- Giovannangelo Camporeale –
instance at Vetulonia in the trench tomb of Castelvecchio that may be dated to the years
bridging the eighth and seventh centuries bc (Camporeale 1966, p. 33, n. 39).
The same pattern developed for other materials of foreign origin such as ivory and
gold, used extensively in artistic craftsmanship in Etruria. Evidence for these materials
in the eighth century bc is sporadic, but they become common – naturally at higher
levels of society – from the beginning of the next century. The fi rst ivory carvings found
in Etruria are either imports or are made locally by foreign masters who came from the
source-region of the material (the Near East), and adapted their art to local ideologies:
the master of animals, fi ghts between fi erce animals or monsters, processions of animals.
Also the fi rst products of goldsmiths, from the seventh century bc, may be attributed to
masters from these areas because of the use of techniques, like granulation and fi ligree,
common in the Aegean and Near East (see Chapter 50). They would have arrived in
Etruria with their tools and would have begun the tradition of working these materials.
In short, amber, ivory and gold have intrinsic market value, and their fi nished products
are the prerogative of the rich class, the class that could adequately compensate the
foreign masters who were introducing new and innovative arts.
Beginning in the middle years and for the rest of the eighth century bc, ceramic cups
and kraters of Euboean manufacture, brought by Euboean seafarers, are found among
Etruscan grave goods (Fig. 48.2). These are a novelty, in contrast to the local pottery of
coarse impasto, while they stand out for their fi ne clay, wheel-made technique, decorative
friezes painted in panels, and for their decorative repertoire of geometric elements like the
chevron, broken meander, waterbird motif (anatrella), blossoming fl ower, checkerboard,
and wavy line (linea a tremolo). They are vases used for wine-service, and their arrival in
Etruria marks the arrival of wine, of the ceremony of the symposium, and of the associated
aristocratic ideology (Ridgway 1984 [1992], pp. 143–169; Camporeale 1991). In the last
decades of the eighth century and fi rst decades of the seventh century bc, many vases for
Figure 48.2 Krater by the Pescia Romana/Cesnola Painter, of Euboean background, circa 730–710 bc,
from Pescia Romana. Grosseto, Museo di Archeologia e d’Arte della Maremma, inv. 1426. With thanks
to Dott.ssa Mariagrazia Celuzza.