- Maria Paola Baglione –
creation of a small enclosure (temenos τ), incorporating these three “points of interest”
further emphasizes the importance of separating them from the rest of the sacred area.
About the same time as the expansion of the monumental sanctuary occurred, the
minor sanctuary was also expanded to the south. In the southeast sector the tholos-type
altar λ was erected, which was accessed by a short ramp, the only feature with a character of
monumentality, with which was probably associated the structured deposit κ, functioning
as a votive deposit (see plan). Within the circumference of stones that delimited altar λ
the exceptional offering of a group of lead ingots was buried (see Figure 37.16), while the
contiguous deposit κ was made in three different nuclei deposited in succession. The act
of consecration began in sector A, where the ground was prepared fi rst by pouring the
liquid from three different containers of perfumed substances (one lekythos, one alabastron
and one aryballos) placed next to a “package” of leaves in iron and bronze sheet and
covered with a rough row of stones on which was overturned a bronze basin. Inside the
basin were also found three perfume vases, more valuable than those preceding (a pair of
alabastra in alabaster and a small oinochoe in glass paste). The objects are clearly related
to a female divinity, to whom the “package” of metal leaves also alludes, reminiscent of
a ritual reserved for Demeter, the phillobolìa (“offering of leaves”). Further to the south, a
cluster of vessels all of open forms, deposited without order, marks the second act and an
ideological change in the rite. In the group, an Attic kantharos, datable to 470 bc, seems
relatively isolated; attributed to the workshop of the Painter of the Syriskos, it is formed
of masks of a silen and a maenad joined together. Since the kantharos is par excellence the
vessel of Dionysos for drinking, and maenads and silens form part of the god’s cortege,
it is obvious that an attempt was made to characterize this deposit as “Dionysiac.” This
character is then reprised by the pair of column-craters, these too Attic, deposited closer
to altar λ; one of the craters is decorated with Heracles in repose, who extends a large
kantharos toward a silen who is ready to pour the wine from a goatskin; under Heracles’
foot is the Etruscan inscription mi fufl unusra. This is a “speaking inscription” in which
the vase announces that it belongs to Fufl uns, the Etruscan version of Dionysos, with a
precise match betweeen the language of the inscribed text, the image and the function of
the vase, which was considered the symposium vase par excellence.
Other offerings, placed at the side of the two craters, emphasize a particular connection
between the spheres of Demeter and Dionysos. A pair of female protome-busts, which
in Etruria fi nd their closest parallels in those from the newly discovered deposit of the
sanctuary of the emporium of Gravisca, may be considered offerings linked to the cult of
the pair of Demeter, tied to the cycles of nature and rebirth, and her daughter Kore.
To the rituals of chthonic character reserved for the two goddesses may be assigned as
well a large olla in impasto, placed in a hollow beside the busts, and containing heavy
fragments of aes rude. The olla had certainly been used for an offering of chthonic character,
because its base had been drilled and subsequently closed, allowing liquid to fi lter over
the bronze. In this complex deposit the two deities, in charge of agricultural activities
essential in the Greek and Etruscan worlds (the vine and wheat), probably were associated
in a perspective within which the same relevance to the mystery religions is considered
an integral part of the complex of beliefs and rituals associated with the cycles of rebirth
of the forces of nature and of man himself.
In the corner towards the sea was built a second shrine, designated γ, about a decade
later; with an elongated plan, it had been built so as not to allow a view from the threshold
of the inner cella, isolated on all four sides, as if it had been conceived to defi ne an