- chapter 5: The Villanovan culture –
Figure 5.9 Etruscan material imported into Sardinia and Sardinian goods found in Etruria
(after La Sardegna nel Mediterraneo tra il secondo e il primo millennio a.C., Cagliari, 1987).of the eastern Mediterranean, which began early in the eighth century bc, continues to
be widely attested in the middle decades of the century. In addition to the prestigious
objects found in tombs of both sexes, male depositions are highlighted by weapons in
various combinations, female burials are distinguished by ornaments belonging to rich
headdresses and by impasto spindle whorls and rocchetti (“spools” or weaving weights)
that were sometimes accompanied by spindles and distaffs in bronze.
The assemblages show signifi cant enrichment with the presence of goods manufactured
in the Near East and Greece: seals, scarabs, and pendants seem to be the materials of choice
of the nascent local aristocracy, but there are also vases, as evidenced by the discovery in
Tarquinia of a Phoenician-Cypriot jug type widespread in all the Phoenician settlements
from Cyprus to Malaga, datable to the middle years of the eighth century bc, according
to the stratigraphic sequence developed for Tyre (see Chapter 17).
In the necropoleis, tombs are arranged in small, no doubt family, groups: examination
of the horizontal stratigraphy of burial at Veii, for example, shows a breakdown of the
graves into more or less consistent groups, probably belonging to extended family groups,
recognizable not only in their arrangement on the ground, but also for the combination
of particular characteristics of the ritual and the grave goods.