- chapter 28: Etruscan religious rituals –
testify to the fact that the rituals involving blood sacrifi ce of the victim were associated
with vegetable offerings. The ritual use of the jars, also intended for the cooking of the
exta (internal organs) of the sacrifi ced animals (exta aulicocta)^89 is widely documented in the
sacred area of the Civita at Tarquinia, where the only “repeated deposit”^90 has furnished
numerous examples of cooked vegetable and animal offerings, to which are added the two
impasto jars found in the so-called “area α,”^91 under the Archaic wall; they contained the
remains of a foundation deposit,^92 including burnt fi sh bones and bones of a piglet.
Consistent with the primary role that in Etruria must have imbued the sacrifi ces with
an expiatory character, and rituals of foundation marked by the same value, there are
numerous small animal victims alongside the sheep in these contexts, represented mainly
by dogs, foxes and suckling piglets.
The excavations conducted in the last decade in the sanctuary areas of Pian di Civita in
Tarquinia, in the so-called “monumental complex,”^93 and at Ortaglia^94 have furthered the
documentation of the use of foxes as sacrifi cial victims, designated, as with the wolf/dog^95
and the piglet, with a specifi c value justifying their use in expiatory ritual. This is proven
in the fi eld of art by the reproduction of these animals designated for the infernal deities,
as in the case of the Cortona bronze fi gurine depicting a canid,^96 with an inscription
containing the name of the god.^97 To the skeletal remains already noted of a dog and
piglet found “whole” in the main shrine at Pyrgi, in the wells placed respectively in front
of Temple A and in Sacred Area C,^98 and perhaps related – like the structures – to the
divine fi gure of Uni-Eileithyia and to a chthonic Tinia, and to [the bones] of foxes found
in the same Caeretan sanctuary,^99 we may add the remains of canids found in the well in
the sanctuary of Ortaglia and in the “monumental complex” of Tarquinia – La Civita,^100
and the remains of complete skeletons of foxes recovered from the well of the sanctuary
at Ortaglia and in the same Tarquinian “monumental complex,”^101 as well as the remains
of pigs and piglets from the same contexts.^102
The pig was widely used in foundation sacrifi ces, as evidenced by the fi nds in the
Sanctuary of the Acropolis of Volterra,^103 and especially those recovered inside Area “α”
(Alpha) of Tarquinia – La Civita,^104 where, in the votive deposits, there is recorded the
distinct predominance of the remains of pigs over those of sheep/goats. A suckling pig, in
particular, seems to constitute the offering more likely to fulfi ll that custom very deeply
rooted in the Etruscan religious system,^105 represented by the ritualized construction
of boundary-walls, the precepts of which, useful to separate from profane space entire
or partial buildings and to regulate “the foundation and consecration of cities, altars,
temples” (Festus 285 L. “quo ritu condantur urbes, arae, aedes sacrentur”), had to be preserved
at the heart of the Libri Rituales (“Books of Rituals”) of the Etrusca Disciplina.^106
The concept of the sacredness of the structure, together with that of the sacredness of
the individual, both achieved through the same religious ritual of consecration, deeply
interrelated, dominates, in Warden’s opinion,^107 ancient religious ideology during the
entire fi rst millennium bc, inserting the man and the structure into the same circular
path that leads inexorably from construction to destruction and to burial in the context
of a process marked by stages shared by the two identities, human and structural.
In the Sanctuary of Poggio Colla, near a cylindrical stone element, variously understood
as a column or altar, there came to light in 2006 a bronze bowl fi lled with pig bones
and resting on more bones of the same species, in relation to which one would like to
recognize a sacrifi ce of purifi cation, in terms of a parallelism that may be established
between funerary practice, where the body of the individual is returned to the earth