- Maurizio Sannibale –
BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND SYMBOL: THE TRANSFER
OF THE GOLDSMITH’S ART AND OF ARTISANS
The technology transfer of the goldsmith’s art to the West is a broad cultural phenomenon,
the direct transmission of knowledge and empirical aspects, accompanying an intangible
heritage linked to the formal aspects: iconography, symbol, message.^15 In investigating
the contextual acquisition of typological and iconographic elements we cannot ignore the
prevailing ritual character of production in the eastern areas that instilled a high degree of
symbolism, which is where the symbol and analogy are the only direct form of conceptual
communication, and we should not forget how this can be traced back to the realm of magic.
The technical principles of the Etruscan goldsmith, fi ligree and granulation, burst
onto the Tyrrhenian Early Orientalizing scene without previous technological and formal
predecessors, after only the briefest, minimal experimental phase (see Chapter 50). The
link has now been identifi ed in the construction of a “Villanovan” gold fi bula, from a tomba
a pozzo in Tarquinia, dated to the mid-eighth century bc (Fig. 6.9).^16 Its linear decoration
and fi lled triangles evoke Eastern models distributed during the second millennium. But
what now appear even more extraordinary are the technological elements that clearly
distinguish the Tarquinia fi bula from Etruscan jewelry: layout and grain size (0.4 mm),
and the same welding technique with salts of silver instead of copper, making it in virtually
all aspects identical to the goldwork of the East, including those extraordinary discoveries
in the royal necropolis of Ebla. Similar Eastern techniques can be found in the jewelry of
Cumae, which, however, appears toward the end of the eighth century bc, also as some
of the fi rst evidence in Italy of fi ne granulation technique with solder of copper salts,
typical of Etruscan jewelry. It is likely that the area of the Phlegraean Fields was one of the
“laboratories” in which the meeting of cultures fostered a decisive technological advance.^17
It is no coincidence that new techniques are associated with the introduction of any new
motifs that, in themselves, are more than mere decoration. Suffi ce it to consider the rising
moon and sun motifs, the disc-shaped pendant-amulets common in Etruria, Latium,
Campania, but also in Rhodes, during the eighth century. These are the delocalized and
later descendents of far more ancient Near Eastern amulets, symbols of deities in aniconic
phase,^18 in which we also fi nd the reason for the star/rosette of Inanna/Ishtar,^19 as in
the Tarquinia pendant.^20 Pendant-amulets, in the form of divine symbols, are worn by
Ashurnasirpal II (883–859) and other Assyrian kings of the ninth and eighth centuries. It
is reasonable to question whether the presence of these ancient symbols of astral divinity
in the Orientalizing gold of Etruria is totally without meaning (Fig. 6.10).
Figure 6.9 Tarquinia. Fibula in gold decorated in granulation and fi ligree. Second half of eighth
century bc. Photo Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici per l’Etruria Meridionale.