- chapter 28: Etruscan religious rituals –
personage is leaning in the process of sacrifi cing a bird on a sardonyx gem preserved in
Vienna.^24 To this may be added, in the same Orvietan sanctuary, two other altars with
inverted echinus profi le, one of which^25 is comparable for shape and dimensions, to an
example from the necropolis sanctuary of the Cannicella, with lower recesses,^26 already
defi ned as a sort of altar chopping-block very likely reserved for operations in the killing
and butchering of the body of the animal victim.^27
In the framework of the classifi cation of altars proposed by Colonna (2006), a form of
monumental structure, provided with elements associated with a catachthonic cult, such
as channels, pits, holes, pipes and conduits is identifi able now with a single construction,
as in the case of the altar in the sanctuary of Punta della Vipera (S. Marinella) in the
Caeretan countryside, now with a complex cultic apparatus formed by the association of
a “pierced” altar, and an altar constructed above ground, wells, bases for offerings, which
are attested in Etruria within sanctuary precincts, as shown by the examples from Area C
of Pyrgi or by the sacred area with the “precinct” of the Veian sanctuary of Portonaccio.^28
These would actually constitute a kind of open-air worship, passed down in literary
sources in the dual formulation of the “loca sine tecto diis sacrata”^29 or of the “locus parvus
deo sacratus cum ara.”^30 In the extreme variety of typological variations thereon, such cultic
reality would come to include monumental “podia” with T-shaped plan and rectilinear/
molded profi le, like the structures “B” and “D” of the sanctuary on the Acropolis of
Marzabotto, already fortunately defi ned, also by Colonna, as a “self-suffi cient unit of
worship,”^31 capable of combining planimetric elements drawn from the Greek world
(T-shaped plan, etc.) with Etruscan structural elements and cultic valences. With a certain
degree of probability, we may assign them respectively to a cult devoted to the celestial
gods (altar “D”) and to Underworld/chthonic gods (altar “B”); the two “podia” seem to
lend reason to that ambivalence of destination, “urania/infera” (“heavenly/underworld”),
already emphasized,^32 that seems to characterize, from the Archaic period on, the above-
ground Etruscan cultic structures corresponding to the Greek bomos (raised altar),^33 also
located in sanctuary and funerary contexts and assignable to divinities and cults labeled
either celestial or subterranean.
As regards sanctuary spaces, structures related to chthonic/underworld cults^34 are
recognizable, in addition to the structures mentioned above, in the nenfro block of
truncated conical shape, with a small cavity, situated within the sacred area of Pian di
Civita at Tarquinia, near the entrance to area “γ” (Gamma), and compared by Bagnasco
Gianni^35 with the two stone blocks, also provided with cavities and a gutter, placed in the
sacellum (“chapel”) “γ” (Gamma) of Pyrgi, interpreted as altars^36 and ritually connected to
bothros “ε” (Epsilon). In the sanctuary of Cetamura,^37 Altar 1, identifi ed in an irregular,
tetragonal platform of large, rough stones and presumably related to the NW channel
prepared to convey offerings of a liquid nature into the natural cavity opening into the
rocky bank (cf. the cultic structural complex constructed at the Civita site at Tarquinia
in connection with the natural cavity there^38 ), exhibits, on its fl attened upper surface, a
circular depression perhaps used for the same sort of cultic procedures.
A similar variety of shapes and sizes, accompanied by an equal semantic-functional
complexity, recurs, always in the presence of elements such as conduits, channels, etc.
in the structures used for the cult of the dead and for the catachthonic gods, in those
contexts where the actual use of the monument within burial areas, or the contiguous
relationship of the structure with the tomb construction, openly declares their funerary
connotation.