- chapter 16: Etruscans in Campania –
most importantly, a set of multipurpose tools alluding to the function of the sacrifi ce,
the banquet with meat and the display of the hearth (hatchets, axes, machaira [dagger/
knife], knives, andirons, fi re tongs) and, therefore, symbols of assurance of the continuity
of the group or community, and at the same time signs of power. The possession of one
or more horses is attested for tombs 926–928; in Tomb 4461 a royal type of horse armor
appears, unique for its kind, consisting of a pair of equine masks in bronze with repoussé
decoration of hunting scenes (Fig. 16.2, no. 1C).
A quite different scenario is outlined in the eastern necropolis. In this case, the lady of
Tomb 2465 (Fig. 16.2) is the sole “princely” fi gure, and not merely the wife of the prince:
in the funerary representation she seems to be the sole guarantor of the system of signs
associated with the legitimization of the family line, the guarantee of the continuation
of the group, a form of authority and power. For the woman, there is confi gured in
the eastern necropolis of Pontecagnano a centrality of conception of the family line
that could imply the existence of bilinear systems of descent (Cuozzo 2003). To female
fi gures, the sole custodians of the prerogative of the chariot/cart, of royal symbols like
the fan, sacrifi cial instruments and the hearth (axe, knife, fi re-dogs, spits), major roles
seem to be assigned, particularly in the sacred sphere. As various ancient sources recount,
the deep bonds between divinities and those administering their cults at times could
comprise a genuine personifi cation of the gods through the splendor of the costumes and
the presence of specifi c attributes, as has been hypothesized for the lady buried in the
Regolini-Galassi Tomb of Caere (Colonna-diPaolo 1998; Cuozzo 2003), so the garments
of the princess of Pontecagnano Tomb 2465, enriched with rare jewelry with repoussé
and fi ligree decoration of Etruscan and/or Greco-Campanian manufacture (Fig. 16.4), are
stiff in their lower half, entirely covered by a tight network of ornaments in metal plate.
It has also been noted that the valorization of the female line of descent, together with
typologies of uxorilocal matrimony with a foreigner, are attested in the ancient world
precisely in relation to royal or princely conditions. However, in the case of Tomb 2465,
as in that of the Regolini-Galassi Tomb of Caere, the construction of a funerary landscape
of feminine type leads one to consider the possibility of a transitory female pre-eminence
in the creation of the group and/or of power, perhaps in conjunction with one of those
crucial periods of transition that, at times, seemed connected, in the ancient sources, with
momentary changes in power relations (Rathje 2000; Bartoloni 2003).
CAPUAThe settlement was displaced to a strategic position that allowed it to control both the river
routes to the Tiber region and interior Etruria through the valleys of the Sacco and Liri,
and by the access routes to the Apennines through the Samnite territory (Cerchiai 2010).
With respect to its foundation, the literary sources are not uniform, even if they all agree
on the Etruscan character of the city. A well-known passage of Velleius Paterculus (1.7),
that constitutes the principal testimony for this issue, proposed two different traditions:
one, espoused by the author, places the foundation around 800 bc, the other, attributed
to Cato, instead dates the event 260 years before the Roman conquest. In the light of the
most recent archaeological discoveries, both dates seem to reveal a correspondence with
crucial moments in the history of Capua: the “high” date must refer to the fi rst foundation
of the city which today is amply confi rmed in the necropoleis of “Villanovan” type of
the First Iron Age; the “low” chronology, instead, would indicate a phase of urban “re-