- Stefano Bruni –
violent impact suffered by the ship, that cannot be attributed to the physical conditions
of the seabed or other natural obstacles. A confi rmation of the sinking of this cargo vessel
(Latin: navis oneraria) following a pirate action is also the recovery among the materials
of the cargo, which fi x the date of the sinking in the last decades of the second century
bc, of a fragment of the calotte of a human skull still wearing a bronze helmet, probably
belonging to one of the sailors, which is more likely than one of the pirates who had
attacked the vessel. Much more ambiguous is the possibility of reading the spearhead
found among the materials of the Bon Porté 1 wreck of the full Archaic period, and equally
open to quite a few options of interpretation, is the case of the extraordinary cache of
arms (helmets of the class “a bottone,” Coarelli type C, in bronze and iron, bronze muscle
cuirasses, swords, iron spear-points and ends of spears and javelins) found on the beach of
the Gulf of Baratti, an area in ancient times certainly set well back from the shoreline in
comparison to what it is today, but otherwise associated with the epineion of Populonia.
Similarly, there is nothing to identify people who practiced piracy in the fi nds of
the various Etruscan necropoleis, even in a center like Spina, which especially after the
Celtization of the inland Po valley in the fourth century bc, had to be at the center of
Etruscan piracy in the Adriatic. Since it cannot be ruled out that the headquarters of
Adriatic piracy can be recognized in Ravenna, this situation does not seem to depend
on the inability of us moderns to read the signs, but rather should be explained by the
funerary ideology of this community, which seems oriented according to parameters
which exclude from the composition of grave goods expressions of military areté (“honor/
excellence”) and of polemos (“war”).
As in the case of port facilities, our knowledge of Etruscan naval engineering is also
limited. The wrecks defi nitely known to date are, in substance, many, but in practice
limited to a few cases from the southern French coast between Antibes and Agde, to
which has recently been added the case of the wreck from Calafuria, found on the seabed
immediately south of Livorno, which, with its load of Etruscan amphorae (Py type 4A),
and by virtue of the characteristics of other materials stowed on it, including a Massaliote
amphora of Bertucchi type 2B and a Phoenico-Punic amphora (of the group of Torres
T-1,4 between 2 and 5), seems to be dated to the second half of the fi fth–beginning of the
fourth century bc. However, if in the case of the wreck of La Love at Cap d’Antibes, and in
that of Écueil du Miet 3 in the little archipelago of Marseilleveyre in the Bay of Marseille,
of Cassidaigne in the bay of Cassis, or that of Point du Dattier, or in those of Pointe
Lequin 1B in front of the north coast of the island of Porquerolles, only materials from
the cargoes and on-board equipment are known; the only data available on characteristics
of the hulls are for the wrecks of Bon Porté 1 of the second half of the sixth century bc,
found off the island of San-Tropez, between Cape Camarat and Cape Taillat, and that
excavated only partially in the waters off the south-east of the small peninsula of Giens to
the west of the islet of Grand Ribaud (wreck F), dated between the end of the sixth and
the fi rst decades of the fi fth century bc (Fig. 40.2).
In the case of the wreck of Bon Porté 1 there are more than a few doubts about the
origin of the vessel and its naukleros. The cargo included about 20 amphorae of Py type
5 of Vulcian production, fewer than 10 amphorae of Massaliote Bertucchi type 1, two
specimens of the so-called Corinthian B type from Magna Graecia, and two or three
Clazomenian amphorae seem to place the activity of this ship as part of a circuit of a
Massaliot emporos (“merchant”) redistributing goods of various origins. The characteristics
of the engineering of the hull would seem to agree with this perspective, a boat a dozen