- chapter 15: Etruria on the Po and the Adriatic Sea –
in a large jar in the late eighth or early seventh century bc, with nearly 15,000 bronze
objects carefully stored inside. Accumulated over time, these objects weighed about 1418
kg, and all were destined to be recast. This was certainly the reserve storage of one or
more workshops, as evidenced by the presence of many tools related to metallurgy (saws,
fi les, hammers, anvils and crucibles). There are also many ingots of pure copper, perhaps
from the mines of Tyrrhenian Etruria. Other work tools (saws, drills, rasps, chisels and
axes) can be traced back to woodworking or tool making, while large scythes, sickles and
the pennate axes indicate different crops, and viticulture and arboriculture.
The cemeteries of Bologna have furnished more than 3,000 graves for the Villanovan
phase (ninth to eighth century bc) and Orientalizing period (seventh to sixth century bc)
and about 1,000 for the next phase conventionally called the “Felsina phase” (from the mid-
sixth to beginning of the fourth century bc). They began to bury in the areas closest to
the village and proceeded to spread out almost in haphazard fashion. After an initial phase
characterized by a substantial uniformity in the grave goods, attested by a biconical urn
and few other objects, from the mid-eighth century bc differences begin to appear in the
funeral ritual, the consequence of radical structural changes that correspond to economic and
social transformations. The population is now heading towards a rapid cultural and political
development, which will lead at the end of the eighth century bc to the emergence of an
aristocratic class, just as happens in the centers of Tyrrhenian Etruria. Symptomatic in this
respect is the indication of possession of a horse through the deposition in the tomb of bits
and other items of tack, alluding to a higher social level. More and more numerous in the
tombs is the banquet service of fi ne vessels, often made of bronze (Fig. 15.4), and especially
lavish is the system of personal ornaments such as fi bulae, pins and belts made of bronze. The
rare presence of weapons in graves evokes special functions of a military character, but the
rite of burial in Bologna did not envisage the connotation of the deceased as a warrior, in
contrast to the situation in the Tyrrhenian area. During the seventh century bc the high
level of production and artistic attainment is evidenced by the appearance of painted
pottery in imitation of Greek wares and the stamp-decorated ceramics that are a feature
of Bologna (Fig. 15.5). But above all there is the emergence of funerary sculpture in
stone, perhaps due to craftsmen from the East who came to Bologna, indicating a strong
economic development and a high artistic culture, supported by the aristocracy. The
Orientalizing stelae (so-called “proto-Felsina stelae”) exhibit an iconographic repertoire
that extends from the Near Eastern (sphinxes, tree of life, the lord in the chariot) and
ends with the exhibition of the social and political values of the class in power (Fig. 15.6).
Another event of great signifi cance in cultural terms, forever linked to this group of
aristoi, is the early acquisition of writing in the early seventh century bc. The inscription
on an amphora from the Melenzani necropolis dating from the late seventh century bc,
the longest in Bologna and one of the longest of all the Etruscan area, recalls a solemn gift
Figure 15.4 Bronze vessels from Benacci Caprara Tomb 39 of Bologna
(Museo Civico Archeologico di Bologna).