Taranto is still one of the most important cities in Southern Italy. Already at the end of the 8th century BC the city was founded as the only Spartan colony and soon became the leading trading center of Magna Graecia (Greater Greece). Between the last third of the 4th and the 1st century BC, a social class benefited from the political and economic situation, expressing its prosperity in the construction of architecturally elaborate chamber tombs, rich with grave goods.

The present book compiles the Tarantine chamber tombs for the first time in a comprehensive catalog, which includes plans of the burial chambers and the necropolis, a description of each burial context, and photographic documentation of the finds. With more than 150 chamber tombs discovered so far, the archaeological record presented here forms the largest group of South Italian chamber tombs ever systematically evaluated. Taranto boasts the largest concentration of chamber tombs discovered in any necropolis in Southern Italy to date, which can be taken as an indication of Taranto’s enormous wealth during this time period. At the same time, the grave buildings are an example of the incipient monumentalization of grave architecture in many parts of Southern Italy since the last third of the 4th century BC.

An in-depth analysis of the chamber tombs’ architecture, its décor and grave goods, as well as the topographical organization of the necropolis forms the foundation of this study. Through a comparison of the tombs with other contemporary South Italian burial chambers, a typical appearance of the Tarantine chamber tombs emerges. These tombs show how the Tarantine upper class responded to cultural influences, armed conflicts, and conquests, and how they changed or preserved the ideological and identity-creating elements of self-expression in the grave. The intervention of Rome in Southern Italy and the eastern Mediterranean also contributed to significant structural changes in the tombs. New elements and peculiarities in the grave architecture can be interpreted as reflections of contemporary events and social change. It should be emphasized, however, that the structure of a necropolis is not a simple reflection of real social conditions, but rather a representation of the ideal image that a society designs for itself.