- Stefano Bruni –
Ancient antiquarian tradition, however, attributed to Etruscan shipbuilding its own
inventive autonomy, projecting onto the mythical fi gure of the hero Pisaeus, the son of
Tyrrhenus (Pliny NH 7.56.207) the innovation of adding a rostrum to the bow of a vessel
for a more effective offensive role, perhaps evoking the famed arsenals of Pisa with the
name of this protos euretés (“fi rst discoverer”). A bronze example of this prow-fi tting, now
in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, dated to the Hellenistic period,
was found off the coast of North Africa: it is a tripartite rostrum (ram) with its base open
in a V-shape and crossed vertically at an angle by a sort of curved bar that seems to fi t
well on the convex curve of a prow, the appearance of which seems to fully justify the
image incised on a small impasto jug from tomb I of the excavations of 1928 in the
necropolis of Veii-Macchia della Comunità (beginning of the seventh century bc), which
depicts a ship provided with a rostrum fi tted horizontally to interrupt the profi le of the
symmetrically curved keel, typical of a round ship (thus a cargo vessel). In the case of
purely representational evidence, it would not seem feasible to distinguish the presence
of a rostrum, or even of a simple cutwater, since prow-overhangs seem to continue in the
majority of Etruscan ships of the Orientalizing and early Archaic periods (oinochoai of
the Pittore delle Palme, the Pania pyxis, bronze plaques now in Copenhagen, Etrusco-
Corinthian plate by the Kithara Painter, etc.): the keel curves, fl exing in profi le, in a
different fashion from what is observed for the Greek world. The case seems different for
longships of marked military (naval) use, for instance the one that is attacking a navis
oneraria on the famous crater of Aristonothos, or the penteconters on a Vulcian hydria by
the Micali Painter now in the British Museum, and the stele of Vel Kaikna of Bologna,
where the rostrum continues the straight line of the keel following an engineering system
also common to Greek and Carthaginian shipbuilding. Other information can be inferred
from the corpus of images of ships, in design and pattern, which marked the Etruscan
iconographic repertoire from the early Iron Age until the full waning of Etruria in the
Roman world, and shows that quite a few ship types were in use in Etruria since the early
Iron Age, differentiated both diachronically and in their mode of use and functions. A
wide range of ritual vases that replicate, in clay, the structure of ships and boats found in
the necropoleis of many centers of southern and interior Etruria allow a glimpse inside
the framework of types of Etruscan naval architecture of the earliest era, showing a diverse
typology and a very fi ne level of engineering already in those years. Craft designed for river
navigation or as small coasting vessels (cabotage) are in all likelihood portrayed on some
vases from Veii (Tomb of Monte Oliviero), Capena (necropolis of S. Martino, tomb 16)
and Orvieto, which replicate in impasto the form of monoxile (dugout) canoes like that
actual one, exceptionally well known, of the mid-eighth century bc from the necropolis
of Caolino near Sasso di Furbara in the territory between Pyrgi and Cerveteri, or instead
ships constructed by assembling the various parts of the hull seams with ligatures (“sewn
ships”). Also likely to have been designed for lake sailing are the reproductions found in
the necropoleis of Bisenzio: these are fl at-bottomed boats, whether small craft or with
symmetrical, round hulls with keels and curved ends, with stempost and sternpost and
skin made of planking sewn with ligatures; a gaudy ornament in the form of an animal
protome was on the stempost of both types, jutting upwards, while, apparently only
in the round-hulled ship above the stempost was found a circular element protruding
out beyond the hull, which formed the seat for the helmsman who steered the ship, as
confi rmed by the boat propelled by two oarsmen painted on a nearly contemporary olla
(jar) from tomb 24 of the necropolis of Olmo Bello (Bisenzio; Fig. 40.3).