The New Galleriesof Ancient Classical ArtOpen at theMetropolitanMuseum, New Yorkby Jane Whitehead and LarissaBonfante

between 1912 and 1926. The atrium, whichwas designed to evoke the garden of a largeprivate Roman villa, has been enlarged, andin spite of its numerous innovations, thenew design remains faithful to the originalarchitectural concept: a space designed ac-cording to a style influenced by Classicalarchitecture and roofed in glass, which al-lows the viewer to admire the objects undernatural light.” This is the space formerlyoccupied by the kitchen and restaurant, putin place by a former director, Francis HenryTaylor; the huge windows in the south wall,blocked up when it served as a kitchen,have now been opened up to Central Park.

In addition to old favorites, there are nowmany objects that were never before exhib-ited, as well as pieces beautifully displayedin informative new contexts. In the sculp-ture court here are some spectacular, unex-pected Roman portraits: one of along-haired man in marble and two bronzeheads, perhaps a mother and son.

Cippus base of pietra fetida, carved with scenes ofgymnastic games. Casuccini Collection, Palermo Museum 8385.

Etruschi: La collezione Bonci CasucciniChiusi Siena Palermoby Debora Barbagli and Mario IozzoTranslated by Jane Whitehead.

The exhibit, curated by D. Barbagli andM. Iozzo, the result of the successful col-laboration among various institutions (theComune di Siena, the Comune di Chiusi,the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologicidella Toscana, the Fondazione Monte deiPaschi, the Regione Siciliana, and theMuseo Archeologico Regionale “A. Sali-nas”), has for the first time reunited findsfrom Chiusi that were part of one of themost prestigious collections of Etruscan an-tiquities, the Bonci Casuccini collection.One long page of the history of Chiusine ar-chaeology is bound to this important fam-ily: in a little more than a century, in fact,two members of the family gathered andput together equally important collections.For this reason, the exhibit, separated intotwo display sites, the museum complex atSanta Maria della Scala in Siena and theMuseo Nazionale Archeologico in Chiusi,has been organized into sections based onthe historical developments that led to theformation and the later sale of these impor-tant groups of objects.

The first section – the larger one of thetwo – is dedicated to the collection of PietroBonci Casuccini (1757-1842); it is housedtoday in the Museo Archeologico Regionaledi Palermo. Its founder, an able land owner,great administrator, and multi-faceted char-acter involved in the political changes of histime, managed, among other things, to ob-tain from Grand Duke Ferdinand III in 1792the enrolment of his family in the album ofthe Sienese nobility. His interest in archae-ology, which came to him rather late aftersome fortunate discoveries on his ownproperty, led him to organize and over theyears to increase a collection that was even-tually housed in the palazzo on the via Pors-enna in Chiusi. In the years between 1826and the death of Pietro, a series of excava-tions and discoveries in the vast familyholdings involved some of the most impor-tant necropoleis of Chiusi (the podere ilColle, le Pellegrina, Poggio Gaiella, Mon-tebello, and others).

Continued on page 8

The Metropolitan Museum’s opening ofthe new galleries of ancient Hellenistic, Etr-uscan, and Roman art on April 20, 2007completes the installment of its ancient col-lection, the first part of which, the BelferCourt, displaying pre-Greek and Oriental-izing art, was opened in 1996. A beautifullyillustrated, 13-page cover article in Archeo(March 7, 2007) presents an exclusive pre-view:

“The heart of the new galleries is thespectacular Leon Levy and Shelby WhiteCourt, a majestic courtyard and peristyle,dedicated to Hellenistic and Roman art; itoccupies an area designed and built by thearchitectural firm McKim, Mead, and White

Continued on page 8

VOLUME: 8 SUMMER 2007

LL ee tt tt ee rr ss tt oo tt hh ee ee dd ii tt oo rr ss

ETRUSCAN NEWS-Editorial Board, Issue #8, October 2007

President of the U.S.Section of the Istitutodi Studi Etruschi edItalici, ex officio

Editior-in-Chief

Language Page Editor

Editor for the Fellows

Book Review Editor

Layout Designer

Submissions, news, pictures, or other material appropriate to this newsletter maybe sent to any of the editors listed above. The email address is preferred. For sub-missions guidelines, see Etruscan News 3 (2003) 9. Nominations for membership inthe Section may be sent to Larissa Bonfante at the above address.

Dear Editors,

Just a quick note to pay my compli-ments: the new issue of Etruscan News is,I think, even better than usual. I love thePriapus article - much more informativethan most stuff on the topic, I assure you -and the debate over Etruscan genetics, thecats, everything in short. Complimenti! It'salways a great journal, but this is an espe-cially fun and interesting issue.

Andrew LearClassics DepartmentFlorida State UniversityTallahassee, FL

Dear Editors,

First of all, I thank you very much for thelast issue of Etruscan News, which I largelyappreciated for the important informationand agreeable form of publishing. Thissplendid magazine has really created a use-ful link among the archaeologists who areworking in so many countries.I am also very grateful to Larissa Bon-

fante and Jane Whitehead for the excellenttranslation and editing of my text, "Tar-quinia: Twenty Years of Excavation".

With best wishes,Maria Bonghi JovinoUniversità degli Studi di Milano

Dear Editors,

I have the pleasure to announce to youthat starting with the next issue of Studi Etr-uschi, which will come out in the next fewmonths, the publishing house will offer aspecial price for individual clients, as isdone for many scientific periodicals.The price of Studi Etruschi vol. 71 (only

for individuals) will thus be E. 120.00. Ibelieve that such a reduction in price mightincrease the circulation of this important re-view, and I would be grateful to you if youwould announce this information in thenext issue of Etruscan News.

Boris BretschneiderCasa Editrice G. BretschneiderVia Crescenzio 431-00193 Roma, ItalyInternet: www.bretschneider.it

http://www.box.net/shared/ov82fh16b5(Not an orphan.doc)http://www.box.net/shared/sslf66ae0i (Notan orphan.pdf)

Best regards.Yours sincerely,Ed RobertsonEdinburgh, Scotland

Larissa BonfanteClassics DepartmentNew York University100 Washington Square EastSilver Building, Room 503NewYork, NY 10003

Jane WhiteheadModern and Classical Lan-guagesValdosta State UniversityValdosta, GA 31698

Rex WallaceClassics DepartmentUniversity of MassachusettsAmherst, MA 01003

Elizabeth de G. ColantoniClassics DepartmentOberlin CollegeOberline, OH 44074

Franceso de AngelisArt History and ArchaeologyColumbia UniversityNew York, NY 10027

Elisa RowaValdosta State UniversityValdosta, GA 31698

lb11@nyu.edu

jwhitehe@valdosta.edu

rwallace@classics.umass.ed

elizabethcolantoni@obeline.edu

fda2101@columbia.edu

ecrowan@valdosta.edu

Page 2

Dear Editors:

The question of the Etruscan language'sultimate affinities has occupied the atten-tion of at least a proportion of scholars andan even greater number of amateurs for acentury and a half. What is clear is that theincreasingly common practice of listingmiscellaneous lexical resemblances, evenwith allegedly regular sound correspon-dences, cannot constitute acceptable proofof a genealogical relationship. Still lessvalid, of course, is the practice, to be foundeven in some supposedly academic works,of discarding what progress has been madeby the combinatorial method in order todream up more convincing comparanda.

The fact is that genealogical linguistic re-lationships can only be proved by identify-ing shared paradigms and irregularitieswhich are so unusual that they cannot be ac-counted for by chance or by borrowing.(See Johanna Nichols 1996: "The Compar-ative Method as Heuristic" in Mark Durieand Malcolm Ross (eds.): The comparativemethod reviewed: Regularity and irregu-larity in language change [New York/Ox-ford: Oxford University Press]).

By using the method of identifyingshared paradigms and irregularities, and ap-plying it to features of Etruscan morphol-ogy which are already generally agreed bymost mainstream specialists in Etruscan, Ibelieve that I have identified proof that Etr-uscan is relatively closely genealogicallyrelated to the Nakh-Daghestanian phylum(also known as North-East Caucasian).

I have attached the as yet unpublishedpaper outlining these findings, and wouldbe pleased to receive your comments. Thefiles can also be downloaded from the fol-lowing addresses:

A I A O U T R E A C H

TheAIA has added staff to support thenew Vice President for Education and Out-reach, Shelby Brown. Included at thisyear’s meeting was the childrens’ fair andteachers’ work-shops on “Ceramics in Ar-chaeology” and “Roman Clothing.”

Each provided reproducible activitiesand lesson plans for attending teachers.Click on Education on theAIAweb site forlesson plans (six more to be added thismonth!) and other resources for teachers ofK-12.

AA rr tt ii cc ll ee ss

Letter to our Readers:

Dear Readers,

Controversies are the theme of this issue. Since Etruscan News 7, when we includedarticles on the latest research into DNAand Etruscan origins, as well as the shocking al-legation that the Lupa was not Etruscan, we have received a flurry of articles, letters, andcritiques. The off-repeated question on the origin of the Etruscans has raised the hack-les of archaeologists now for two generations. As Francesco de Angelis said, “Doesn’tanyone read Pallottino anymore?” That is not to say that genetics cannot give us im-portant insights into the movements and formations of ancient peoples, including theEtruscans, as one of our editors has attempted to explain in an article included in thisissue (“DNA and Ethnic and Cultural Origins: the Possible and the Improbable”).As to the Lupa: the book byAnna Maria Carruba, (2006) claiming a Medieval origin

for the Lupa on the basis of the restoration, has had an important impact on scholars inItaly. It resulted in a conference organized at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” atwhich numerous scholars debated the question from both technical and art-historicalperspectives. We have invited Carol Mattusch to respond to issues presented in Car-ruba’s book. She has unfortunately not been able to see the statue before we went topress; we might expect a more detailed technical response in future issues.There is important museum news from both sides of the Atlantic. In New York, the

long-awaited opening of the Etruscan, Hellenistic, and Roman galleries has fulfilled itspromise. The Etruscan Monteleone chariot, ably restored under the direction of Adri-ana Emiliozzi, now displays elements that were not visible in 1903, when the chariot firstcame into the possession of the museum. It is conspicuously exhibited so that it can beseen as soon as one enters the gallery, and has been drawing the particular attention ofvisitors. An important interactive addition to the three major collections is the studycollection, a gallery of unlabeled artifacts arranged into cases according to variousthemes; each artifact can be pulled up on one of the many computers around the roomand researched for its parallels.The reunited and newly exhibited Bonci Casuccini collection of important Chiusine

material, long divided among Chiusi, Siena, and Palermo, is the subject of a brief reportby the organizers of this new exhibition. It will run through the summer and early fall,and can thus be seen by readers of Etruscan News in Italy this summer. They can alsogo to Verucchio, where an exhibit on early women has replaced the remarkable exhibi-tion of warriors’ tomb furnishings, reported in Etruscan News 7. An update on the Veruc-chio warriors exhibit: the surprisingly well preserved rounded tebennas, ancestors of theRoman toga, are soon to be studied at the textile laboratory in Copenhagen. A third veryinteresting exhibition in Italy this summer is Trasparenze dall’Antico. Ambre, housed inthe National Museum in Naples. It has been organized by Maria Luisa Nava, Soprint-endente per i Beni Archeologici delle provincie di Napolie Caserta, and will run fromMarch 26 to September 10, 2007.As we regroup for the fall, we hope to keep in touch. Our email addresses listed on themasthead remain the same, but readers will also note from the masthead that LarissaBonfante’s department mailing address has changed. We remind you that Etruscan Newshas two web sites: one, based at New York University, that contains the pdf versions ofissues 4 to 7 (www.nyu.edu/fas/center/ancientstudies) and an interactive site, based atthe University of Massachusetts atAmherst, that has longer versions of articles to whichreaders can respond (www.umass.edu/etruscannews).

Larissa BonfanteJane Whitehead

ANCIENTACOUSTICS: Why the Greeks couldhear plays from the back row

by Philip BallPublished online: 23 March 2007

The wonderful acoustics for which theancient Greek theatre of Epidaurus isrenowned may come from exploiting com-plex acoustic physics, new research shows.The theatre, discovered under a layer ofearth on the Peloponnesos in 1881 and ex-cavated, has the classic semicircular shapeof a Greek amphitheatre, with 34 rows ofstone seats (to which the Romans added afurther 21). Its acoustics are extraordinary:a performer standing on the open-air stagecan be heard in the back rows almost 60meters away. Architects and archaeologistshave long speculated about what makes thesound transmit so well.Now Nico Declercq and Cindy Dekeyser

of the Georgia Institute of Technology inAtlanta say that the key is the arrangementof the stepped rows of seats. They calculatethat this structure is perfectly shaped to actas an acoustic filter, suppressing low-fre-quency sound, the major component ofbackground noise, while passing on thehigh frequencies of performers' voices. Itis not clear whether this property comesfrom chance or design, Declercq says. Buteither way, he thinks that the Greeks andRomans appreciated that the acoustics atEpidaurus were something special, andcopied them elsewhere.

In the first century B.C. the Roman au-thority on architecture, Vitruvius, impliedthat his predecessors knew very well howto design a theatre to emphasize the humanvoice. "By the rules of mathematics and themethod of music," he wrote, "they soughtto make the voices from the stage rise moreclearly and sweetly to the spectators' ears...by the arrangement of theatres in accor-dance with the science of harmony, the an-cients increased the power of the voice."Later writers have speculated that the ex-

cellent acoustics of Epidaurus, built in thefourth century B.C., might be due to theprevailing direction of the wind (whichblows mainly from the stage to the audi-ence), or might be a general effect of Greektheatre owing to the speech rhythms or theuse of masks acting as loudspeakers. Butnone of this explains why a modern perfor-

mer at Epidaurus, which is still sometimesused for performances, can be heard so welleven on a windless day.Declercq and Dekeyser suspected that the

answer might be connected to the waysound reflects off corrugated surfaces. Ithas been known for several years now thatthese can filter sound waves to emphasizecertain frequencies, just as microscopic cor-rugations on a butterfly wing reflect partic-ular wavelengths of light. Thesound-suppressing pads of ridged foam thatcan be plastered on the walls of noisyrooms also take advantage of this effect.Declercq has shown previously that thestepped surface of a Mayan ziggurat inMexico can make handclaps or footstepssound like bird chirps or rainfall (see 'Mys-tery of 'chirping' pyramid decoded'). Nowhe and Dekeyser have calculated how therows of stone benches at Epidaurus affectsound bouncing off them, and find that fre-quencies lower than 500 hertz are moredamped than higher ones.

Murmur murmur"Most of the noise produced in and

around the theatre was probably low-fre-quency noise," the researchers say: rustlingtrees and murmuring theatre-goers, for in-stance. So filtering out the low frequenciesimproves the audibility of the performers'voices, which are rich in higher frequen-cies, at the expense of the noise. "The cut-off frequency is right where you wouldwant it if you wanted to remove noise com-ing from sources that were there in ancienttimes," says Declercq. Declercq cautionsthat the presence of a seated audiencewould alter the effect, however, in waysthat are hard to gauge. "For human beingsthe calculations would be very difficult be-cause the human body is not homogeneousand has a very complicated shape," he says.

Filtering out the low frequencies meansthat these are less audible in the spokenvoice as well as in background noise. Butthat need not be a problem, because thehuman auditory system can put back someof the missing low frequencies in high-fre-quency sound. "There is a neurologicalphenomenon called virtual pitch that enable

the human brain to reconstruct a soundsource even in the absence of the lowertones," Declercq says. "This effect causessmall loudspeakers to produce apparentlybetter sound quality than you'd expect."Although many modern theatres improve

audibility with loudspeakers, Declercq saysthat the filtering idea might still be relevant:

"In certain situations such as sports stadi-ums or open-air theatres, I believe the rightchoice of the seat row periodicity or of thesteps underneath the chairs may be impor-tant."

Page 3

DNA and EtruscanOrigins.G. Barbujani’s Responseto J. TurfaEditors’ note: This letter has beenslightly edited for length and tone.

In Etruscan News 7, Jean MacIntoshTurfa writes a [critique of] two geneticstudies from my laboratory. [This letter isa response to her comments.] In 2004 wepublished the first, and so far only, geneticanalysis of Etruscan bone remains (Vernesiet al., American Journal of Human Genet-ics 74:694-704), [and showed] that differ-ent Etruscan populations shared a commongene pool; in 2006 we compared DNAvari-ation in the Etruscans and in modern Tus-cans under various explicit demographicmodels, and observed little genealogicalcontinuity between the two populations(Belle et al., Proceedings of the NationalAcademy of Sciences USA, 103:8012-8017). In these Prof. Turfa [criticizes]: 1.the design of the 2004 study; 2. its samplesize; 3. the modern DNA samples withwhich the Etruscan DNA sequences werecompared; 4. the absence of archaeologistsamong the authors of both studies; 5. thequality of [our study’s] data; 6. its results;7. their interpretation; 8. the use of com-puter simulations to test hypotheses in the2006 study; and 9. the review process lead-ing to publication of the 2006 article.

I shall first answer to the [less seriouspoints]:

(1) In the 2004 study we found no signifi-cant genetic differences among individualsfrom classical Etruria, Capua and Adria. Ifthe Etruscans were mixed, they were mixedwith people who were genetically very sim-ilar to them. Moreover, the higher the ad-mixture, the higher the probability ofrandom resemblance with modern popula-tions. On the contrary, what calls for an ex-planation is the surprisingly low number ofDNA sequences shared by Etruscans andmodern Europeans, both Tuscans and non-Tuscans;

(2) Our 28 Etruscan sequences are so far thelargest European ancient DNA sample.Prof. Turfa would like to see 1,000 EtruscanDNAs, and I share her dream. But in thereal world we have to cope with the factthat the technical complexity of ancientDNA research is such that 20 years ofworldwide efforts have not yielded yet1,000 human sequences;

(3) The Etruscans’ DNAs were comparedwith two modern Tuscan datasets, one ofthem published by Francalacci et al. (1996,American Journal of Physical Anthropology

100:443-460). We could analyse the otherdataset, still unpublished, fromMurlo,cour-tesy ofAlberto Piazza andAntonio Torroni.Turfa says the Francalacci sample comesfrom undisclosed localities, but that is nottrue; a map of the sampling sites is inBertorelle et al. (1996, Human Genetics98:145-150). Should new Tuscan DNA se-quences become available, more compar-isons will be possible; at present, no othersuitable dataset exists;

(4) Indeed, there were no archaeologistsamong the authors of our studies. Tom Ras-mussen, Graeme Barker and Robert Tykotgave us precious input in the planning ofour work and in the interpretation of its re-sults, and are mentioned in the acknowl-edgements. However, a genetic analysisrequires competence in different fields,namely molecular biology and biostatistics.

Now to the more serious criticisms:

(5) Contrary to Turfa’s [suspicions], ribsand long bones, which we used, are a com-mon source of ancient DNA at least asmuch as tooth roots (see e.g. Green et al.2006, Nature 444:330-336). Turfa thenraises the issue of contamination of thesamples, and [then] complains that only 28of the initial 80 specimens were sequenced(in fact, they were 30). While there is nopossible positive proof that an ancient (or,for that matter, even modern) DNA se-quence does not contain errors, one cancheck whether there are reasonable doubtsabout the authenticity of a sequence. Start-ing from an initial sample of 80 individualsand 160 bone fragments (all these analysesare run in duplicate), we made 9 biochemi-cal tests, and at each step eliminated fromthe study the specimens for which there wasany reason to suspect they might contain in-sufficient DNAor multiple (and hence con-taminating) sequences. Thus, the 30sequences we published were obtained ac-cording to the current strictest methodolog-ical standards, and are those for which noneof the biochemical tests raised suspicionsof contamination. A subsample of these se-quences was then independently confirmedby a second laboratory. In the statisticalanalyses we reduced these sequences to 27to avoid possible effects of consanguinity.Turfa cites a criticism of our 2004 study byMalyarchuk and Ragozin (2004, AmericanJournal of Human Genetics 75:920-923);our reply [appeared in] in the same issue(pp. 923-927). It is worth mentioning thatin the 2004 study the nucleotide misincor-poration rate, a measure of the possible rateof error in the sequences, is among the low-est ever observed in ancient DNA studies.

(6 and 7) We never claimed that mtDNAlinks Etruscans with Asia Minor and notTuscany. Quite to the contrary, the Tuscansappear to be the modern population geneti-

cally closest to the Etruscans (Fst geneticdistance=0.036). The Etruscans are, on av-erage, closer to modern Turks (genetic dis-tance=0.037) than to any other modernItalian population studied (0.050<geneticdistance<0.118). All this information is inFigure 3 of the Vernesi et al. paper. Onpage 8015 of the 2006 paper we wrote:“Our simulations gave no evidence of ge-nealogical continuity between Etruscansand modern people from Anatolia. As aconsequence, it seems simpler to interpretthe cultural and genetic similarities betweenEtruscans and Turks as a consequence ofcontacts entailing genetic exchanges (as op-posed to common origins).”

(8). Ancient DNA research has many limi-tations. Samples are necessarily small; thelaboratory procedures are expensive andtime-consuming; only a single DNA regioncan be typed with reasonable chances to ob-tain reproducible results; and this region,the mitochondrial DNA, is only transmittedby the mother to the children. Therefore, atpresent there is no way to investigate pater-nal inheritance, nor do we have a way tocompare DNA diversity at mitochondrialand at other genetic loci. Still, knowing alittle about DNAvariation in ancient popu-lations is much better than knowing noth-ing. The extensive literature on theNeanderthal’s DNA, of which only a hand-ful of sequences are known, clearly demon-strates this, and nobody could deny thesignificant steps made in the reconstructionof our evolutionary past, ever since ancientDNA technologies were developed.

To make sense of DNA variation onemust compare it in ancient and modern peo-ple. If the modern people are directly de-scended from the ancient people studied, acertain level of genetic identity should beobserved. However, this level depends onfactors such as population size, natural se-lection, rates of immigration and of muta-tion, the long-term effects of which cannotbe reliably approximated by mathematicalformulae. The solution, then, is to do whatscience has been doing for centuries,namely, experiments. In this case, the ex-periments are based on the reconstructionof gene genealogies through time, a task forwhich theory is extensive and extremelywell developed (see e.g. Ray et al., 2005,Genome Research 15:1161-1167). One cansimulate the fate of a set of genes as theyare transmitted across the generations, vary-ing several evolutionary parameters, and re-peating the experiments thousands of times,so as to obtain a distribution of simulatedgenetic statistics. The simulated statisticsare then compared with the observed statis-tics, i.e. those estimated in the Etruscansand the Tuscans in our case. In this way,one can estimate the likelihood to observethe data, given a certain set of populationparameters, which define a certain model.If a model proves incompatible with data,

it is rejected; if not, it is considered ac-ceptable. (Science can tell us what is falsebut not what is true).

In our 2006 study we did exactly this.The numbers we input tentatively quantifyevolutionary factors, such as populationsizes and mutation rates. These numbers aredoubtless approximated, but the strength ofour approach lies in the fact that unlikely,or plain wrong, parameters will result inpoor resemblance between observed andsimulated data, and hence in rejection of themodel. Once a model shows any degree ofcompatibility with the data, the parametersare fine-tuned so as to achieve a better ap-proximation. This is not a way to predicthuman behavior, but rather to test whethertwo populations can be regarded as belong-ing to the same genealogy. In our 2006study, one-population models, that is, mod-els assuming that the Etruscans are the bio-logical ancestors of modern Tuscans,appeared unlikely. On p. 8015 we wrote:“We cannot guarantee that the ancient dataset is absolutely error-free, that the muta-tion rate we chose is accurate, and that noother modern Tuscan population could begenetically closer to the Etruscans, but noneof these factors is sufficient to account, byitself, for our difficulty to fit one-popula-tion models to the data.”

Because no other comparable study hasbeen carried out yet, it is impossible to saywhether the Etruscans are the exception orthe rule, that is, whether ancient popula-tions do or do not tend to resemble geneti-cally their modern counterparts. We shallhave a clearer picture when other past andpresent European populations are comparedgenetically.

(9). All articles published in the Proceed-ings of the National Academy of SciencesUSA undergo peer review.

Guido BarbujaniDipartimento di Biologia edEvoluzioneUniversità di FerraraVia Borsari 46I-44100 Ferrara, ItaliaEmail: g.barbujani@unife.it

Page 4

DNA and Ethnic Origins: the Possibleand the Improbableby Jane K. Whitehead

In Etruscan News 7 (Winter 2006) wereprinted an article by Lisa Trei, “AncientEtruscans unlikely ancestors of modernTuscans, statistical testing reveals.” She re-ports the findings of a genetic study (Moun-tain, Ramakrishnan, Belle, and Barbujani,PNAS [5/15/06]) that compared ancientEtruscan and modern Tuscan DNA andfound there to be only a “weak link” be-tween them. Trei cites Joanna Mountain,who developed the statistical model for thestudy: “we couldn’t tweak it [the simulationstudy] enough to get the modern people tolook like they descended from the people inthe Etruscan burial [sites].” The editors ofEtruscan News requested a response fromProf. Jean MacIntosh Turfa, and asked herto give an archaeologist’s critique. In thisissue, we print the reaction of the principalinvestigator, Prof. Guido Barbujani, to thatcritique (see page 4). Since then, NicholasWade, in an article in the New York Times(April 3, 2007), pushed the geneticists’ con-clusions further by claiming that the ancientEtruscan DNA actually resembles moreclosely that of the modern peoples ofTurkey than that of the modern Tuscans.(There have been no genetic studies to datethat have attempted to establish a DNAcon-nection between modern Turks and any ofthe ancient Turkish peoples.) Wade wenton to interpret his alleged connection be-tween modern Turks and ancient Etruscans(a connection that he parallels to the simi-larity in the DNA of the Etruscan breed ofcattle, the Chianina, to modern Turkishbreeds) as corroborating Herodotus’ theorythat the Etruscans originated in Anatolia.

This flurry of interest in DNA has sug-gested to the editors that an article weighingthe possibilities and limitations of DNA forstudying ethnic and cultural origins wouldbe useful for our readership. Given the vastscope and the many aspects of the topic,this summary must be highly simplified andgeneralized.

It was the conclusions that Trei drawsfrom Joanna Mountain’s statistical model-ing of the group’s genetic study, rather thanthe original study’s scientific protocols, thatelicited the strongest response from JeanTurfa. Trei states, “The findings suggestthat something either suddenly wiped outthe Etruscans or the group represented a so-cial elite that had little in common with thepeople who became the true ancestors ofTuscans.” Well, no. We are not dealingwith the Neanderthal here. We know whathappened to the Etruscans. They were anhistorical people: they wrote about them-selves, other peoples wrote about them, andthat written record, taken as a whole, is not

discontinous.Instead, the “weak link” between the an-

cient and modern samples must raise morebasic questions:1.What is the connection between genesand ethnic or cultural identity?2.What are the methods, and how reliableare they, for determining the genetic “fin-gerprint” of an ancient people?3.How can one establish a statistically reli-able connection between representativeDNA samples of modern and ancient pop-ulations?1: The first thing that must be said is that

genes do not determine culture, nor do theydetermine language. The Etruscans weredefined as a people by their common reli-gion, the Etrusca disciplina, and by theirlanguage, which was non-Indoeuropeanand different from that of any of theirneighbors.

It is no doubt the oddness of their lan-guage that spawned the universal fascina-tion with the mystery of their origins.Philologists long hoped that, if Etruscanorigins could be located in some specificarea, they could go to that place and find alanguage once or currently spoken therethat would allow them to “crack” the Etr-uscan language.

We now can securely identify two frag-mentary ancient languages that are relatedto Etruscan: Lemnian, known from somelate inscriptions from the island of Lemnos,and Raetic, known from inscriptions fromthe Italian Alps. Neither of these regionsshows much promise, and ancient Lydia, inmodern Turkey, because of Herodotus (whoreports the opinion of the ancient Lydians),remains the imagined origin of choice.Even in antiquity, as early as we can rec-

ognize them in the archaeological record,the Etruscans were not a completely homo-geneous culture. The various city statesvaried among themselves in burial prac-tices, tomb forms, pottery wares, architec-ture: in short, in almost every way onedefines culture. Nor were they, for most oftheir history, a political or military union oran economic bloc. The Etruscans are hardenough to define as a cohesive ethnic groupfrom their cultural presence; is it not wish-ful thinking that we want them to be genet-ically homogeneous?2: What are the methods of studying an-

cient DNA and their limitations? The lim-itations would seem overwhelming:theseare, chiefly, lack of preservation andcontamination of the samples. Finding suf-ficient organic material that is securely an-cient and securely Etruscan in order to puttogether a statistically significant numberof samples is difficult; the Etruscans, over

much of their history and much of their ge-ographical area, cremated their dead. Whenone can find inhumation burials, the sheerage of the remains contributes to decay andfragmentation of the DNA. Contamination,both from the ancient context that held theremains, and potentially also from theirmodern handling, affects a high percentageof the few available samples.

Nuclear DNA, preserved in the nucleusof the cell, is used for modern forensic pur-poses. Because it is not preserved to a us-able degree in ancient samples, studiesbased on ancient samples, such as that ofBarbujani et al., analyze mitochondrialDNA, which is found in the mitochondriaof the cell. This is a much smaller molecule,and thousands occur in each cell, so theyare more likely to be preserved. From mi-tochondrial DNA (mtDNA) scientists candiscern a relatively limited number of hap-lotypes, or lineages, which, even thoughfragmentary in preservation, can nonethe-less be distinguished one from another. Toborrow a metaphor from Prof. Paolo Fran-calacci, the lineages can be compared toworks of literature, say epic poems; fromeven a small fragment it is possible to dis-tinguish the Iliad from the Aeneid from theDivine Comedy from the Chanson deRoland from Hiawatha.

Changes in the mtDNA record, by theaddition of new haplotypes, occur onlythrough mutations, which take place, at aregular pace computed by scientists (differ-ent regions of the mtDNAmolecule mutateat different rates), over hundreds or thou-sands of years. Thus mtDNA is useful fortracking the movements of peoples acrosswide geographical distances and over thecourse of millennia. As Luca Cavalli-Sforza, the author of The History and Ge-ography of the Human Gene, once said,“Everyone came from somewhere else.”The mtDNA lineages that most frequentlycharacterize the ancient Etruscan genes arealso commonly found in populations acrossEurope and westernAsia; most of these arelineages that were carried fromMesopotamia into Europe with the spreadof agriculture during the Neolithic. Cav-alli-Sforza’s studies of nuclear DNAmark-ings and blood types have shown that notjust the technology of agriculture, but thefarmers themselves, passed from the NearEast across Europe over the course of 4,000years. Since these Neolithic lineagespassed through Turkey, it is not surprisingthat they should be still found there in themodern mtDNA. The fact that the Ne-olithic farmers themselves passed throughon their way to Europe may explain also thecommonality of the Chianina cattle DNAwith that of Turkish breeds.

Because it is preserved in the mitochon-dria, however, only the mtDNA of themother is passed on to the offspring: a pat-tern contrary to that of the cultural defini-tion of lineage in most peoples (but not the

Etruscans). The matrilineal transference ofmtDNA thus also records the intermarriageof foreign women into the genetic patternof a people. Count Ferdinand Cinelli oncetold me that he had known the last surviv-ing member of the Cecina family ofVolterra, a family whose lineage extendedback to the quintessential Etruscans, AulusCaecina père et fils, friends of Cicero. Sup-pose we could analyze the mtDNA of thatlast Cecina: if any single Cecina man, overthe course of the millennia stretching be-tween Cicero’s time and the mid-20th cen-tury A.C., had married a non-Etruscanwoman, his pure Etruscan lineages wouldhave been lost, despite the passing on of thename through the father’s line. Of course,if his son married an Etruscan woman, Etr-uscan mtDNA would come back into theline; but as the centuries passed and the Etr-uscan population mingled with the Romansand Gauls and Francs and others, it wouldbe harder and harder for a man to be surehe had a wife with Etruscan mtDNA, if hecared.

Thus, the more contact a given peoplehas with foreign elements (assuming thatcontact involves some intermarriage), themore muddled the pattern of its mtDNA lin-eages becomes. Since it is a fact that Tus-cany is paradise, it is not surprising that themodern DNA has drifted far from its an-cient patterns. Conversely, the earlier theDNAsamples, the closer they are to the ge-netic origin of the people. The Villanovanage peoples, recognized as the IronAge Etr-uscans even though they had not yet begunto write their distinctive language, mostlycremated their dead. Thus the majority ofthe ancient Etruscan DNA sampled, and allof that from the Barbujani study, dates be-tween the 7th and 3rd centuries B.C., wellafter intensive foreign contacts had stronglyinfluenced their material culture.

It is significant that Barbujani’s studystill finds relatively little heterogeneity inthe mtDNA samples from different sitesand centuries; it suggests that the Etruscanshad a high enough population to be self-sustaining, and did not need to practicemuch intermarriage. But it is in the cen-turies following, with the tremendous eth-nic fluidity and diversity of the Hellenisticperiod and the Roman Empire and, after itsfall, the greater chaos of the Italian penin-sula up until modern times, that any genetichomogeneity would have been more se-verely weakened than in the previous mil-lennia. At the same time the fact that theEtruscans had given up speaking their lan-guage in favor of Latin made them harder todistinguish from the rest of the population3: Establishing a connection between the

ancient and modern DNA of a single (orwhat one hopes is a single) people is prob-ably the stickiest wicket.. It is interestingthat, while the mtDNA lineages of ancientSee “DNA” page 12

Page 5

Fig. 1: Plan of the “ settore dell’Autostrada”area of the Bandi-taccia Necropolis of Cerveteri, with location of the Tomba delleIscrizioni Graffite.

Fig. 3: Inscription above the door of the Tomba delleIscrizioni Graffite.

Fig. 2: Draw-ing of thedoor and wallinside theTomba delleIscrizioniGraffite,with inscrip-tions and fig-ures.

Page 6

Caere, Banditaccia: The Tomba delleIscrizioni Graffiteby Barbara Belelli MarchesiniUniversità degli Studi La Sapienza di Roma

The recent publication by GiovanniColonna of a Caeretan Tomb bearing sev-eral incised inscriptions (“Cerveteri. LaTomba delle Iscrizioni Graffite,” in M. Pan-dolfini Angeletti, ed., Archeologia inEtruria Meridionale, Atti delle giornate distudio in ricordo di Mario Moretti, CivitaCastellana 14-15 novembre 2003 [Rome2007] 419-468) has not only revealed thepresence of a highly representative funer-ary monument but has also shed light on thebiography of the well-known king ofCaere, Thefarie Velianas, connected by thegolden tablets of Pyrgi to the erection ofTemple B and to the foundation of theSanctuary of Uni-Astarte.

The Tomb was discovered in 1981 in theBanditaccia necropolis, in the so-called“settore dell’Autostrada,” stretching besidethe modern asphalted road and situated nextto the “Vecchio Recinto.” This area has re-cently undergone substantial cleaning fromvegetation and ground deposits, and it istherefore possible to have a good generalidea of its complex organisation. The ur-banistic arrangement of the area is the re-sult of its exploitation from the Villanovanperiod onward, through several activitiesthat have strongly modified the originallandscape of the place. We remind readersthat the features of the local volcanicbedrock, easy to cut and sufficiently resist-ant to atmospheric agents, have allowed thedevelopment of funerary architecture andthe gradual growth of a carved town, whichprobably much resembled and reflected thephysiognomy of Caere itself; for this rea-son the Banditaccia necropolis has been in-cluded by UNESCO in the WorldwideHeritage since 2004.

The district to which the Tomba delle Is-crizioni Graffite belongs developed alongthe north-western side of the main funeraryroad, which crossed the plateau longitudi-nally and was progressively deepened(Fig.1) The tomb itself occupies a quad-

rangular open space left by previous dig-ging and building operations. To the late8th century B.C. belong some early par-tially-built chamber tombs enclosed bysmall tumuli, which are preserved on theleft portion of the original bedrock surface.To the Orientalizing period (beginning ofthe 7th century) belong the huge Tumulodell’Affienatora, 25 meters in diameter, anda later minor and nameless tumulus, bothstanding at some distance from the road.The 6th century phase, marked by the in-troduction of the so-called tombe a dado,brought to the district a neat regular plan.Such a feature is well shown by the archi-tectural façade created along the deep rock-cut funerary road by the rhythmic sequenceof doors and dromoi, and by their architec-tural crowns, only partially preserved. Theplans of the tombs themselves, some ofwhich are decorated with simple geometricpainted patterns, are of different kinds, alldating to the first three-quarters of the cen-tury.

The Tomba delle Iscrizioni Graffite waserected between the row of tombe a dadoflanking the road and the tumuli, within adepressed square which seems to date backto the Orientalizing period. The square isdelimited by a path connecting the main fu-nerary road to the nameless tumulus, and italso preserves a fossa tomb covered withhorizontal slabs, datable to the end of the7th or beginning of the 6th century B.C.;the fossa tomb has been respected in furthertransformations of the area.

The underground Tomba delle IscrizioniGraffite was enclosed by a well-built rec-tangular structure, parallel to the main fu-nerary road. It was originally about 1.80meters high, and consisted of a foundationcut from the bedrock, and of opus quadra-tum boundary walls, with a substantial em-bankment and crowned with a simplemolding. On top of the monument was aflat earthen tumulus, which was accessiblethrough a lateral staircase. The entrance to

the tomb, sealedwith tufa blocks,opens in the middleof the front side ofthe monument andis flanked by exter-nal benches. Threesteps lead to ashort, partiallycovered dromos,which also had an

upper shaft; such a shaft was used to fill inthe dromos partially with soil between oneburial and the next, both as a hygienicmeasure and as a security measure to pre-vent robbing. A minor lateral chamber ex-tends off the dromos on the right side; thedromos itself leads to the main tomb, whichconsisted of two parallel, coaxial chambers(type Prayon E). The first chamber isslightly higher and longer than the secondone. Both have slanted ceilings, but thehigh-relief columen runs transversally inthe first chamber and longitudinally in thesecond one.

The transversal wall that divides up thetwo funerary chambers bears a central door

and two small lateral windows, which areframed by semi-convex string coursesedged with Doric moldings and proiec-turae. The furniture is all carved from thebedrock and consists of beds and a singleplain seat, reminiscent of the aristocratic“thrones” of the Orientalizing period, nextto the entrance door. There are pairs ofbeds in each chamber, all of them shapedlike klinai and flanked by a small bench forobjects. The beds show that the small lat-eral chamber could be used for two infants,whereas the main burial space could houseup to four adult couples.

The tomb’s coaxial chamber pattern,

which first appears at the end of the 7thcentury and is widely used, with slightmodifications to the main proportionsthroughout the next century both in Caereand its territory, is not its most significantfeature. The most interesting features of thetomb are the technique and the quality ofthe decoration that was applied to the trans-versal partition wall (figure 2). This wallwas first covered with a thin layer of clay ofa light colour (a rare technique also attestedin the Caeretan Tomba dell’Argilla). Apainted decoration was then used to markout architectural elements, the red color sig-nifying the wooden elements and the blackcolor the mouldings around doors and win

dows. This kind of decoration is not con-fined to the partition wall but stretches tothe other walls, where it is directly appliedon the bedrock surface; this is the case forthe multicolor horizontal fillet that runsaround the antechamber walls and separatesthe level of offerings from the upper level.

The upper level of the partition wall alsobears an incised decoration, consisting offigures drawn with varying degrees of fi-nesse and without any pattern. It is possi-ble to identify at least four human figures,all of them turned to the left, and anotherobject, which may be a pomegranate.

Continued on page 9

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Italy Recovers RareMarblesby Elisabetta Povoledo, compiledby Lawrence van GelderJanuary 25, 2007: The Italian governmentsaid yesterday that police investigators hadtracked down a rare group of first centuryB.C. marble panels that had been illegallyexcavated and offered to museums and pri-vate collectors. The 12 panels depict glad-iators in combat and were found about twoweeks ago in the garden of a private home25 miles north of Rome, a governmentprosecutor, Paolo Ferri, said at a news con-ference. That the thieves did not succeedin selling them suggests that the market inancient antiquities has largely dried up, hesaid.

He credited Italy’s tougher stance indealing with those who loot antiquities, in-cluding prosecutions he has led recently inRome, like the current trial of a former J.Paul Getty Museum curator. Mr. Ferri de-clined to give further details on the case,saying an investigation was under way; hedid say that dealers already under investi-gation for such trafficking were involved.Anna Maria Moretti, a state superintendentfor antiquities, said the panels would be ondisplay at the National Etruscan Museumafter they were restored.

Nasher Museum acquires ancient treasures

Ellen Sung, The News Observer

DURHAM – The Nasher Museum of Artat Duke University has received a monu-mental gift of ancient Mediterranean artthat doubles the size of the museum’s an-tiquities collection and includes objectsnearly 5,000 years old.The gift from an anonymous donor, offi-

cially announced 3/05/07, was collectedfrom the 1920s to the early 1980s and in-cludes about 220 pieces in gold, terracotta,bronze, ceramic, marble and amber.“It ac-tually complements the older collection,”said Duke archaeology professor CarlaAn-tonaccio. “I’m not telling my students theyhave to go to Raleigh now” to study theN.C. Museum of Art’s ancient objects.

About 60 antiquities – including 45pieces from the gift – is on view in a newexhibit titled “The Past is Present,” whichopened at the Nasher on Feb. 15. Other ob-jects will be available for students andscholars to study. Museum officials andclassics professors declined to identify thedonor but said the gift came from someonewith longtime Duke ties, not an alumnus.

The gift comes amid a roaring contro-versy about ancient objects looted from ex-cavation sites and acquired by museums.The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles,the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NewYork and the Boston Museum of Fine Artshave returned antiquities to Italy andGreece under questioning about how theobjects were unearthed. Meanwhile, for-mer Getty antiquities curator Marion Trueand American art dealer Robert Hecht areon trial in Rome on charges of traffickingstolen artifacts. And looting in Iraq has be-come an urgent concern among archaeolo-gists.

“Do you have a bill of sale for this?”Kimerly Rorschach, who became Nasher’sdirector in 2004, said the museum hasturned down several gifts of antiquitiessince her arrival because of incompletedocumentation. When the anonymousdonor approached the museum in 2005, sheassumed the same problem would exist.“You say, ‘Well, do you have a bill of sale

for this?’” Rorschach said. “To our delight,we were able to accept.”The Nasher is working on a policy for

accepting antiquities, but Rorschach saidshe is inclined to turn down gifts that aren’tdocumented before 1970, when the UnitedNations Educational, Scientific and Cul-tural Organization adopted a convention totighten antiquities trade. But the Getty andthe British Museum have adopted the samestandard.“You don’t want to acquire things that are

excavated recently,” Rorschach said.“There is a link between the market andclandestine looting of sites. We don’t wantto contribute to that in any way…Prettysoon, the IraqWar will be 10 years ago, andwe know we won’t want to be acquiringwork that was sold at that time.”Malcolm Bell III, a University of Virginia

archaeologist and a leading proponent ofstricter museum acquisition policies, lec-tured Friday at the Nasher. He and An-tonaccio are co-directors of excavations atMorgantina, a major archaeological site inSicily that dates back to 1,000 B.C.

“It is extraordinarily difficult to excavateareas raided by looters,” Bell said, notingthat thieves with metal detectors damage ar-tifacts they think are worthless and rip ob-jects from their original context. “The artmarket erases the history of ownership thatmuseums otherwise work very hard to pro-tect.”

Objects to adore as well as studyAt a Friday preview of the gift, Anne

Schroder, curator of academic programs,stood before a Greek Droop cup from thesixth century B.C. It was done in hallmarkburnt-umber-and-black style known asblack figure, and Schroder pointed out theintricate figures painted underneath horsesand warriors and the detailed patterning to-ward the stem.

“It sends chills up my spine,” Schrodersaid.Other highlights of the new collection in-

clude an exquisite sculptural gold disc withfour bees and a flower, possibly worn as apendant in the seventh century B.C., and analmost perfectly preserved amber dolphinfrom Southern Italy.The exhibit allows stunning visual con-

nections: a Greek white ground lekythos, orstorage vessel, from the fifth century B.C.,shows a woman with a mirror in the back-ground; the same case holds an Etruscanmirror of near-identical shape.

A new mosaic with Aiòn and the Seasons fromLucania (Oppido Lucano, PZ, Italy)by Maurizio Gualtieri, Università degli Studi di Pergia

The mosaic was discovered in the late1990s during the large scale excavationsconducted at the site of Masseria Ciccotti(Oppido Lucano, PZ) by a University of Pe-rugia/University of Alberta team. It be-longs to the late 2nd-3rd c. A.D. phase of alarge residential villa in the hinterland ofnorth-eastern Lucania, the region south ofVenusia, between the Ofanto and Bradanorivers, where large senatorial estates andImperial properties are indicated by a num-ber of epigraphic texts. The well-knownlate 2nd c. A.D. “Melfi sarcophagus,” a di-rect import from the Proconnesus area, waspart of the funerary monument annexed toone such villa at Rapolla (only 30 kms.north of Masseria Ciccotti), which mayhave belonged to the Bruttii Praesentes, asenatorial family of Lucanian descent con-nected with the imperial family (BruttiaCrispina was wife of Commodus).A preliminary discussion of this mosaic

was included in a recent, comprehensivestudy on La Lucania romana, Quaderni diOstraka, vol. 8, Naples 1993 (reviewed byR. Ross Holloway in Etruscan News 5[2006]). Particular reference is made in thatvolume to the architectural context (a re-ception hall opening onto the peristyle toprovide monumental access to the large ce-natio, on the opposite side) and to the in-sights it provides into the level ofownership of some of the recently exploredvillas from Lucania.

One of the most important aspects of thismosaic, as already pointed out in La Luca-nia Romana, is the fact that unlike othercomparable examples with similar iconog-raphy known from the Roman world anddated between the 2nd and early 4th c.A.D., it belongs to a clearly definable ar-chitectural context which, in its turn, can beplaced within a carefully studied archaeo-logical context (the villa and its landscape,the object of a systematic exploration in the1990s: see H. Fracchia and M. Gualtieri,”Roman Lucania and the upper Bradano val-ley,” in MAAR 43-44 [1998-1999] 295-343).

Most recently, restoration and removal ofthe mosaic from its original floor (then itsplacement, for the sake of preservation, inthe National Museum at Muro Lucano, PZ)have allowed a more specific analysis of theiconography and style of this exceptionalpiece, which undoubtedly provides new andimportant documentation on mosaic pro-duction in South Italy (M. Gualitieri “Aiòn”

e le Stagioni in Lucania: contesto archit-tettonico, committenza, musivarii,” Atti XColloquio AISCOM [Tivoli 2005] 225-240).

The large figured panel (6 x 6 m.), withan elaborate polychrome geometric decora-tion that dates it to the central decades ofthe 3rd c. A.D., includes four octagons atthe corners of the composition, with thepersonifications of the Seasons in the guiseof stately female busts, and a central octa-gon with the representation of Aiòn seatedin a rocky landscape, holding the circle ofthe zodiac with his upraised right arm and abunch of flowers and fruits (rather than themore common cornucopia) with his left.The personification of the cyclical, inces-sant flow of time, ensuring the regular al-ternation of the seasons and thus of theagricultural cycle represented in a centralroom of the reception area of the villa

See “Mosaic,” page16

Page 7

Fig. 2. Urn from Chiusi, Casuc-cini Collection. Male figure re-clining on lid (head and rightarm missing). On casket, reliefscene of Hippolytus thrownfrom chariot, surrounded byfemale demons. (Palermo,Museo Archeologico Regionale"A. Salinas," inv. nos. 12305).

“Etruschi,”Continued from page 1At the death of the founder, the collectionincluded cippi, funerary urns and sculpturesin pietra fetida [fig. 1], urns of alabaster[fig. 2], travertine and terracotta, buccheropottery, Attic black- and red-figure pottery,painted Etruscan ceramics. In spite of thefact that his son Francesco had not indi-cated a wish to give up the important col-lection he had inherited, and had evenasked Alessandro François to continuesome excavations, his sons Pietro and Ot-tavio at his death decided to sell the collec-tion to ease the changed economicconditions of the family. The negotiationswere long and complex, because of the con-siderable sum requested; the sale was onlyconcluded in 1865, the Palermo Museumthe buyer.

The first section of the exhibit is thus en-tirely dedicated, at the Siena venue, to a dis-play of the material from the first BonciCasuccini collection. The exhibit openswith the famous sarcophagus of Hasti Afu-nei, discovered in 1826 in Località il Colle,bronzes and more, displayed here besidethe cinerary statue from Poggio Gaiella andseveral cippi in pietra fetida, and a rich se-lection of Hellenistic period cinerary urnsin alabaster, travertine and terracotta. Thestone sculpture is flanked by a selection ofChiusine bucchero vessels, among whichare the oinochoe with Perseus and the Gor-gon, a lebes with a mourning figure on thelid [fig. 3], a full documentation of Atticpottery with masterpieces of the most im-portant black- and red-figure painters(Lydos, the Antimenes Painter, the An-dokides Painter, Epiktetos, the BerlinPainter, the Syleus Painter [fig. 4], Makron,and others) and of Etruscan ceramics (with

the amphora of the Micali Painter and hiscircle, a krater of the Vanth Group), as wellas bronzes and objects in bone and ivory.In addition, this section is accompanied bypanels that illustrate the structure and paint-ings of the Tomba del Colle (the Tomb ofthe Hill) discovered in 1833.

The second section concentrates onPietro’s great-grandson, Emilio Bonci Ca-succini, son of the younger Pietro. He puttogether a second collection between 1899and 1934, with a particular attention to ar-chaeological finds, once again obtainedfrom the excavations conducted on his fam-ily’s properties. His “new way” of collect-ing is also documented in the inventory thathe compiled, in which he recorded the exactprovenience and context of each find. Acollaborator of Emilio was the youngRanuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, already atwork editing his thesis on the necropoleisof Chiusi: from him come some of the mostinteresting insights into Emilio’s personal-ity, which appear in Bianchi Bandinelli’ssecond edition of Emilio’s obituary.

The objects from Emilio’s collectionwere sold in 1953 by his son Alessandro tothe Archaeological Museum of Siena,where they remain. The second section ofthe exhibition thus offers a selection of theobjects from this collection, reorganized byDonatella Zinelli: it includes the contentsof dolium burials and chamber tombs of theOrientalizing Period, found at Ficomontanoand Marcianella, and of chamber tombs atLa Pellegrina and Querce al Pino, dated be-tween the second half of the 6th and thefirst half of the 5th centuries B.C. Theseobjects, produced by the earliest of Emilio’sexcavations, are accompanied by referencesto excavations conducted, beginning in1924, on the estate of la Marcianella.

The Siena exhibit closes with two smallsections, the first of which is dedicated tothe “epigonoi,” the later generations, of theBonci Casuccini family, with some materialthat is now the property of Nicolò Casini,and according to the same family, with ob-jects and important documents for recon-structing the history of the archaeology(stamps of nobility, a book of family mem-oirs, portraits, photos, and other items).

The Chiusi exhibit, set up in the reno-vated rooms of the former Fascio House(planned by another member of the family,Guido Bonci Casuccini) revolves around asingle thematic nucleus, the archaic stonesculpture from Chiusi. It includes uniquepieces such as the so-called “Pluto,” cylin-drical and parallelipipedal bases in pietrafetida, funerary lions and sphinxes, a boxand two limestone bases, a xoanon, andother things.The exhibition, which opened onApril 20,

2007, will continue until November 4,2007.

Fig. 3.Liddedlebes ofbuccheropesantewith fig-ure ofmourneron thelid. Ca-succiniCollec-tion,PalermoMuseum.

Fig. 4.Attic RedFigurestamnosby theSyleusPainter:Heraclesand theHydra.PalermoMuseumV763.

“New Galleries,”Continued from page 1The cubiculum from the villa at Boscore-

ale has been newly restored, its bed re-moved and placed in a gallery where onecan see it from all sides; the visitor can nowenter into the room to view the frescoesmore fully. The black Pompeiian ThirdStyle frescoes from Boscotrecase have beenassembled into a cubiculum, where one canfully enjoy their refinement and ambience.

Upstairs from the main hall, on the mez-zanine, are the study collection and the Etr-uscan galleries, which are the main interestsof your editors and the readers of EtruscanNews. Here the Monteleone Chariot (fig-ure 1) reigns supreme. It can be seen fromthe gallery below when it is not hiddenfrom view by hordes of visitors crowdingaround it. It is now in a free-standing caseand, as before, its associated tomb furnish-ings are displayed in a nearby case. What isremarkable about the chariot’s new restora-tion, carried out over the course of fiveyears under the direction of Adriana Emil-iozzi (photo above ), and its installation, isthe fact that so much more of it can be seenand understood. Some of the ivory piecesthat adorned the exterior of this extraordi-nary chariot have been put back in place,and the detailed reconstruction includes acareful placement of the shaft at the heightof the small ponies that once drew the ve-hicle The new installation reveals the work-manship on the bronze sheeting of the cha-

riot; the wooden backing, which once ob-scured the underside of the repoussée de-sign, has been removed. The reliefs depictthe life and apotheosis of the heroAchilles,to whom the driver of the chariot is implic-itly compared.

Also new to this installation is the waythat the amber, mirrors, and cinerary urnsare exhibited and explained. One of theworld’s most remarkable pieces of figuredamber, appropriately set apart in its owncase so that its exquisite detail can be seen,is the large image from Ancona of a reclin-ing couple, reminiscent of the Cerveteri sar-cophagus of the bride and groom. It wasonce used as a decorative element on afibula.

Notable, too, is the installation of the twodozen bronze mirrors in the collection; eachis accompanied by a line drawing that al-lows the viewer to discern the careful inci-sion adorning the mirror’s reverse. Amongthe Hellenistic period urns, some of whichretain their coloring and painted inscrip-tions, we particularly noted the epitaph of alady with the gamonymic “CREICESA:”[the wife] of CREICE (the Greek). Thisbrought to mind issues of foreign intermar-riage, so much on our minds as a result ofthe DNA controversy raging elsewhere.

Page 8

Richard De Puma,consultant for theEtruscan galleries,and Adriana Emil-iozzi, who directedthe new restora-tion of the Mon-teleone Chariot,standing in front ofthe chariot, at theopening of theMetropolitan Mu-seum of Art's newgalleries, May 16,2007.

An Etruscan Inscription in New York

by Larissa Bonfante

Christie’s catalogue of the June 8, 2007sale in New York illustrates an Etruscanbronze thymiaterion or incense burner withfemale support, a feline stalking a bird, andthree birds on the incense bowl (one ismissing). Three votive inscriptions, suthina,“for the tomb,” are incised on the shaft, onthe woman’s body, and on one of the tripodlegs. Similar thymiateria have been datedto the early third century B.C. and attrib-uted to Vulci, while suthina inscriptions arecharacteristic of the area around ancientVolsinii –– a quadrilateral including Chiusi,Orvieto, Bolsena and Sovana.

Detail of Etruscan bronze thymiaterion or incense burner, in-cised inscription on shaft, suthina, (Copyright: © Christie's Im-ages Limited 8 June 2007).

Detailof Etr-uscanbronzethymia-terionor in-censeburner,incisedinscrip-tion onfemalefigure,suthina.

(Copy-right:©Christie's Im-agesLimited8 June2007).

Adonis in the Phoeni-cian Text from Pyrgi?ANew Reading of

KAI 277.5Philip C. Schmitz

Eastern Michigan UniversityEtruscan language specialists are famil-

iar with the three gold sheets discovered in1964 at Santa Severa (ancient Pyrgi) in Italyat the site of an Etruscan sanctuary. Two ofthe sheets are inscribed in Etruscan (REE6314, 6315) and one in Phoenician (ICO,158-69; KAI 277). Because the Phoenicianlanguage has affinities with other languagesin the Northwest Semitic family and itsgrammar is similar to that of well-knownlanguages such as Hebrew andArabic,1 thediscovery raised the hope among Etruscanscholars that a secure translation of thePhoenician text might lead to a break-through in the lexical and grammaticalanalysis of the Etruscan parallel texts. Sofar this hope has not been much realized.

One of the impediments facing a con-vincing interpretation of the Phoenician textis word division. Centered dots between let-ters puncuate the Phoenician text at (prob-

ably) four places, but the meaning of thispunctuation is uncertain. Otherwise, worddivision is not indicated. (Phoenician iscommonly written without word division;Punic generally spaces words.) Determin-ing the word division of the Pyrgi text is notvery difficult except in one or two places.In my judgment, the most difficult portionof the text with respect to word division isthe first part of line 5. The transliterated let-ters of the text are these: šmšbmtn’bbt. ThePhoenician word šmš “sun’” readily distin-guishes itself as part of a month name zbh#šmš “solar sacrifices” (?) also found in aPhoenician inscription from Larnaca (CIS I13.1), datable to about 300 B.C.E. The

month probably corresponds to June in thePhoenician calendar.2The next segment of line 5 is difficult.

Garbini initially read bmtn’bbt, treating thefinal ’alep as an attenuated feminine suffix.3In the following year Garbini proposed thealternative reading bmtn ’bbt, which re-gards the ’alep as prothetic to the preposi-tion b-.4 This reading was readily acceptedby other Semitists,5 and has been followedsince 1966 almost without exception.6 Theresulting sentence is grammatically dense,but has not encountered serious resistance.Garbini, for example, translated byrh zbhšmš bmtn ’bbt (lines 4b-5a) as follows: “inthe month of ZBH ŠMŠ, as a gift in the tem-ple.”7 Fitzmyer’s translation, “in the monthof the Sacrifices to the Sun as a gift in thetemple,” differs only in its attempt to trans-late the month name. The preposition ’b- isodd here, but it is attested elsewhere inPhoenician and Punic.9Both Garbini and Fitzmyer acknowledge

that the word mtn is unusual as a free formin Phoenician and Punic.10 The anticipatedspelling is mtt in Phoenician and mtnt inPunic. To resolve this lexical problem, Irecommended thatmtn be interpreted as thename of a month (as attested in a Phoeni-cian inscription from ancient Kition, mod-ern Larnaca, Cyprus). 11

Continued on page 13

Hellenistic terra-cotta figure ofthe dying Atunis supine on acatafalque, found in 1834 duringexcavations at Toscanella. (Gre-gorian Etruscan Museum, Vati-can, cat. 14147)

Page 9

NOTES1. Christie’s New York Antiquities, Friday 8June 2007, 118, lot 143.2. Sybille Haynes, Etruscan Bronzes, Lon-don and NewYork, Sotheby’s Publications,1985, Nos. 170, 181-183; especially closeare Nos. 181-182. Laura Ambrosini,Thymiateria etruschi in bronzo di età tardoclassica, alto e medio ellenisticaRome, L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2002.3. Larissa Bonfante, CSEUSA3 (1997) 11.

Continued from page 6Iscrizioni GraffiteThe main figure is 104 cm. high and issketchednext to the right limit of the wall;he is bulky and bearded, with long hair, andhe stands holding something in his left handand holding up the other in a greeting ges-ture. The same attitude of the arms is seenon a small running male figure representedabove the right window. A small naked fe-male figure is crouching above the oppositewindow; she wears a hat and holds a longobject, which may be a banner or a branch.Amale bearded figure is partially preservedon the left jamb of the door. Iconographi-cal comparisons for the figured decorationsare provided by the Tombe degli Auguri,delle Baccanti and delle Leonesse in Tar-quinia, and serve to date the Tomba delle Is-crizioni Graffite to around 530-520 B.C.The jambs and architraves of the door andthe windows, as well as the adjacent wall,are distinguished by the exceptional pres-ence of at least twelve inscriptions,scratched into the clay surface. The mainone, a long text of 15 words, is written veryvisibly on the architrave of the door; it com-

memorates the ritual action carried out byRamantha Spesias inside the tomb in hon-our of Larice Velianas, presumably her hus-band (figure 3), according to theprescriptions given by Laris Armasiinas.A second inscription, incised above the

right door jamb, further lists the cere-monies attended by Ramatha, including of-ferings and sacrifices. The otherinscriptions, added by various hands, bearnames of individuals of different social po-sitions; they may have been members of afaction, perhaps a political one, who partic-ipated in the burial and, at the end, left theirsignatures inside the tomb as a permanentmemorial to the special ceremony that hadtaken place. The man who was buried in thetomb with such a detailed procedure musthave been a member of the Orientalizingaristocracy. As Giovanni Colonna suggests,the chronology of the tomb and the raregentilicium Velianas indicate that he was arelative, possible the father, of a well-known protagonist of the Caeretan politicalstage: Thefarie, who by that time wasabout to become the “King of Caere.”

Fig. 1. Etruscan bronze thymi-aterion or incense burner witha female support and three in-cised inscriptions, suthina,(Copyright: © Christie's Im-ages Limited 8 June 2007).

R e v i e w sShort Book Reviewsby Francesco de Angelis

Iscrizioni etrusche. Leggerle ecapirle, by Enrico Benelli. An-cona: SACI, 2007.As stated in its title, this book aims at in-

troducing Italian-speaking non-specialiststo Etruscan epigraphy. A preliminary chap-ter provides a succinct summary of themain facts about Etruscan language, alpha-bet, and grammar. Inscriptions are then pre-sented according to their function (funerary,gift, sacred, etc.), roughly following the cat-egories used by H. Rix in his EtruskischeTexte. For each inscription a drawing isshown, accompanied by extensive criticaldiscussion and by a translation of the text;bibliographic references conclude the en-tries.In reading the book one feels transported

inside an ideal Etruscan epigraphic mu-seum; and not by chance Benelli is also theorganizer of the only existing real museumof this sort, the fascinating Museo Civicoof Chiusi, which displays more than fivehundred urns lined up in the ancient under-ground corridors of the city (the famous"cunicoli", once thought to be Porsenna'slabyrinth). Instead of focusing on abstractand generic principles, the author accom-panies the reader step by step, as it were,explaining the meaning of words and sen-tences, as well as cautiously acknowledg-ing what we are (still?) unable tounderstand. Moreover, each possible occa-sion is taken advantage of in order to high-light the relevance of a given text for ourmore general understanding of Etruscanlanguage and culture. Given the expertiseof the author, many entries will prove use-ful also to specialists. Unfortunately costreasons have prevented from adding photo-graphs of the inscriptions (and of their mon-umental supports). A reason more to go toEtruria, after having read the book, and tostart deciphering Etruscan inscriptions on-site.

Le ceramiche argentate e a rilievoin Etruria nella prima età ellenis-tica, by LauraMariaMichetti.Ac-cademia Nazionale dei Lincei,Monumenti Antichi, ser. misc.VIII (ser. gen. LXI). Roma: G.Bretschneider, 2003.This truly monumental and lavishly illus-trated publication is the first systematicoverview of Etruscan "silvered pottery",thus called because of the tin layer that cov

ered their surface and lent them a metallicappearance. Thanks to extensive research(the catalogue consists of more than 700 en-tries!) as well as close analysis, the author isable to reach a number of interesting con-clusions.It cannot be stressed enough that many

of these results derive from careful consid-eration of the known archaeological con-texts from which the objects come. Thisapplies, e.g., to the identification of the pro-duction centers (Volsinii, Falerii, andVolterra), and to the assessment of chronol-ogy (mid-4th to mid-3rd c. B.C.), both ofwhich are based on distribution charts andon analysis of contextual findings. Thisconstitutes a useful reminder of the primaryimportance of an archaeological approachto objects that so often risk ending up un-provenanced in private collections.Especially rewarding is a perusal of the

chapter devoted to iconographic themes.The single most interesting, and surprising,image is that of Socrates and Diotima (orAspasia), to be found on Volsinian situlaeand craters. Besides being one of the manyproofs of Tarentine influence on the im-agery of these vessels, the scene raises thequestion of the meaning of such motifs de-rived from Greek prototypes and used in anEtruscan context. Did the Volsinians reallycare about Socrates' philosophy? Or -- if wethink of the many anecdotes with Socratesand women (e.g. his wife Xanthippe) asprotagonists -- should we rather take theseimages as the sign of a "popular" receptionof his figure in Etruria? In any case, herewe have one more example of Etruscan in-terest in male-female relationships.

Across Frontiers. Etruscan,Greeks, Phoenicians & Cypriots.Studies in Honour of David Ridg-way and Francesca Romana SerraRidgway, ed. by Edward Herringet al. London: Accordia ResearchInstitute, 2006.

Italo - Tusco - Romana.Festschrift für Luciana Aigner-Foresti zum 70. Geburtstag am 30.Juli 2006, ed. by Petra Amman,Marco Pedrazzi, Hans Taeuber.Wien: Holzhausen, 2006.Festschriften are gifts for the recipients

mentioned in their titles, of course, but alsofor the scholarly community at large, andthese two volumes -- honoring three distin-guished archaeologists -- are no exception.Interestingly, in both cases the primaryfocus on the Etruscans does not exclude amuch broader focus on the ancient world;

actually, it almost requires it. This is asmuch a reflection of the range of friends ofthe honorees as an acknowledgement of thefact that it is pointless to study the Etr-uscans without taking into account theirmultiple relationships with the other cul-tures of antiquity.As so often with this kind of publication,

it is practically impossible to do justice toevery single contribution. Here we willpick out only some papers to give an idea ofthe richness of the topics that the reader willencounter. In the volume in honor of theRidgways, one can find, e.g., various arti-cles on specific aspects of Etruscan familystructures, each with its own approach:based on the study of terminology (P.Amman), on discussion of the archaeolog-ical contexts of tombs (G. Bartoloni), or oniconographic analysis (L. Bonfante). Ques-tions and problems raised by recent findsare addressed, as in the case of the chario-teer of the Tomb of the Infernal Quadriga(near Sarteano), a figure which, accordingto M. Pedrazzi, is female, and whoseiconography shows connections with thatof the Gorgon.

But long known sources are also readagain from a new angle -- which is what G.Camporeale does by focusing on allusionsin ancient authors to the flow of agriculturalproducts from the Tiber area to Rome underPorsenna.Also to be mentioned is the studyby S. Steingräber of sculptural heads asdecoration of façades and entrances in Etr-uscan architecture, which also includessome modern cases apparently influencedby this ancient custom.A similar variety we find in the collec-

tion of essays for L.Aigner-Foresti. Contri-butions (by N. Winter and M. StrandbergOlofsson) on animals and monsters in a ar-chitectural terracotta, a genre characterizedby repetition and seriality, alternate withdiscussions of quite unique pieces, like apeculiarly shaped Villanovan vessel of Sar-dinian influence decorated with a femalemourner (F. Delpino). The much-debatedissue of the meaning that Etruscan viewersattributed to scenes on Greek vases is ad-dressed by E. Rystedt in relation to Pana-thenaic amphorae, while N. de Grummondprovides us with a thorough analysis of themythological character of Maris (often rep-resented on mirrors), whom she interpretsas the equivalent of the Roman Genius. M.Bonghi Jovino's discussions of particularpieces of archaeological evidence un-earthed in Tarquinia, both in this and in theformer volume, show how much informa-tion seemingly irrelevant features can yieldif properly interrogated.

Art of the Classical World in theMetropolitan Museum of Art.Grece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome.New Haven – London: Yale Univ.Press, 2007.This elegant volume accompanies and

celebrates the reopening of the Hellenisticand Roman (as well as Etruscan) wings ofthe Met by showing images of 476 ancientpieces of its collections. The objects aregrouped in seven geo-historical sections,each of which is briefly introduced by somebasic historical information. Entries per-taining to the single items are placed to-gether at the end of the volume.The Etrusco-Italic masterpieces are well

represented in their variety, from the bronzechariot from Monteleone, with its Iliadicscenes, to the charming Hellenistic terra-cotta bust of a young woman fromLavinium whose necklaces and arm bandare decorated with relief images reproducedfrom molds of actual jewelry; from thestunning amber bow of a fibula featuring ayouth and a woman reclining at banquet (al-legedly found in Falconara, on the Adriaticshore), to the colorful Pontic amphorawhich again shows similar couples. Moreobjects related to Etruria hide in other sec-tions of the volume, as does the Caeretanhydria decorated with an impressive pair offelines devouring a bull, which is placed inthe Archaic Greek section.As emblem of the beauty of Etruscan

pieces we could take the 4th-century mirrorwith startled Peleus gazing in astonishmentand wonder at nude Thetis contemplatingherself in a mirror; the reaction of the herocan be seen as an apt commentary on thereal viewer's response to the sight of thewhole scene itself, as well as of ourselvesin front of Etruscan art.The images are consistently of very high

quality. For those who purchase the bookafter having visited the Museum, the pic-tures will certainly keep memory of theseen objects well alive. And for those whohave not had occasion yet to go to NewYork and admire the pieces de visu, the cat-alogue will provide at least consolation, ifnot incentive to undertake the trip.

Myths and More on EtruscanStone Sarcophagi (c. 350 - c. 200B.C.), by L.B. van der Meer. Lou-vain - Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2004.Since Herbig's corpus of Etruscan stone

sarcophagi of 1952, there had been practi-cally no systematic treatment of this highlyinteresting class of monuments

Continued on next page

Page 10

L.B. van der Meer now discusses most ofthe exemplars individually. The main focusis on iconography and its interpretation; butthere are also chapters on issues of chronol-ogy, on find-spots, on the status and age ofthe deceased, and even on the relationshiopbetweeen the size of the coffin and the bodylength of the ancient Etruscans.

Thesaurus cultus et rituum an-tiquorum (ThesCRA), vv. 4-5. LosAngeles: The J. Paul Getty Mu-seum, 2005.

Readers of Etruscan News are already fa-miliar with the ThesCRA, whose first threevolumes were presented in issue 6 (p. 7).The last two volumes are dedicated to whatthe editors define as the "static elements" ofreligion, which encompass cult places andtheir representations (vol. 4), and the per-sonnel of cult as well as cult instruments(vol. 5).Those who are interested in Etruscan cult

places will find them together with theItalic and Roman ones in the section organ-ized by M. Torelli. The entries are orderedalphabetically, almost in all cases accord-ing to the Latin definition of the place or ofthe architectural structure (e.g. aedes,columna, donarium, puteal, etc.). This par-ticular grouping highlights the elementsthat connect sacred places across culturesand ethnic divisions in Italy until the be-ginning of the Imperial period, and is more-over justified by the fact that only in thecase of Rome do we have a relatively or-ganic and complete picture of its religioussystem. But the specific content of the en-tries also makes clear what the peculiaritiesof, say, Etruscan altars or Etruscan stelaewere.Only a rather brief entry (by M.-L. Haack)

is dedicated to the Etruscan haruspicesunder the section about Roman cult per-sonnel, while Etruscan cult instruments aretreated with the usual competence and thor-oughness, often together with the Greekones, by I. Krauskopf. Whoever wants tolearn or to be updated on the axe, the lituus,or the thymiaterion in Etruscan cult will notbe disappointed.

Gli Etruschi e il Mediterraneo:commerci e politica. Atti del XIIIConvegno Internazionale di Studisulla Storia e l'Archeologia del-l'Etruria, ed. by Giuseppe M.Della Fina. Annali della Fon-dazione per il Museo ClaudioFaina, 13. Roma: Quasar, 2006.

Gli Etruschi da Genova ad Am-purias. Atti del XXIV Convegno diStudi Etruschi ed Italici. Marseille- Lattes, 26 settembre - 1 ottobre2002, vv. 1-2. Pisa - Roma: IEPI,2006.

The skill of the Etruscans as sailors andpirates, the diffusion of their products allover the Mediterranean, their receptivity toforeign stimuli -- these are all well knownfacts, which have been often studied anddiscussed by scholars. And yet, there is al-ways more to learn on this topic. As usual,this is due both to new discoveries and toreconsideration of older information in thelight of more recent theories and ap-proaches. Moreover, even systematic pre-sentations of already known but hithertoscattered materials are likely to producenew insights, and to contribute in an activeway to the increase of our knowledge.The two conferences whose proceedings

were published last year are good cases inpoint. The Orvieto conference of 2005 wasconceived as an updating of its famouspredecessor on archaic Etruscan trade ("Ilcommercio etrusco arcaico"), held in Romein 1983. And indeed, its participants ad-dressed the topic rather systematically, inrough geographical order: Egypt, NorthAfrica, Hiberia, Gaul, the Balcans,Assyria.In paper after paper, a great number of thecountries and areas with which the Etr-uscans exchanged goods unfolds under theeyes of the reader; the volumes outline anextremely lively and complex picture of theMediterranean (and beyond, as the fasci-nating remarks of G. Colonna about Etr-uscan contacts with the area ofHuelva/Tartessos show) during the first halfof the 1st millennium B.C.

To these contributions others can beadded that treat specific topics of overarch-ing interest. Such is the case of A. Mag-giani's study of the tesserae hospitales,which provide an in-depth view of the so-cial mechanisms of hospitality relation-ships, with special attention to Murlo, fromwhich many of the known pieces come.But one should mention also the discussionof naval engineering byA. Cherici, with in-teresting analyses of the extant evidenceabout Etruscan ships and ship-building. In-terestingly, Greece was not given specialpreminence (but cf. A. Naso's discussion ofEtruscan objects dedicated in Greek sanc-tuaries). This omission, of corse, was notdue to any lesser role it may have played,but rather, on the contrary, to its exceedingimportance, which would have required aconference of its own.

The conference held in Marseille andLattes in 2002 was an important antecedentfor the Orvieto one. Especially French andSpanish archaeologists brought up an im-

pressive quantity of new data and evidenceconcerning Etruscan materials found inlocal excavations; nor did the northern partof the Italian shore, from Pisa to Genova,receive less attention. And all these contri-butions were set into a broader perspectivethanks to articles such as those of G. Cam-poreale (a specialist in Etruscans "outsideof Etruria"), J.-P. Morel, M. Gras, A. Mag-giani, G. Colonna, each of whom addressedissues of a more general scope. Not sur-prisingly, even in this case we have a paperdevoted to naval engineering, this time byP. Pomey, which constitutes an excellentpendant to the aforementioned one byCherici. Without denying Italy's central rolein Etruscan studies -- a role which it obtainsalmost naturally, out of geographical andhistorical reasons -- this French meeting ofthe Istituto di Studi Etruschi ed Italici testi-fies to the vitality and health of the fieldalso elsewhere in the world, regardless ofnational boundaries -- something that canbe deeemed equally natural, if we think ofthe Etruscan propensity and capacity toreach out to other cultures.

Brief Reviewsby Larissa Bonfante

Catalogues of RecentExhibits

Beth Cohen, ed. The Colors ofClay. Special Techniques in Athen-ian Vases. Los Angeles, The J.Paul Getty Museum, June 8 toSeptember 4, 2006. Los Angeles,Getty Publications, 2006.

More than a hundred special vases frommuseums in the United States and Europeare described, documented and illustratedin full color in this catalogue, which ac-companied and now records an exhibitionat the newly restored Getty Villa. The focusis on Attic vases made by techniques otherthan the usual black- and red-figure styles:bilingual, coral-red gloss, outline, Kerch-style, white ground, Six's technique, vaseswith added clay and gilding, and plasticvases. The first five essays are by BethCohen, the editor; other contributors in-clude Kenneth Lapatin, DyfryWilliams andJoan Mertens.

The essay by Marion True, the former

curator, takes up the subject of vases madefor the export market, for instance Nikos-thenes, “one of the most innovative and alsoone of the most productive of theAttic pot-ters,” who introduced the Nikosthenicneckamphora and the kyathos, Etruscanshapes from bucchero models. Statuette-vases, an imaginative type found outside ofGreece, are proudly exhibited on the tableat the banquet of Hades and Persephone inan Etruscan wall painting, in the Tomb ofOrcus II at Tarquinia. Included in the ex-hibit was a spectacular drinking-cup in theshape of a vulture’s head. This is a book totreasure, and an eye-opener for those of uswho were not fortunate enough to attend theexhibition.

Books on AmberMaria Luisa Nava, ed.

Trasparenze dall’Antico. Ambre.Napoli, Museo ArcheologicoNazionale, March 26 to Septem-ber 10, 2007. Milan, Electa 2007.

This is the large-scale catalogue of theequally large-scale exhibition in the Na-tional Archaeological Museum in Naples.Maria Luisa Nava, Soprintendente per iBeni Archeologiche delle provincie diNapoli e Caserta, organized the exhibit andedited the catalogue. She explains in herintroductory note that although there havebeen numerous individual studies on the na-ture, origin, provenance, function and usesof amber, none has as yet dealt with thephenomenon of its use throughout the longperiod of time from prehistory, through theRoman and Medieval, down to moderntimes. The catalogue follows the organiza-tion of the exhibit, and includes essays byvarious authors on amber in the various re-gions of Italy, as well as notable collections.The exhibit included amber from the

British Museum collection, including thespectacular group of the satyr and maenad.

Magie d’Ambra: Amuleti egioielli della Basilicata antica. Cat-alogue of exhibition, Potenza, De-cember 2005 – March 2006.Museo Archeologico Nazionaledella Basilicata “DinoAdamesteaanu.”

This beautifully produced, beautifully il-lustrated volume, with informative articlesby Attilio Mastrocinque, Angelo Bottiniand others, provides a fitting introductionfor the uninitiated to the stunning carvedamber of the region.

Continued on next page

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Reviews Continued:Continued from previous page

These amulets, worn by the local“princesses,” women and girls, to theirgraves, were perhaps made by ivorycarvers, many of them Etruscans or Etr-uscan-trained, who turned their attention tothis material, no longer used by either theEtruscans to the north, or the Greekcolonies to the East.

Aleksandar Palavestra. VeraKristic, The Magic of Amber. Cat-alogue of an exhibition at the Na-tional Museum of Belgrade.Belgrade, 2006.

In 1969 the publication of the book onthe site of Novi Pazar revealed the richnessof a remarkable princely grave from theIron Age in Serbia. Around 8000 amberitems come from this find, among the rich-est ever found; many are included in thiscatalogue, which provides an in-depth sur-vey of the amber across the Adriatic. Theexhibition opened during the Fifth AmberConference in Belgrade in 2006, organizedby Joan Todd and Curt Beck (EtruscanNews 7, page 12), whose Proceedings areforthcoming: they will include accounts ofthe amber finds and problems of the regionsalong the amber route, including a report onthe amber of prehistoric Italy, and an ac-count by Patrizia von Eles on the technol-ogy of the amber fibulas and other amberfinds from Verucchio.

ArticlesLauraAmbrosini, “Operatori del culto

sugli specchi etruschi,” Maria Rocchi,Paolo Xella, José-Angel Zamora, eds,GliOperatori Cultuali. Atti del II Incontro distudio, Gruppo di contatto per lo studiodelle religioni mediterranee, Rome, May2005. Storia delle Religioni, III. Verona,Essedue edizioni 2007, 197-233.

Armando Cherici, “Per una scienza etr-usca,” Science and Technology for Cul-tural Heritage 15 (2006) 9-28.

Angelo Pinci, Review of Larissa Bon-fante and Blair Fowlkes, eds., ClassicalAntiquities at New York University. Rome2006, in La Notizia (Palestrina) 3, Satur-day, December 26, 2006, page 4.

Marjatta Nielsen, “The Three Ages ofman. Myth and Symbol Between Chiusiand Athens.” Synnove des Bouvrie, ed.Myth and Symbol II. Symbolic phenom-ena in ancient Greek culture. Papersfrom the Norwegian Institute at Athens7, Bergen 2004, 25-41.

AA nn nn oo uu nn cc ee mm ee nn tt ssSoprintendenza per i Beni Archeo-logici dell’Etruria Meridionale

Istituto di Studi sulle Civiltà Italichee del Mediterraneo Antico del CNR

announce the presentation of thevolume:

Il guerriero di Ceri:Technologie per far rivivere e inter-pretare un capolavoro della pittura

etrusca su terracottaedited by G. F. Guidi, V. Bellelli, G.

Trojsi (ENEA, Viterbo 2006)March 8, 2007

Exh i b i t o nGard en si n An t i qu i t y

An exhibit on gardens in antiquity, "Il gi-ardino antico da Babilonia a Roma" is nowopen and will continue until October 28,2007, in Florence, Palazzo Pitti, Giardini diBoboli.

The curators for the gardens in the An-cient Near East section are Maria GiovannaBiga and Marco Ramazzotti of the Univer-sità di Roma "La Sapienza".

Web site: http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/gi-ardinoantico/indice.html

Contents:Pars tertia: Langue étrusque et langues italiques:Journée Langues rares (Paris, 18 novembre2005)Les gloses étrusques, Dominique BriquelLa langue falisque, Emmanuel DuprazLa langue étrusque dans la religion romaine,Marie-Laurence HaackLe déchiffrement de l'étrusque: histoire, prob-lèmes et perspectives, Isabelle Klock-FontanilleL'étrusque et les langues anatoliennes, René Le-brunEléments d'onomastique hourrito-louvite et lalégende étrusque de Tagès, Alexandre PortnoffÉtrusque et ibère: branches d'un substratméditerranéen commun? Coline Ruiz Darasse

Details and Order Form on the website :www.safran.be/resantiquae

Istituto Nazionale di StudiRomani

announces the presentation of thevolume:

Istoria Romana Incisa all’acquaforte da Bartolomeo Pinelli romano

L’anno 1818 e 1819(“L’Erma” di Bretschneider,

Rome 2006)March 14, 2007

Res Antiquae 3 (2006)

Éditions Safran are pleased to announce thepublication of the latest issue of the journalRes Antiquae.

Page 12

DNA” Continued from page 5Etruscans are not clearly distinguishablefrom those of most of Europe, studies ofmodern DNA reveal a distinctive pattern inTuscany that sets it apart from the rest ofItaly.

Scientists who study the DNA of modernpopulations have more options, since thestumbling blocks of contamination andpoor preservation are removed. Studies ofvast scale, such as that of Luca Cavalli-Sforza, who mapped the history and geog-raphy of human genes across the globe, andthose of an intensive character, such as Al-berto Piazza’s analysis of the population ofMurlo, have used a combination of bloodtypes and certain markers in nuclear DNAto generate principal component analyses.In contrast to mtDNA, nDNA preservesboth the maternal and the paternal geneticcontributions equally. The closer the fam-ily ties, the more the nDNA will be similar.The plotting of paired principal componentsgenerates diagrams that display the relativecloseness (or as Cavalli-Sforza prefers toview it, the relative “strangeness”) of vari-ous people on the basis of those specificcharacteristcs. While both of these stud-ies revealed a certain degree of genetic dis-tinctiveness in the modern Tuscanpopulation with respect to the rest of Italy,Piazza’s well-known concentration on therather remote village of Murlo, conserva-tive in its population and close to the im-portant ancient site of Poggio Civitate, wasdirected toward uncovering the characteris-tics of ancient Etruscan DNA. With their

genetic distance computed, the people ofMurlo are now convinced that they are gen-uine Etruscans, but the fact remains thatthere is no ancient nDNA with which tocompare them.

Studies such as those by Francalacci orBarbujani have analyzed modern mtDNAin attempts to establish a link between theancient and modern samples. Here is theplace for the “slip between the cup and thelip,” where either the modern samples needto be carefully chosen to have a high prob-ability of reflecting a continuous lineagefrom antiquity, if that is what one wishes toshow, or plans must be laid to fill in thechronological gap with genetic materialfrom the intervening millennia, if onewishes to chart the drift.While Piazza se-lected his modern nDNA samples by ex-cluding people with German surnames in anattempt to rule out families who had inter-married with the invading Longobards inthe 6th century, Francalacci, also trying toconnect modern Tuscans with ancient Etr-uscans, selected no more than a few peoplein each town across southern Tuscany in at-tempt to sample a diversity of maternal lin-eages and to avoid sampling familyrelatives.The Barbujani study used Fran-calacci’s data. Barbujani’s study now ap-pears to have displayed the extent of thegap between the ancient Etruscan mtDNApatterns and those of the modern Tuscans.Significantly, his conclusions do not sup-port the interpretations of either the Trei orthe New York Times article. He says, “Theshortest genetic distances between the Etr-

uscan and modern populations are withTuscans.” While it is true that the distancesfrom the Tuscans are slightly shorter to themodern Turks than to other modern peoplesof Italy, the very closest, even overlappingin the diagram, are the British. Next clos-est, and still almost 75% closer than theTurks, are the Portuguese, Syrians, Greeks,and Bulgarians. In fact the Tuscans appearto be equidistant between the Turks and theBasques, who are descended from Pale-olithic lineages.

The interpretations in the Trei and NewYork Times articles are further belied by ev-idence of cultural continuity between theEtruscans and the Tuscans. Could the Etr-uscan social structure that gave an equalpower to women be traced forward to pow-erful and independent Tuscan women, suchas St. Catherine of Siena, whose DNA ispreserved (in the form of her head andthumb) in the church of San Domenico?The Etruscan religion has been shown, byCharles Leland in the 19th century, to havegone underground and re-emerged aswitchcraft: Tuscan witches are still in busi-ness today. One can think of many othercontinuities.

The study by Barbujani et al. is to date theonly one that attempts to connect a modernpopulation with its ancient ancestors throughDNA. It opens the door to enormous possi-bilities for comparative research. It may notbe possible to stop the popular presss fromgrabbing a fact and running it to its most at-tention-grabbing conclusions, but perhapswe can agree to keep Herodotus out of it.

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Unhappily, this interpretation raises thepragmatic problem that two month namesfollow in succession. My attempt to explainthe name zbh# šmš as a general term ratherthan a month name failed to convince otherSemitists, and I have since abandoned thatline of argument.I recently returned to the Phoenician text

from Pyrgi in the context of a survey ofPunic religion in North Africa.12 The newword division I proposed in that study hasgreater potential to stabilize the reading ofthe entire Phoenician text and to place it ina context well known to classical scholar-ship. The first five lines of the transliteratedPhoenician text appear below, followed byan English translation.13

TEXT1. lrbt l‘štrt ’šr qdš2. ’z ’š p‘l w’š ytn3. tbry’ . wlnš mlk ‘l4. kyšry’ . byrh zbh5. šmš bmt n’ bbt . . .

TRANSLATION(Lines 1-5a) For the Lady, for Astarte (is)this holy place which Thefarie Velunas,king over Kaysriye, made, and which he putin the temple in the month zbh# šmš, at thedeath of (the) Handsome (one).

COMMENTARYThis separation of words in line 5 reveals aconstruct noun phrase bmt n’. I will com-ment here only on that phrase.

b-mt n’ b-btfor-death (of) handsome in house/ temple

The phrase bmt consists of the preposi-tion b- “in, at, of, for” prefixed to the nounmt “death.” Phoenician n’ is cognate withthe Middle Hebrew adjective nā’eh “hand-some”14 and is etymologically related toBiblical Hebrew nā’wê (e.g., Song 1:5,2:14; 4:3; 6:4), referring to facial beauty.15Thus the phrase bmt n’ appears to mean“for the (occasion of the) death of (the)Handsome (one).”

The adjective “handsome” suggests anelement from the myth ofAdonis, a baby sohandsome that Aphrodite (Astarte) couldnot bear to be separated from him.16 In thecourse of his mythical life Adonis becomesthe lover of Aphrodite, leaves her tem-porarily for the chase, and is gored by awild boar, succumbing pathetically to hiswound. His demise is movingly portrayedin the famous Hellenistic terra-cotta figureof the dying Atunis supine on a catafalque,found in 1834 during excavations atToscanella, one of the masterpieces of Etr-uscan plastic arts.

The second part of the Phoenician textfrom Pyrgi (lines 5b-9a) concerns the build-

Phoenician TextContinued from page 9

ing of a structure in the temple in the fol-lowing month: byrh krr . bym qbr ’lm “inthe month krr, on the day of the deity’s bur-ial.” Altogether, three thematic elements ofthe Adonis myth figure in this text: hisbeauty, his death, and his burial. The dateof the event provides a further calendricallink with the myth. The traditional date oftheAdonis festival, July 19 or 20, links it tothe cycle of the Egyptian solar year, and byimplication with the Osiris myth. Themonth krr (line 8), in which the deity’s bur-ial is commemorated, corresponds to Julyin the solar calendar.17 The festival coin-cides with the heliacal rising of the starSothis, anciently the first day of the Egypt-ian New Year. 18

I am currently collaborating with PaulMosca, a specialist in Phoenician-Punicepigraphy, on a more complete expositionof the interpretation adumbrated here. Ourhope is to provide stable context fromwhich both the Phoenician and the Etruscantexts from the Pyrgi temple can be inter-preted. One area where the judgment of Etr-uscan scholars is necessary regards thepossible relevance of the Etruscan expres-sion mutana or mutna inscribed on sar-cophagi from Cerveteri and other Etruscancemeteries in the region of Pyrgi.19 I wel-come comments from Etruscan specialistsregarding this lexical matter and respectingother aspects of the Phoenician and Etr-uscan texts from Pyrgi.

NOTESI thank Prof. Larissa Bonfante for inviting me tocontribute this note to Etruscan News. The fol-lowing abbreviations are used in this article:ACFP 4 = Actas del IV Congreso Internacionalde Estudios Fenicios y Punicos Cádiz, 2 al 6 Oc-tubre de 1995, ed. M. E. Aubet and M.Barthélemy (Cádiz: Servicio de Publicaciones,Universidad de Cádiz, 2000); CIS I = Corpus In-scriptionum Semiticarum, Pars prima (Paris: Re-publicae typographeo, 1881-1962); ICO =M. G.Amadasi Guzzo, Le iscrizione fenicie e punichedelle colonie in occidente (Studi Semitici 28;Rome: Istituto di Studi del Vicino Oriente, Uni-versità di Roma, 1967); KAI = H. Donner andW. Röllig, Kanaanäische und aramäische In-schriften, 3 vols. (2d ed., Wiesbaden: Otto Har-rassowitz, 1966-69; 3rd-4th ed., 1973-79; 5th,enlarged and revised ed., 2002), cited by textnumber.1. And the archaeologically recovered languageof Ugarit in coastal Syria.2. R. R. Stieglitz, “The Phoenician-Punic Cal-endar,” ACFP 4 (2000): 695.3. G. Garbini, “L’iscrizione punica,” Archeolo-gia Classica 16 (1964): 70. Improved descrip-tions of the pronominal suffixes inPhoenician-Punic have shown this interpretationto be ungrammatical.4. G. Garbini and G. Levi Della Vida, “Consid-erazioni sull’iscrizione punica di Pyrgi,” OriensAntiquus 4 (1965): 41.5. For example, J. A. Fitzmyer, “The PhoenicianInscription from Pyrgi,” JAOS 86 (1966): 290-92, who arrived at the same word division inde-pendently (291); M. G. Amadasi Guzzo, Le isc-

rizione fenicie e puniche delle colonie in occi-dente (Studi Semitici 28; Rome: Istituto di Studidel Vicino Oriente, Università di Roma, 1967),164-65; H. Donner and W. Röllig, Kanaanäis-che und aramäische Inschriften, 3 vols. (2d ed.,Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1966-69; 3rd-4thed., 1973-79; 5th, enlarged and revised ed.,2002), 1:67, no. 277.6. The reading is recognized in the grammars: J.Friedrich and W. Röllig, Phönizisch-punischeGrammatik (3rd ed., ed. by M. G. AmadasiGuzzo and W. R. Mayer; Analecta Orientalia55; Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico,1999), 180 §251; C. R. Krahmalkov, A Phoeni-cian-Punic Grammar (HO 1.54; Leiden: Brill,2001), 228.7. “. . . nel mese di ZBH ŠMŠ, como dono neltempio” (Garbini and Levi Della Vida, “Consid-erazioni,” 47; Levi Della Vida expressed someuncertainty over the reading m in mtn’ consider-ing the reading ktn’ also possible. The latterreading did not win acceptance). The grammat-ical interpretation is unchanged in Garbini, In-troduzione all’epigrafia semitica (Brescia:Paideia, 2006), 140.8. Fitzmyer, “Phoenician Inscription,” 286-87.Amadasi Guzzo (ICO, 161) reproducesGarbini’s translation exactly.9. Friedrich et al., Phönizisch-punische Gram-matik3, 52 §95c.10. The word mtn in the Pyrgi text (KAI 277.5)is the only example of the form cited by Krah-malkov, Phoenician-Punic Dictionary (OLA 90.Studia Phoenicia 15; Leuven: Peeters, 2000),320 s.v.11. P. C. Schmitz, “The Phoenician Text fromthe Etruscan Sanctuary at Pyrgi,” JAOS 115(1995): 564.12. P. C. Schmitz, “Religion of the PhoeniciansinNorthAfrica: PunicReligion,” inTheCambridge

History of Religions in the Classical World,vol.1 (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, in press).13. Portions of the translation not discussedin the commentary are explained in Schmitz,“Phoenician Text” (N 11).14. M. Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targu-mim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, andthe Midrashic Literature (1903; repr., NewYork: Judaica Press, 1985), 56.15. L. Koehler andW. Baumgartner, The He-brew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testa-ment (ed. and tr. M. E. J. Richardson; StudyEdition; Leiden: Brill, 2001), 657.16. C. Vellay, Le culte et les fêtes d’Adônis-Thammouz dans l’orient antique (Paris:Ernest Leroux, 1904): 26-27; S. Ribichini,Adonis: Aspetti “orientali” di un mito greco(Studi Semitici 55; Rome: ConsiglioNazionale delle Ricerche, 1981), 80-86.17. Stieglitz, “Phoenician-Punic Calendar,”695.18. P. Wallin, Celestial Cycles: AstronomicalConcepts of Regeneration in the AncientEgyptian Coffin Texts (Uppsala Studies inEgyptology 1; Uppsala:Akademitryck, 2002),18.19. P. Agostini, in a posting to Linguist List,13Aug 1999,http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-b i n / w a ? A 2 = i n d 9 9 0 8 & L = i n d o -european&P=19653 (retrieved 8 Aug 2006),noted the similarity of mut- to Phoenician mt“death, dead.” G. M. Facchetti, L'enigma sve-lato della lingua etrusca, 2d ed. (Rome,2001), which I have not seen, has posted theglossary online:http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_etr-usca_(vocabolario). The glossary lists mu-tana, mutna “sarcofago.”

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More Light on theLupa Controversyby Carol Mattusch, GeorgeMason UniversityIs the Capitoline Wolf Mediaeval rather

than Etruscan? This question has been hotlydebated since the appearance of AnnaMaria Carruba’s book in November 2006:La Lupa Capitolina: Un bronzo Medievale(De Luca Editori). The question was raisedby German scholars during the nineteenthcentury, but it was discounted, as docu-mented by Carruba, as well as by FrancisHaskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and theAntique (Yale University Press, 1981).Haskell and Penny’s book as well as Phyl-lis Pray Bober and Ruth Rubinstein’s, Ren-aissance Artists and Antique Sculpture(Harvey Miller and Oxford 1986), provideinvaluable information about the modernhistory of theWolf. Neither book is cited byCarruba, nor is Wolfgang Helbig’s lengthyentry in the Führer durch die öffentlichenSammlungen klassischer Altertümer inRom, in which the initial “strange and unan-cient impression” of the Wolf (1895 Eng-lish ed.) is noted, as is the possibility of itsbeing a ninth-century creation. Now thatCarruba brings up the question again, withnew angles, we are bound to think again.Carruba’s own experience with the Wolf

dates to the conservation project carried outbetween 1997 and 2000, published in Clau-dio Parisi Presicce’s La Lupa Capitolina(Rome 2000), a well-illustrated exhibitioncatalogue. The wolf suckling Romulus andRemus is of course the symbol of Rome, soit is no surprise that there are ancient liter-ary references to one or more images likethis (Dionysios of Halikarnassos 1.79.8;Cicero, In Catilinam 3.8.19; Livy 10.23;Dio Cassius 37.9). Many ancient images ofthe Wolf suckling Romulus and Remushave survived, in many contexts and media,and they range over a very long period oftime. Claudio Parisi Presicce documentsthem, from the earliest examples in fifthcentury B.C. Etruria, to coins struck fromthe early third century B.C., right onthrough the Augustan, Julio-Claudian, andFlavian periods. Coins from as late as thesixth century A.D. bear the wolf and twochildren, as does a ninth-century ivory dip-tych from Rambona near Ancona (Vatican,Biblioteca Apostolica inv. 2442), whichheralds the modern life of this ever-familiarimage. In her book, Carruba illustrates Car-olingian and Romanesque stylistic parallels,concluding that the Wolf resembles themmost closely.The CapitolineWolf is first mentioned in

the ninth century, and in the tenth centuryit was at the Lateran. In 1471, Pope SixtusIV gave it to the city of Rome, and some-

time after that it was placed above the en-trance of the Palazzo dei Conservatori. By1509, Romulus and Remus were in place,looking very much like the antique exam-ples of the group. It is not clear who madethe children, but Johann Joachim Winckel-mann knew they were modern, and said soin his History of Ancient Art, where he il-lustrated the Wolf by herself.The Capitoline Wolf is usually dated to

the early fifth century B.C. All agree thatthe Wolf is a direct lost wax casting, andthis process can be attested for some largebronzes, although indirect casting was moreoften used, being less risky and far moreeconomical, allowing as it did for re-use ofthe original model. If necessary, a combi-nation of the two techniques was used sothat a bronze could be individualized.Carruba’s primary argument for a Car-

olingian or Romanesque date is that theWolf is a single casting, a procedure thatshe says was not used during antiquity. Sheuses ancient literary testimonia about theearly bronze artists Rhoikos and Theodorosof Samos, as well as the illustrations on thefamous Berlin Foundry Cup (Berlin F2294), to support her argument that ancientbronze statues were always cast in pieces.

So far as we know, this was normallytrue. A single casting, however, can be aslarge as the weight of the molten metal thattwo men can lift. Thus a single piece of alife-size bronze statue sometimes consistsof the entire body together with the legs,and it may weigh a few hundred pounds. Todate, relatively few technical studies havebeen carried out on ancient bronze statues,particularly in Greece, but those that havebeen done reveal an industry with manyvariations. Ancient workshop practiceswere idiosyncratic, and it is clear thatbronze technology cannot be categorizedaccording to region or date. We cannot yetdate or regionalize alloys, casting tech-niques, or finishing procedures.As for bronze animals, very few of them

are preserved, and there is even less techni-cal evidence available for them than thereis for statues. The Capitoline Wolf is nolarger than a real wolf, and she has almostno undercuttings and projections that tendto complicate the casting process for stat-ues of humans in elaborate poses. For thesereasons, a founder might have chosen totake a chance and cast theWolf in one piece– in antiquity, or in the Middle Ages.The renewed controversy about the date

of the Capitoline Wolf inspires us to lookagain and to consider carefully the techni-cal, stylistic, and historical evidence, sothat, whenever we reach conclusions andwhatever they turn out to be, they will bewell informed.

The She-wolf is Mediaeval, no longer Etruscan?

by Fabio IsmanTranslated from Il Messaggero, February 2, 2007Translated by Jane WhiteheadWe have lost the Wolf! The Capitoline

She-wolf is not Etruscan: it has ceased tobe the immortal and unchanging symbol ofthe city, a symbol that has come down to usfrom the time of the kings. It is a bronze ofa much later time: datable perhaps to theend of the 800s, more probably to between1200 and 1300.The first to say this is Anna Maria Car-

ruba, who restored it in 2000; but not all (oralmost all) scholars are in agreement.Adriano La Regina, for decades the So-printendente Archeologo of Rome, agrees,as does Lucia Vlad Borrelli, another im-portant archaeologist. In addition,Francesco Gandolfo, Docente of Mediaevalart at Tor Vergata, and Marina Righetti, Do-cente at La Sapienza, Edilberto Formigli, awell-known expert and bronze restorer, arein agreement.The Capitoline She-wolf is cast in a sin-

gle piece by the method known as “lostwax.” No other Classical sculpture,whether of Greek, Roman, or Etruscanmanufacture, uses this method. Someonementioned the Chimaera of Arezzo; “Butthere are obvious traces of soldering,” ob-jects Carruba, and continues, “The tech-nique of single casting was devised in aboutthe 8th century and derives from the cast-ing of bells.” Then she adduces a largenumber of examples: the Griffin and theLion of Perugia; the sculptures on thefaçade of the duomo and the Maurizio (thefirst mechanical figure in history, who beatsthe hours) of Orvieto; the Eagle of Todi.And in order to demonstrate her discover-ies, she contrasts the Mars of Todi and theOrator of Arezzo, as well as the Lion ofBraunschweig, cast in 1166.The Wolf is mentioned for the first time

by Benedetto, a monk in the Abbey of So-racte, in 995. He recounts that there was inthe Lateran a “tribunale ad Lupam;” the an-imal was taken as a point of reference be-cause it was so very well known,monumental as it was. Since then, citationshave not been lacking. But what of Cicero,Livy, and others who had already men-tioned a Wolf? “Probably several of themexisted; the bronze came to be reused;much in those times was lost,” explainedGandolfo. This warns us against a fullyMediaeval date: “There are no compar-isons. At that time, the largest objects madein bronze were gates: but these were formedof panels or plates, nothing of a casting ascomplicated as this.” In contrast, it was inthe Duecento that bronze sculpture had itsflowering. Thus, this would not be a Car-olingian work, as Anna Maria Carruba andAdrianoLaRegina think, “but almost a proto-

Other articles on theLupa controversy:

“La Lupa Capitolina non è più etrusca?”by Giuseppe M. Della Fina, in ArcheoXXIII.4 2007, 40-51.“Sfida accademica sull'età della Lupa,”by Adele Cambria, in L'Unità Roma28/02/2007

Page 14

Gothic one; besides, there is no documen-tation that the Popes in the 800s commis-sioned sculptures in bronze. In my opinion,it seems to be, if anything, a Lion adaptedto make a Wolf: a 13th century Lion.”“When it was, in fact, the symbol of Rome.The Bolognese Brancaleone degli Andalòwas senator; he leveled so many towers ofthe most powerful families,” adds Righetti.Still, we have lost the Wolf. In school

we all came to know it as Etruscan; all thetextbooks will have to be rewritten. “It’strue: the icon, the totem, has up to nowovercome every chronological ambiguity,”admits Licia Vlad Borrelli, “but now it istime to think differently.” Also in supportof this theory are the scientific tests, “whichit would be good to publish immediately,”says Gandolfo. About 20 of the results thathave come from radiocarbon, the famousC14, and from thermoluminescence tests,suggest a rather wide spectrum, which ex-tends until 1800. (“Please, let us notfetishize these tests, too. They can help, butthey are often imprecise; never Gospel,”Gandolfo again.) But in 1471, Sisto IVDella Rovere transferred the totem from theLateran and displayed it on the Campi-doglio. “Still no result, not even one, con-nects it with the Classical age,” Carrubapoints out. And she explains how the cast-ing in a single block was born: “There wasneed for an internal structure, and thenholes, usually rectangular, for removing itafterward. In the Chimaera they are miss-ing, but in the Lupa they are evident.”Nonetheless, the catalogue written after

it was restored, in 2000, it is still called aClassical sculpture. “The first to date itthus was Winckelmann: a difficult judg-ment to dispute,” says Adriano La Regina,“but already in the 19th century somedoubted it.” For more information, seeAnna Maria Carruba’s book, La Lupa Capi-tolina, un bronzo medievale, published byDe Luca, Rome.

Latin storms state schoolsOnce the preserve of private schools, the language of theRomans is even booming in Britain's inner cities

by Anushka Asthana, education correspondentReprinted from The Observer, May 13, 2007

“Res ipsa loquitur,” (the thing speaks foritself) said MP and columnist Boris John-son when asked to describe his love forLatin. Steeped in Classics, he thinks it“tragic” that the subject has been “ghet-toised in independent schools” for decades.So Johnson will be the first to welcometoday's news that Britain's state schools areexperiencing an astonishing renaissance inLatin.The number of state secondary schools

offering Latin has soared from 200 threeyears ago to 459, new research will revealtoday. From after-school clubs for giftedpupils to pan-European contests and on-linecourses, Latin is in vogue.Some say the revival is being driven by

popular culture. Television, films, radioand books are filled with stories based in abygone age, according to Peter Jones, of theNational Co-ordinating Committee forClassics. “One thinks of Boris Johnson'sbook on the Roman empire or a film such as“Gladiator” that raises issues of conflict anda sense of value. A great spin-off from thatis a greater interest in the ancient world,”he added. “Latin is no longer perceived asan elite subject simply studied by pupils atEton.” He and other classicists fiercely dis-pute the argument that Latin is not a rele-vant subject in the 21st century. They pointout that concepts of freedom, democracyand citizenship, embedded in modern poli-tics, were first developed by the Greeks andRomans. Moreover, learning Latin can help

pupils with modern languages. “I have beentrying to learn Czech,” said Anne Dicks,head of classics at Malvern St James, an in-dependent girls' school. “Although the vo-cabulary is different, the structure is thesame as Latin.”

Last week pupils from across Europeturned up in Paris, Berlin and Malvern,Worcestershire, to battle it out in a Euro-pean Latin competition that Dicks helpedorganise. On the Saturday of a bank holi-day weekend they turned up to tackle atough translation.Will Griffiths, the director of Cambridge

School Classics Project (CSCP), who car-ried out today's research, said many peoplewrongly assume that Latin is only taughtwell in the independent sector.

His study highlighted schools such asGeorge Green secondary, a comprehensivein Tower Hamlets, east London, wherepupils stay after school to learn the lan-guage. Other schools were using a new on-line course from CSCPwhich allows pupilsto learn Latin without a specialist teacher.At another school in Kilburn, northwest

London, where 87 per cent of students arefrom ethnic minorities, Latin is also boom-ing. “It is wonderful that so many schoolsare bringing it back,” said Johnson who re-cently visited the school. “It is becausepeople are looking for something that is in-tellectually stimulating, rewarding and de-livers lasting value. If you are able to com-

Fertility Rite Temples “of significant importance'”found in Puglia

(ANSA) FOGGIA - Italian archaeologistshave unearthed temples attesting to thestrength of fertility rites in prehistoric Italy.The discoveries were made at a major sitein Puglia (ancient Apulia) which has re-cently been recognized as an archaeologi-cal area "of significant importance,"excavation directorAnna Maria Punzi Sistotold reporters. The new dig at Trinitanapolihas uncovered a huge well used for sacri-fices to an unknown fertility goddess, PunziSisti said. "This is a major discovery whichshows the importance of these rites toBronze Age peoples, around 3,500 yearsago. It should enable us to decode the rit-ual of this ancient religion," she added, re-vealing that traces of sacrificed animals andofferings of corn and other plants had beenfound. As in other such rites, these offer-ings presumably asked the goddess to blesscrops and to keep communities well supp-

lied with fresh hands, Punzi Sisti explained.Tombs have also been found, spanning outfrom a central religious area that is believedto have been used as a full-fledged temple,she said. "The purpose of the site is un-mistakable. Its opening architectural lay-out is similar to a vulva and the corridor thatleads to the inside is narrow, like a birthcanal. There is no image of the fertilitygoddess inside, but the temple itself, in itsvery shape, is an icon of fertility.” Twoyears ago the site yielded a remarkable find,carbon-dated to 1,600 B.C.: the skeleton ofa man, which, at 1.85 m., is taller than theaverage height of modern men. The mediawere quick to declare that a race of giantswalked the Earth in Italy in prehistorictimes. Scientists explained the Trinitanapoligiant as a product of unusual cross-breed-ing with tribes from the Balkans.

pose sentences in Latin you will never writea dud sentence in English.” Johnson, whowas yesterday crowned president of theJoint Association of Classical Teachers,called on the government to change therules so Latin could be taken instead of amodern foreign language when childrenturn 11.It is not just secondary schools. Latin is

being used as a tool to teach younger chil-dren basic English grammar. Barbara Bell,a classics teacher at Clifton High School inBristol came up with Minimus, a series ofLatin books for children that is now beingused in 2,500 primary schools. Childrenlearn about Flavius and Lepidina, a couplefrom AD100, through comic strips. BobLister, a lecturer in education at the Uni-versity of Cambridge will argue in a forth-

coming book that Latin is being used byteachers to stretch the brightest pupils.“I think there has been a sea change in the

attitude towards the gifted child,” he said.But his book, Changing Classics inSchools, will also highlight a crisis in thesubject due to a lack of teachers. “There isa very serious problem with recruiting,”said Lister. Within recent weeks he hasheard of two comprehensives that receivedno applications at all when they advertisedfor classics teachers. Figures suggest thatthere are four or five jobs for each trainee -a shortage that could provide an obstacle toLatin's comeback.

The She-wolf, the Symbol of Rome, is on the Moveby Gabriele IsmanModified from La Repubblica, February 18, 2007Translated by Jane Whitehead

The symbol of Rome is on the move, atleast a little. After the controversy ignitedby Maria Teresa Carruba’s book La LupaCapitolina. Un bronzo medievale, whichhas brought into discussion historical cer-tainties which seemed to follow from its at-tribution to the sculptor Vulca as the creatorof the work in the 6th c. B.C., a public de-bate was held – on February 28, 2007 at theDepartment of Archaeological Sciences atLa Sapienza, with the greatest experts in ar-chaeology, Etruscan studies, Mediaeval arthistory. A few days later, the bronze will

have found a new venue, probably in theMarcus Aurelius room in the Musei Capi-tolini, along with many panels that recountits history and its recently completedrestoration by the Soprintendenza Comu-nale. The Superintendent himself, EugenioLa Rocca, moderated the debate on the 28that La Sapienza, among such renownedscholars as Andrea Carandini, GiovanniColonna, Marina Righetti, Carruba, andAdriano La Regina. Then the Lupa’s newvenue: it will be placed in the Marcus Au-rlius room designed by CarloAymonino; analternative would be a better display in theroom of the Horatii and Curiatii, the histor-ical home of the work in the Capitoline Mu-seums.The recently restored Lupa in anyevent is displayed at a lower level so that it

can be more easily admired, with betterlighting. “I think it is proper,” says SilvioDi Francia, Assessore Comunale alla Cul-tura, “that the historical debate, in which Iwill not take part, should be made publicand that the Lupa should be displayed withexplanatory panels that recount its historyand its restoration, which has been ably car-ried out by the Soprintendenza Comunale.”How long the Lupa will remain in its newlocation is not known: “It will depend, “ ex-plains Di Francia, “on the visitors’ reaction,although in the fact the Capitoline Muse-ums now for several years have beenamong the most visited places in the city.The Capitoline Museums of today are notthose of ten years ago.”

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Photo by: Caitlin Zampella

By his will, Thomas Spencer Jerome en-dowed the lectureship that bears his name.It is jointly administered by the Universityof Michigan and theAmericanAcademy inRome, and the lectures for which it pro-vides are delivered at both institutions.They deal with phases of the history or cul-ture of the Romans, or peoples included inthe Roman Empire, and with other topics inhistoriography and the philosophy of his-tory. The lectures here announced consti-tute the thirty-sixth in the series, which ispublished by the University of MichiganPress.

Larissa Bonfante Delivers the JeromeLectures, Spring 2007

Larissa Bonfante gleefully distributing Etruscan News atthe Villa Poniatowski (Villa Giulia), before delivering one of theJerome Lectures in Rome, April 31, 2007.

thing, some skill or trade that you have andlearned, and can be reasonably good at.AndI guess that is true of any archaeologist: youare good at Something, you are good forsomething, excavating, or reading German,or knowing how a pot is made, you can takeyour friends around a museum, or a dig, andtell them something about it. Which leadsme to the word “archaeologist.” Again, Dr.Bieber comes to mind. When she came tothe US she wrote a series of articles called,“Excavating in Museum Basements.”And Ifound that a useful answer when someonewould ask, “Well, if you are an archaeolo-gist, where do you dig?” And I would an-swer, “I excavate in museum basements.”The Second C is Connectedness: that in-

cludes love, and family, and friendship. Itis also something archaeology has that Ithink few other disciplines have to such adegree. Call it Collaboration: We work to-gether, we depend on each other, we learnfrom each other, and it is very exciting tobe connected to the past, together with otherpeople who are also trying to get back tothat truth that is out there, somewhere. Ilove working with someone else on a proj-ect, brainstorming, and getting new ideas.The third… well, like the consul at the

end of Stoppard’s Travesties, I forget thethird. So I went around asking friends andfamily, and I received some interesting sug-gestions. Chocolate was a good one. Clas-sics comes to mind, for me, because it hasbeen a great joy to be in a Classics depart-ment during my time at NYU, to be read-ing Vergil, and Lucretius, with a group ofsmart, excited undergraduates, or to teachmythology through iconography. My son,who makes music, agreed with me that Cre-ativity is a good one, and so I think I willsettle on that. Creativity of course meansthat you can make things up, and I am sure

we all do that quite happily: we make uptheories, facts, we make up history. Teach-ing is creative, too, in all sorts of ways: youhave a lot freedom, you can sing CarminaBurana, organize an impromptu dramaticreading of Aristophanes, and have a prettydancing girl run around the table, escapingfrom the lecherous Scythian.Connectedness brings me to the Etr-

uscans: I have been connected with themfor a long time now. Once Elias Bickermansaid to me, “Larissa, you must get out of theEtruscan ghetto.” I think what I have triedto do is to get the Etruscans out of theirghetto, and I am so happy today to see thatscholars now are looking at a past that ismore international, that we can hope to un-derstand better as a whole, as well as thespecialized pockets of “Greek,” usuallymeaning fifth-century Athens, and“Roman,” meaning the time of Augustus.Otto Brendel remarked, “We always takethe Greeks as our model, forgetting thatthey did everything differently from every-body else.”And because they were the onesthat were different, we can often understandthem better by looking at them from theoutside, from the point of view of the Etr-uscans, of “everybody else,” and see somethings more clearly.Like others before me, I have cited my

teachers. I also want to remember teachers,mentors and models who received the GoldMedal, Eve Harrison, Emmy Richardson.To them, and to the Archaeological Insti-tute, I am grateful.Thank you for this great honor. “I will domy best to deserve it.”

Larissa Bonfante

In Etruscan News 7, we reported that Larissa Bonfante was to be awarded the GoldMedal for Archaeological Achievement from the Archaeological Institute of America onJanuary 5, 2007. Here is the text of her acceptance speech.

Images and Translations: Greek,Etruscan, and BeyondLecture I: Early EncountersLecture II: Images of GenderLecture III: What happened to theKouros?Lecture IV: Runes and AmberLecture V: Final Journey: theUnderworld

March 26 – April 4 at the University ofMichiganApril 24 – May 8 at the AmericanAcademy in Rome

Gold Medal Acceptance Speech

When I was told that I would be awardedthe Gold medal of the AIA, I rememberedmy dear friend Margarete Bieber’s joywhen she received the medal. It was terriblyimportant to her; it was the recognition ofall that she had been working for, and lov-ing, her whole life, in Germany until 1933,then when she started over, inAmerica. Shecould not be present at the ceremony, whichwas held somewhere else, I forget where,but she sent a cassette with her acceptancespeech. I was at her house that day, and Iremember she watched the time, and notedthe exact moment when the award would beannounced for the first time. (It was a se-cret in those days, and the custom of an-nouncing it ahead of time, and having apanel in honor of the person receiving theaward, had not yet been started).

What she said in her talk was, “I will domy best to deserve it.” She was well intoher 90s at the time, and positive and opti-mistic as always.I was surprised, and happy and moved, atlearning that I was to receive the sameaward that had crowned the achievement ofsomeone who had done so much more thanI will ever be able to even imagine. I canonly repeat what others have said, that theyare being rewarded for doing what theylove best. This profession has given memuch happiness. I see now “Happiness” isa Science, a subject for which they haveclasses, at Harvard and elsewhere. And in-deed I found a kind of Cliff Notes, sometime ago, that said research showed thatpeople who were happy had the three C’s.Being an archaeologist has given me thethree C’s.The first is Competence: there is some-

MosaicContinued from page 7

undoubtedly echoes themes that had be-come popular in the official art of the time,which often shows the assimilation of thefigure of the reigning emperor with that ofAiòn. Starting in the late Antonine period

and continuing throughout the 3rd c. A.D.,numerous bronze medaillons show, on thereverse, in a very repetitive iconographicscheme, the figure of the emperor as Aiònholding the circle of the zodiac, throughwhich the Seasons are about pass.

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SeasonsMosaicfrom Op-pido Lu-cano,2nd-3rdcenturyA.D.; Na-tional Mu-seum atMuro Lu-cano, PZ.