nan Qin, – in Scientific Reports volume 6, Article number: 26621, year 2016).

The recent metagenomic experiment about the wine of rice is very interesting when we remember that the first archeological traces of wine can be actually found in China, in 7,000 B.C., when first type of wine in human history was a fermented mixture of honey, “rice”, grapes and hawthorn berries. Further, rice wine is still a widespread beverage in China today, while the first pure wine of grapes can be dated to 6,000 BC and geographically placed in the region of Georgia and the Caucasus in general.

Recent news of 2023 refer that the origin of the grape and that of the wine, which have so far been an unsolved mystery, date back even 11 thousand years ago, thanks to two domestication events geographically separated by more than 1,000 kilometers but similar in the result.
They occurred in Western Asia and the Caucasus region. It was reconstructed by the largest genetic analysis ever conducted, which examined over 3,000 samples of vine varieties also coming from private collections and specimens never documented. From that area the wine making, then, spread to the Phoenician, Greek and Latin world…

Map of Vitis vinifera (Neolithic period). Image Credit: Science journal

The study is published in the journal Science, also conquering the cover, by the international group led by the Chinese Agricultural University of Yunnan, the State Laboratory of Agricultural Genomics in Shenzhen and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, with the Italian collaboration of the Universities of Milan, Milan- Bicocca and Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria, of the National Center for Biodiversity (Nbfc) of Palermo and of the National Research Council (Cnr).

Particularly, the Chinese scientists investigated the influence of microbial composition on the quality of rice wine, and sequencing was performed for 110 wine samples on bacterial 16S rRNA gene and fungal Internal Transcribed Spacer II (ITS2).

Bioinformatic analyses demonstrated that the metagenomics of rice wine is marked by Lactobacillus brevis. These results led to a conclusion that metabolisms of microbes influence the wine quality and can mark it.

PERSPECTIVE: CALABRIAN OENOLOGY AND WINE ARCHEOLOGY

The new techniques of Metagenomics are a new wide open field for proving the best quality of Calabrian soils and of their vineyards. Further, archeology of wine can avail of this method to investigate history of wine in the south of Italy, as environmental heritage of Phoenician, Greek and Latin history into Calabrian wines.