Orientalising Period in pre-Roman Italy

Viene data una notizia preliminare dell'ultima campagna di scavo nella necropoli protostorica di Ficana (Acilia, Roma), eseguita nel 2007-2008, con il ritrovamento di 19 sepolture di epoca orientalizzante recente, arcaica e repubblicana. Fra queste si segnalano due tombe di carattere principesco a pseudocamera, conservanti ancora resti della copertura a tavo-lato di legno. Nella tomba 107 era sepolto un principe, la cui identità è rappresentata dagli oggetti di prestigio cerimoniali presenti nelle tombe principesche dei coevi e confinanti abitati di Castel di Decima (Tellenae) e della Laurentina Acqua Acetosa (Politorium), confermandone la sostanziale affinità culturale e la comune partecipazione ai traffici commerciali in atto fra l'area campana e quella etrusca. In particolare l'organizzazione del corredo all'interno della tomba, sottolinea il nuovo aspetto dell'aristocrazia gentilizia con potere ereditario, distinguendo i vari ruoli del capo, fra cui pare privilegiato quello di custode dell'hestia. Ficana, orientalizzante, tombe principesche laziali. Aristocratic burial ceremonial of orientalizing period: new data from Ficana. Preliminary report about the latest excavation in the proto-historic necropolis of Ficana (Acilia, Rome), conducted in 2007-2008, indicates the finding of 19 burials from the late Orientalizing, the Archaic and the Republican periods. Among them, we highlight two princely tombs with underground chamber, still preserving the remains of their coverage in wooden boards. In the tomb 107 was buried a prince, whose identity is represented by the prestigious ceremonial objects which are to be found inside the princely tombs of coeval and neighboring towns of Castel di Decima (Tellenae) and Laurentina Acqua Acetosa (Politorium), confirming the substantial cultural affinity and the participation to the same kind of trades taking place between the Campanian and the Etruscan areas. Namely, the organization of the goods in the grave underlines the new aspect of the gentilitian aristocracy with hereditary power, differentiating the many competences of the chieftain, among which the role as the keeper of the hestia seems to have been privileged. Ficana, orientalizing, Latial princely tombs. Lo scavo preventivo condotto nel 2007-2008 in proprietà Lippi, in un lotto di un migliaio ca. di metri quadri all'angolo fra Vicolo monti S. Paolo e via Madre Teresa Cittadini, ha messo in luce un lembo della necropoli, con 19 sepolture, poco più a sud di quello indagato negli anni 1975-1977 e 1981-1982 (fig. 1, a). 1 L'area presenta analogie con il gruppo di tombe scavato nel 1975, con sovrap-* Per esigenze editoriali si propone una versione ridotta del testo presentato in sede di convegno, rimandando ad una prossima pubblicazione la versione integrale. Si ringrazia la Direzione del Museo delle Civiltà per l'assistenza fornita nello studio dei materiali. 1. Cataldi 1984, p. 95 sq. posizioni di sepolture di età arcaica/repubblicana (T. 102, 110, 115-119) e con sconvolgimenti dovuti ad interventi di sistemazione agricola, forse già in epoca romana medio-repubblicana (aree T: 103-104-105). Le dodici sepolture protostoriche ora indivi-duate sono tutte inquadrabili nell'Orientalizzante recente; sei sono maschili (103, 104, 106, 107, 108, 111), tre femminili (109, 112, 113) e tre di genere indeterminabile (101, 105, 114). Sei delle dodici tombe (107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 114) ubicate presso l'angolo nord del lotto, presentano un interessante raggruppamento presso la tomba 107, a pseudo camera , con sepoltura principesca maschile, affiancata da due altre significative tombe di rango

"En tant que construction sociale et culturelle, le prestige peut être défini comme le rejaillissement de l’appartenance au groupe dominant. L’archéologie qui s’attache à l’étude des sociétés du passé à travers leurs vestiges matériels, est confrontée à un certain nombre de filtres et d’entraves lorsqu’il s’agit d’appréhender cette notion qui, contrairement à la richesse par exemple, appartient au domaine de l’immatériel. Si ce glissement du monde matériel vers l’immatériel est délicat à opérer, il est pourtant une étape indispensable à toute analyse socio-funéraire archéologique qui chercherait à atteindre les mécanismes de pensée collective et les choix culturels, à entrevoir la charpente sur laquelle repose la construction – et la différenciation – sociale.
À partir d’une étude de cas italienne, celle des nécropoles villanoviano-étrusques de la fin du Premier âge du Fer et du début de la période Orientalisante (fin du VIIIe siècle – première moitié du VIIe siècle av.n.è.), on se propose ici de s’intéresser aux supports du prestige, à ces marqueurs – plus ou moins visibles aux yeux de l’archéologue – qui entourent les membres de l’aristocratie naissante : les « princes » de l’Orientalisant. Si cette période charnière, au carrefour de la protohistoire et de la période archaïque, marque l’achèvement d’un long processus de différenciation sociale, économique et politique, les sépultures d’élite issues des différentes régions composant la « grande Étrurie », selon l’expression de Mario Torelli, vont alors déployer un mode d’expression singulier et autonome du prestige. Ainsi, selon que l’on se situe en Étrurie méridionale tyrrhénienne, en Italie médio-adriatique ou en Campanie, la tombe affichera, ou non, le prestige du « prince » et de son groupe à travers la possession, parfois ostentatoire, d’insignes de pouvoir et d’autorité, de biens exotiques, d’indicateurs de richesse, voire encore la pratique de certains rituels comme ceux de la commensalité. L’analyse comparée des sépultures d’élite des sites de Véio (Étrurie méridionale), Verucchio (Émilie-Romagne) et Pontecagnano (Campanie) devrait permettre, en révélant cette variabilité importante rencontrée d’une région à une autre, de mettre en évidence l’ancrage social et culturel inhérent à la notion de prestige. On verra que les symboles et les objets marqueurs du prestige peuvent exacerber le caractère individuel du défunt ou bien, au contraire, effacer l’individu. Enfin, on cherchera à s’interroger sur les implications socio-politiques soulevées par ces choix différentiels dans les modes de manifestation et d’incarnation du prestige."

The Oxford English Dictionary defines koine as 'a set of cultural or other attributes common to various groups'. This volume merges an academic career over a half century in breadth and scope with an editorial vision that brings together a chorus of scholarly contributions echoing the core principles of R. Ross Holloway's own unique perspective on ancient Mediterranean studies. Through broadly conceived themes, the four individual sections of this volume (I. A View of Classical Art: Iconography in Context; II. Crossroads of the Mediterranean: Cultural Entanglements Across the Connecting Sea; III. Coins as Culture: Art and Coinage from Sicily; and IV. Discovery and Discourse, Archaeology and Interpretation) are an attempt to capture the many and varied trajectories of thought that have marked his career and serve as testimony to the significance of his research. The twenty-four papers (plus four introductory essays to the individual sections, biographical sketch and main introduction) contain recent research on the subjects from the Kleophrades Painter to the Black Sea, Sicilian Coinage and archaeology in modern Rome. 247p, 137 b/w images (Oxbow Books 2009)

In recent years, the intense excavation and survey activity of the Veii project has greatly enriched our knowledge of the fortifications of the Etruscan city. In particular, the Campetti excavations have brought to light a segment of the Iron Age ramparts; a clean-up operation has clarified the roads and the organization of the defenses of the Portonaccio area; while has clarified the roads and the organization of the defenses of the Portonaccio area; while

As it is well acknowledged, the formulas of the Etruscan aristocratic gift-exchange, attested by several inscriptions of the 7th to mid-6th century BCE, derive from a broader oral tradition, which has left trace in the epigraphic documents that record the final stage of this phenomenon.
Starting from the hypothesis that the earliest phases of writing record often oral expressions, at times with rhetoric and formulaic aspects, the authors shows that some long and complex gift text belong to an earlier tradition, which included in gift-formulas information on the past history of the object, from its production to its exchange.
Comparanda in Homeric tradition and in the history of craftsmen’s signatures help to explain the passage from oral to written formulas, still ongoing during the Orientalizing period.

Keywords: Etruscan epigraphy, orality, gift-exchange, signature, gift formulas

"The late 7th and 6th century BC in Central Italy have long been regarded as obscure, because only a small number of graves could be ascribed to this period and because these tombs generally contained very few or no grave gifts. However, recent excavations at the burial grounds surrounding the Latial settlement Crustumerium (near Rome) have yielded a fairly large number of tombs dating to this period, shedding new light on this poorly understood period. The study of the Crustumerian funerary archive has revealed a number of remarkable changes in the funerary rituals after the end of the 7th century BC. Apart from a dwindling number of grave gifts granted to deceased individuals, the period witnessed the introduction of more monumental tombs for the deposition of more than one burial. In addition, it seems that people abided less strongly by former strict rules for the treatment of the bodies and the spacing, orientation and closing of the tombs.
Many of the changes in the burial customs seem to be prompted by a shifting locus of investment of the elite; from the sepulchral areas to the now urbanised settlements. The developments can also be viewed as the result of an altered ideological concept of death and afterlife. Overall, the funerary archive of Crustumerium has proven to be of great importance to bring a previously obscure period “into the light”."

Archaeological excavations carried out by the University of Naples Federico II and the University of Siena in the locality Trebbio di Sansepolcro (Sansepolcro, prov. Arezzo) have contributed significantly to the knowledge of an eighth to sixth century BC Italic settlement located on the left side of the river Tiber. This is a nucleated or semi-urban centre (of about 20-25 hectares) positioned on flat terrain, in all probability artificially fortified. The study of its peculiar settlement pattern and the rich data of its material culture, including many ceramics and metalwork, are starting to provide a new image of a ‘frontier’ settlement with definite cultural traits closer to the Middle Adriatic Iron Age, than to the Etruscan urbanised context. On the basis of this evidence and through comparisons with other  nearby sites (Cortona, Fabbrecce etc.), it is argued that in the Early Iron Age and the Orientalising/Early Archaic period the upper course of the river Tiber did not yet play the role of permanent geographical border between the Etruscans and the Umbrians referred to in later classical sources.

"The Tyrrhenian Sea appears as a geographically well defined space, enclosed within the Italian coasts and the big islands. During the Protohistoric Age, therefore, this is the scenery of development for a mosaic of cultures whose some will produce the under-layer of great ancient civilizations. With the setting of the cultural, commercial and colonial nets, of archaic and then classic periods, native and far-away peoples here give their contribution to the building up of new complex identities, although joined together thanks to the shared vector of the navigations and of the exchanges. Their cohabitation on a territory more and more reduced by the economic tensions and by the early will of predominance, at the origin of the first international conflicts in the Western Mediterranean Sea, will arrive therefore very often to some worthy forms of syncretism and of melting, voluntary or forced ones. Therefore, Ligurians, Etruscans and other peoples of the Pre-Roman Italy, Sicilians, Sardinians, Corses, but also Greeks and Punicians have given a contribute, after a balance concept, continuously put under discussion, into writing almost four centuries of small or big stories, up to the arrival of the Roman world.
The aim of the international day of studies FERTIGE13 (acronym of Iron –Age-, Tyrrhenian –Sea-, Genoa 2013) is to make dynamic the net of the young researchers, gathering about a dozen of PhD students and PhD doctors (up to five years since the end of the PhD), from different nations, who deal subjects concerning the space and the chronology in this way defined for the meeting, with a special remark for the inter-disciplinary approaches. The lecturers will be invited to present some papers related to this subject, pointing out the setting within a context on an inter-regional scale and focusing on the concerned methods, in the optic to compare at the best the nowadays dynamics of research among the different institutions."

This brief note focuses on an unpublished seal of the Lyre Player Group found in Tarquinia. This particular class of seals, widespread in the basin of the Mediterranean and reaching the Italian Peninsula during the Orientalizing period, represents a good indicator for the study of the circulation of craftsmen and traders. In particular, this paper presents some considerations about the development of glyptic in Etruria during the Orientalizing period.

Scopo della presente relazione è illustrare come alcuni casi di raffigurazioni di esseri fantastici attestati nel mondo preromano abbiano profondamente risentito di influssi artistici da diversi areali del Mediterraneo. In questo panorama il ruolo giocato dai Fenici e da altre genti del bacino orientale del Mediterraneo è stata una componente fondamentale nella trasmissione di stilemi, tipi iconografici e tecniche di lavorazione. D’altra parte è ormai ben noto nel panorama degli studi etruscologici come maestranze levantine siano state probabilmente operanti nella penisola fin da quote cronologiche relativamente alte, in particolare nei centri dell’Italia mediotirrenica. Si cercherà perciò di mostrare con particolari casi esemplificativi tratti da diverse classi di materiali come tutte queste componenti si possano riscontrare nell’artigianato artistico etrusco e italico e che, non solo tale ricezione sia stata più o meno fedele ma anche vi sia stata una rielaborazione locale non scevra a volte di originalità. In particolare gli esempi riguarderanno i Mischwesen su cui in tempi recentissimi si è ripreso lo studio e il dibattito proprio per il mondo preromano.