- chapter 11: The Nuragic heritage in Etruria –
The third and fi nal event is the burial of objects, preceded by a more or less long
“second” life, in some cases including breaking and restoration of the piece.
In this line of events, the problem is tracing down the actors and the dates that must
be hypothesized from the beginning to the end, considering that often only the end can
be dated (when the object is not derived from a private collection, lacking in data of
provenance of any kind). That is why the discovery of Nuragic objects in Villanovan and
Etruscan tombs led to the wrong conclusion of an indiscriminate EIA manufacture in the
island, acquired at the moment by market trade as any other merchandise.
A totally different chain links up the imitation of Nuragic handiwork found in peninsular
Italy, fi rstly, because its manufacture can have taken place either in Sardinia or in Etruria
(as in the case of the Vetulonian askoid jugs) and secondly, because it is more diffi cult
to determine the time needed from the making to the burial, when a new and highly
debatable parameter is added, that is the time for the model to reach and penetrate a
foreign environment, up to the point to determine a cultural rather than a material need
(a material need can have been the craving for a new and renowned Sardinian wine, while
the cultural need dictated the shape of the container and the placement in the grave).
It must never be forgotten that one of the strongest and most peculiar features of
Nuragic Sardinia is the miniature reproduction of human beings, animals, monuments,
weapons, tools, clay and wickerwork containers and other objects of ritual value. This
means that reproducing and placing an object of a symbolic aspect not in a Nuragic
sanctuary but in a tomb is far from a casual acquisition of an ornament in a marketplace,
but implies a deep understanding of a common cultural basis, ascribing importance to
images and subjects though in a deliberately smaller size (Lo Schiavo 2011).
The second sequence, as it is now demonstrated by new and exciting discoveries,
not only happens between Sardinia and peninsular Italy, but also between Sardinia and
the Iberian peninsula: see the fragments of a miniature bronze tripod-stand from La
Clota-Teruel in Bajo Aragon, apparently made in the same region as the discovery (Rafel
Fontanals 2002; Rafel et al. 2010), typologically identical to the miniature bronze tripod-
stand from Pirosu-Su Benatzu cave in Santadi (Lilliu 1973; Usai, Lo Schiavo 1995); see
also the “inverted-elbow” handle jar from Sulki-S. Antioco (Bartoloni 1989) and from La
Rebanadilla-Malaga (Arancibia et al. 2011 Fig. 14), an EIA reproduction of a Nuragic
FBA 2 shape (Campus, Leonelli 2006).
Evidently, from now onwards, the main target is to distinguish if the object is an
original Nuragic Bronze Age product or if it is an imitation, and if it was made in Sardinia
or elsewhere. The answer to this question opens a world of different cultural meaning.
To this aim, the most thorough typological and analytical and technical studies are
absolutely necessary and cannot at any cost be omitted, also taking under examination
items that up to now were considered as secure.
THE NURAGIC HERITAGE IN ETRURIA (M. MILLETTI)With few exceptions, such as the votive small bronze boat discovered in the sanctuary of
Hera Lacinia at Crotone in Calabria (Spadea 1996), or the one found recently during the
dredging of Lake Trasimene in Umbria (Marzatico et al. 2011), almost all of the Nuragic
material found on the Italian peninsula comes from Etruscan territories, especially from
the northern mining districts of Vetulonia and Populonia, in (modern) Tuscany (Bartoloni
1991, 2002; Lo Schiavo 1981, 2002; Milletti 2012), but with concentrations also reported