Daunians

The broader region was inhabited by Italic peoples of Southern Italy with whom the Iapygians maintained contacts; among them are the Ausones/Oscans, Sabines, Lucani, Paeligni, Bruttii, Campanians, Aequi, Samnites and Frentani.

[9] The retroactive ascription of a Cretan or Arkadian heritage for the Iapygians was simply constructed for political purposes of the time these sources were written.

[13] Having been also less influenced by the Campanian civilization, it had thus a more peculiar culture, featuring in particular the Daunian steles, a series of funerary monuments sculpted in the 7th-6th centuries BC in the plain south of Siponto, and now mostly housed in the National Archeological Museum of Manfredonia.

Particularly striking is the Daunian pottery (as yet little studied) which begins with geometric patterns but which eventually includes crude human, bird and plant figures.

The main Daunian centers were Teanum Apulum (within the modern San Paolo di Civitate), Uria Garganica, the location of which though is not known with certainty, Casone, Lucera, Merinum (Vieste), Monte Saraceno (near Mattinata), Siponto, Coppa Nevigata, Cupola, Salapia (near Cerignola and Manfredonia), Arpi (near Foggia), Aecae (near Troia), Vibinum (Bovino), Castelluccio dei Sauri, Herdonia (Ordona), Ausculum (Ascoli Satriano), Ripalta (near Cerignola), Canosa di Puglia, Lavello and Venosa.

In the centuries before Roman annexation, the frontier between Messapic and Oscan ran through Frentania-Irpinia-Lucania-Apulia, the transboundary region between Daunians and Oscan-speaking Italic groups.

[6] There are numerous testimonies among ancient authors (Pseudo-Scylax, Virgil, Festus, Servius) of a presence of the Daunians beyond the Apennines in Campania and Latium where some towns claimed Diomedian origins.

[14] The Iron Age Daunian material culture persisted quite different from their Italic neighbours until the region was encompassed into the Roman Republic in the 3rd century BC.

In the western Balkans, isolated from outside influences, the practice of tattooing continued until the early 20th century in Albania and Bosnia, regions that in antiquity were part of the area of Illyria, where Daunian groups conceivably originated from.

Besides of religious beliefs, the accounts of the early 20th century reveal that the tattooing custom in the Balkans was originally connected with a fertility rite, being associated with the beginning of menstruation, thus proving that a girl had become a woman.