- chapter 50: Etruscan jewelry –
type in certain fi bulae in bronze can also be composed of segments of amber, bone and/or
wood alternately covered or not with gold foil decorated with stamped geometric motifs.
Some very fi ne examples come from the necropoleis of Veii or Bisenzio.^7 The bracts, strips
of gold or bronze plates covered with gold leaf cut in the shape of a swastika, meander,
triangles etc. and decorated with stamped geometric patterns, constitute another class of
ornaments relatively abundant in the Villanovan period: pierced with holes at the corners
or along the edge, they were sewn onto fabrics.^8
In the second half of the eighth century bc the populations of the Near East, deprived
of their resources and their traditional markets by Assyrian expansion, turn to the West
in search of new markets and new sources of foodstuffs and minerals. The Phoenicians are
increasing their presence on the coasts of North Africa and Spain, in western Sicily, and in
Sardinia. The Greeks, faced with the narrowness of their lands, attracted by the iron and
copper of Etruria and the fertile lands of southern Italy, settled on the southern coasts of the
peninsula, from Apulia to Campania, and in the eastern part of Sicily. Into Etruria fl owed
objects and precious materials from Greece and the Near East (Asia Minor, Phoenicia, Syria
and Assyria, Cyprus and Egypt). In the grave goods gold jewelry proliferated from the
beginning of the Orientalizing period (720–580 bc – see Chapter 6) and shows the rapid
enrichment of the Etruscan aristocracy, who take advantage of increased Mediterranean
traffi c, of the trade in iron and metal objects, products of agriculture, including wine, and
accumulate, as signs of power and status symbols, precious metals and prestige objects
imported from various regions of the Near East: gold, silver, electrum, ivory, faïence,
glass vases, ostrich eggs or tridacna shells, jewelry, vessels or textiles. Etruscan artisans are
inspired by the new repertoire of forms and images offered to them, and by blending these
create a composite language characteristic of local products; they become familiar through
the immigrant populations with the symbolism of oriental iconography^9 and learn from
artisans, probably for the most part Phoenicians, the techniques specifi c to the working of
precious metals, such as fi ligree and granulation (see Chapter 48). Expert from an already
long experience with metallurgy, the Etruscans took these techniques to an extreme degree
of sophistication, involving drawing motifs on the smooth surface of the background with a
thin gold wire or spheres of gold of one to two millimeters in diameter soldered with the aid
of copper salts which lower the melting temperature of the gold (“colloidal soldering”).^10
The two main centers of jewelry production in the Orientalizing period have been
identifi ed as Cerveteri and Vetulonia. One usually attributes to the workshops of
Cerveteri, which was the hub and clearinghouse for articles imported from the Near
East, a large portion not only of the jewelry found in the great Orientalizing princely
tombs of southern Etruria, but also those in Latium and Campania. A characteristic of the
production of the workshops of Vetulonia, founded probably by craftsmen from southern
Etruria, is a decoration produced with the aid of extremely fi ne granulation, also called
pulviscolo or “gold-dust,” which also lends itself well to the portrayal of narrative scenes^11
and decorative friezes, like the fi le of fantastic animals that adorn the pin from the Tomb
of the Lictor.^12 The gold granules create silhouettes and not merely a contour line. This
technique is also demonstrated at Bologna where its appearance is attributed to the
arrival of craftsmen coming from Vetulonia (Fig. 37.4).^13
Certain types of jewels of eastern origin, already attested at the end of the Villanovan
period, become more frequent during the last decades of the eighth century bc. This
is the case for the circular pendants made of a copper alloy covered with gold or silver,
well attested in Etruscan territory (at Bisenzio, Tarquinia, Veii, Vulci, Vetulonia – as far