34 The Violence of Symbols: Ideologies, Identity, and Cultural Interaction in Central Italian Cemeteries
Abstract
This chapter examines cemeteries to investigate the complex dynamics of ethnogenesis and the construction of collective identity and elite group ideologies in central Italy during the First Iron Age and the so-called Orientalizing period (ninth–seventh centuries BC). In order to explore complex cultural interactions through burial, I draw on the notion of ‘symbolic violence’ as proposed by Bourdieu and Godelier to investigate group and individual strategies and rituals of power in Iron Age and Orientalizing Etruria. The burial evidence serves to explore selections and ambiguity in the self-representation of ‘princes,’ to analyze gender dialectics in burial customs, age-group dynamics, and symbols of status and power. In this way, I hope to contribute to understanding the dynamics of interaction between Etruscans, Greeks, Phoenicians, and other people from the East in the Tyrrhenian context.
What we may call the social imaginary ..., the way it works, with its privileged figures and its rejections, its favourite scenes and its shady zones, the classifications it enacts through a play of similarities and oppositions, through shifts ..., deviations, interferences between different categories of images. (Vernant 1984a: 5)
The definition of ‘social imaginary’ as proposed by J.P. Vernant for a different field of archaeological research provides the best introduction to the topics dealt with in this chapter. On the basis of these premises, this chapter looks at funerary ritual to investigate the complex dynamics of the construction of collective and elite group ideologies in central Italy during the First Iron Age and the so-called Orientalizing period. I will focus on the composite archaeological representation characterizing the main cemeteries of Etruria, a region that was a stage for complex cultural interactions (Figure 34.1).
Figure 34.1. Map of Etruria showing the main sites of the region (after D’Agostino 2003).
Etruria consists of the area delimited by the Tyrrhenian Sea, the rivers Arno and Tiber, and the Apennine Mountains (Figure 34.1). In terms of the traditional chronology, I will be focusing on the two main phases of the early Iron Age (EIA1: ninth century BC; EIA2: eighth century BC until 725 BC) and the Second Iron Age (last quarter of the eighth and seventh centuries BC), better known as the Orientalizing period (Figure 34.2).
Figure 34.2. Chronological chart of the main Etruscan and Italic periods and a distribution map of the first Greek pottery in Italy (after Bartoloni 2012).
Symbolic Violence: A Theoretical Approach
I begin by setting out my theoretical and methodological premises. As a long-running debate has amply demonstrated, mortuary analysis remains an essential field of archaeological research (D’Agostino and Schnapp 1982; Hodder 1982; 1992; D’Agostino 1985; Morris 1987; Thomas 1991; Parker Pearson 1999; Cuozzo 2003; 1999). Caution is nevertheless required in every approach to the study of burial, as it is a non-neutral, selective, segmenting, and partial practice, and, above all, one that is closely dependent on the mentalities and ideologies prevailing among communities, groups, social segments, and/or individuals in a given context at a given time.
The importance of funerary evidence depends not so much on the circumstance that it is often the best if not only source of information (D’Agostino 2005) as on the fact that cemeteries are active ritual contexts and an integral part of mentalities, political and religious cosmologies, ideologies, social strategies, technologies of power, identities, and of many other aspects presiding over the production of the social imaginary.
Interpretation of cemeteries should reconstruct the funerary context as constructed by polyvalent performances often extended through time and renewed at regular intervals and aimed at long-term immobilization of social space and time. We should look out for ‘silences, gestures, behaviours’ (D’Agostino 1985: 52), the deceased’s due, and the social, ceremonial, and cultic actions whereby the deceased’s image was constructed in collective memory. In each context, community value systems, mental attitudes, and the conception of the border between one and the other dimension inform the codes of the funerary imaginary and its relationship with society.
In funerary ritual, the deceased’s group plays a central role. If required by their group’s strategy, the dead often became what they had not been in their lifetime (Hodder 1982). A second aspect of fundamental importance is the active role of funerary performance and of the connected material culture as a powerful motor in the reproduction and transformation of the imaginary and the social order. A path toward a ‘semiotics of cemeteries’ thus implies a passage from the analysis of ‘sign systems’ to an investigation of modes of ‘sign production’ (Eco 1975; Cuozzo 2003).
The interpretation of funerary contexts involves several often contradictory and misleading aspects. I have suggested the possibility of contemporary and potentially contradictory action in four principal ‘fields of action’ of ideologies in funerary representation, connected to different levels of social grouping (Cuozzo 2003; 2007): the field of community action is manifested in rules and interdictions that determine the basic code of funerary language; the action of different or opposed groups is, on the contrary, visible through their differences; the field of ‘transversal’ social segments may involve forms of negotiation (gender, age group, ethnicity); the field of individual action may encompass a wide range of ritual, situational, and emotional variations, as well as funerary behavior with exceptional characteristics. This dialectic and the forms in which it manifests itself as one or the other element are strictly dependent on the degree and forms of social control in different historical-political contexts.
In the first place, we need to ascertain whether, on the basis of the mentality and values prevailing in a given social context, priority is given to aspects of social composition and hierarchy, or whether other factors are emphasized (e.g., political, religious, or private and/or emotion). Second, the modes of action of ideologies must be investigated.
From this perspective, I intend to investigate the notion of ‘symbolic violence’ as proposed by Bourdieu (1972) and Godelier (1985; 1999) as a central aspect of collective group as well as individual strategies, and of power rituals in the early Iron Age and the ‘Orientalizing’ period in Etruria. Symbolic violence is a central concept in Bourdieu’s theory, where it goes hand in hand with the concepts of habitus and practice:
symbolic violence ... is that form of violence that is exerted on agents with their implicit complicity ... insofar as it is not recognized as violence... [it] is contained in a number of postulates or axioms that are acquired in everyday practice (habitus) without needing to be inculcated verbally. (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 28–29)
For Bourdieu (1998: 7–8, 43), symbolic violence is exercised through
the purely symbolic paths of communication and knowledge ... and provides a prime occasion to highlight the logic of domination exercised in the name of a symbolic principle understood and acknowledged both by the dominated and the dominators: a language ..., a lifestyle, and ways of thinking, talking, and acting.
A further line of inquiry concerns the contrast between visible elites and invisible majorities that was highlighted by Ian Morris (1987), when he questioned the demographic and social representativeness of cemeteries. He showed that the exclusive representation of privileged social groups and segments (genders and/or age groups) may depend on political, social, and ideological mechanisms, and these thus should be investigated in each context. Morris’s studies of the cemeteries of Attica revealed, for example, a rigid division between elite groups and ‘a largely invisible majority’ (Morris 1995: 53). Inadequate representation of children in cemeteries (less than 40–50% in preindustrial agricultural societies) is regarded as one of the clearest indications of selective burial. This is something that has hardly received attention at all in Etruscan funerary studies.
For the Orientalizing period, I see the notions of ‘reinvention of tradition’ and ‘living ancestor’ as crucially important (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1984; Helms 1998; Antonaccio 2002; Cuozzo 2003). They imply a cosmology of political and sacral authority that aristocrats play on when they associate themselves with attributes that were previously reserved to ancestors or gods and that are projected into the cosmological sphere through a form of ‘heroization.’ Controversial subjects such as the definition of ‘Orientalization,’ kinship groups, and ‘princely’ status are thus interesting topics for debate.
The Early Iron Age (800–725 BC)
A discussion of Etruscan funerary ritual in the early Iron Age must necessarily start from the major phenomenon of the population concentration during the transition from the Final Bronze to the early Iron Age. The new extensive settlements were so innovative that no better word has been found to characterize them than the much-discussed term ‘proto-urban’ (e.g., Peroni 1996; Iaia 1999; Guidi 2000;Pacciarelli 2000; D’Agostino 2005) that alludes to the high level of planning and the sharp separation between ‘the society of the living and the community of the dead’ (D’Agostino 1985: 47). This separation is a sure sign of a profound change in collective mentality, as the formal establishment of a boundary between the space of the living and the cemetery was a fundamental structuring principle in the rise of the urban form that was acknowledged and complied throughout history (Cerchiai 2005).
Most scholars today believe that the proto-urban phenomenon stands at the origins of the process of ethnogenesis that resulted in the Etruscan cities. In this process, about 80 Bronze Age villages were abandoned around the same time to give way to the south Etruscan centers of Veii, Cerveteri, Tarquinia, Vulci, and Bisentium. These were vast settlements that concentrated large numbers of people on plateaus ranging between 100 and 180 ha in size (Guidi 2000; Pacciarelli 2000; D’Agostino 2005) (Figure 34.3). They were thus naturally defended sites that were usually situated at the confluence of two rivers and in control of broad expanses of agricultural land. A similar development has been traced in mineral-rich north Etruria (Populonia, Vetulonia; Zifferero 2000) and in the interior (Chiusi, Volsinii).
Figure 34.3. Settlements and cemeteries of Veii that illustrate the development of ‘proto-urban’ settlements (after Bartoloni 2012).
The cemeteries extended over the surrounding hills and appear to have been divided into distinct funerary areas, probably pertaining to different kin or social groups. The EIA1 burial grounds offer a picture of great symbolic impact, as they reflect a selective social imaginary that strives to underscore equality with respect to a shared norm (D’Agostino 2005). The ritual seems based on a pattern aimed at obscuring or denying social asymmetries in burial. Trends in the evolution of funerary ritual and grave good associations seem relatively homogeneous over the whole Etruscan area, notwithstanding some exceptions and local peculiarities (e.g., Bisentium; Delpino 1977).
The basic ritual is ‘Villanovan.’ It involved cremation with deposition of the charred bones in a biconical impasto (coarse ceramic) ossuary covered with a bowl or helmet, sometimes a ceramic imitation of the latter, and it may be regarded as the basic ‘normative’ layer of the ritual. This pattern can hardly be regarded as innovative, as it originated in the Final Bronze (so-called Proto-Villanovan; Bietti Sestieri 2010). The ossuary is usually placed in a simple pit grave, sometimes within a stone container. In the EIA1, however, practically all signs of ‘wealth’ or distinction disappeared, and it would seem that funerary ritual played an active part in the deep political reorganization of the time. In other words, ‘symbolic violence’ took the form of a prevailing of community ideology over the self-representation of groups and individuals, favoring cohesion and uniformity. The apparent prohibition to depose real weapons in tombs is another clear sign in this regard.
The anthropomorphic shaping of the biconical ossuary is especially significant. This took the form of the helmet-shaped lids and the often conspicuous traces of ‘clothing’ the urn itself (e.g., the Tomba dei Bronzetti Sardi at Vulci; Delpino 1977; 2005; Toms 1996; Iaia 1999). Most scholars tend to regard it as a constant element of Villanovan burial practice, and it has been suggested that the biconical urn may represent or replace the materiality of the cremated deceased, while the breaking of the handle or the presence of a single handle, as at Tarquinia, may indicate the consecration of the object, and hence of the deceased it embodies, to the deity or afterlife (Peroni 1996). Despite the apparent uniformity and equality, there are ambiguities such as hut-shaped urns, which I will discuss below.
There is wide consensus that the extensive but scattered occupation of the Etruscan proto-urban settlements suggests an egalitarian ideal as an expression of a social warrior group of more or less equal rank that matches the image of early Rome as presented by later Classical authors (Carandini 1997; Pacciarelli 2000). This is explicitly argued to be the case for the so-called bina iugera, which are the plots placed under the authority of the patres familias and regarded as a form of central political and religious authority similar to the Roman curiae (contra Torelli 2011: 28–30; Cerchiai 2012). Intriguing as this may be, there remain serious doubts whether Roman social institutions may be regarded as a valid model for the earliest phases of the various Etruscan centers and, above all, whether such a projection actually matches our funerary data. The interpretation of the latter is rather less straightforward when one looks beyond the ‘normative’ aspects and explores the many differences and ambiguities in ritual and social performance. Burial data have after all a multidimensional character that cannot be translated directly into a social structure (D’Agostino and Schnapp 1982; Parker Pearson 1999). As the funerary ideology of the Etruscan EIA recalls a picture of sociopolitical dialectics between collective trends and specific group or individual features and between conservatism and innovation in constant interplay with the criteria of status, gender, and age, there is no shortage of ambiguities and differences.
Several major south Etruscan EIA cemeteries have been discussed in syntheses and other publications (e.g., Guidi 1993; Bartoloni 1997; Iaia 1999; Pacciarelli 2000; Sgubini Moretti 2002; Trucco et al. 2005). To examine the issues I have just raised, I will, however, focus on the following cases that I consider particularly significant: Tarquinia (Le Rose, Arcatelle, Poggio Impiccato, Selciatello); and Veii, Vulci (Cavalupo; Osteria; Poggio Mengarelli), while I will use Cerveteri, Bisentium, and Vetulonia for some specific aspects. At Veii, the cemetery of Quattro Fontanili is the one best documented with anthropological analysis of 115 burials (Guidi 1993; Toms 1998), but the earliest phase has been lost to plough damage. Both the EIA1 and the second phase are well documented in the cemetery of Grotta Gramiccia (Bartoloni 1997), where anthropological information is available for 84 cremation burials (out of a total of 799).
The Demographic and Social Representativeness of Cemeteries
The starting point is to find out which demographic and social components are actually represented in the burial grounds in order to understand the impact of funerary selectivity, segregation, and differentiation (Morris 1987; 1995). In Etruria, the available evidence points to a sharp increase of funerary representativeness, which would reflect a shift in mentality from the final phase of the Bronze Age, when burial areas were usually reserved to a very limited number of high-ranking burials (Bietti Sestieri 1996). I believe that formal burial – especially cremation – was reserved in EIA1 and EIA2 to free members of the community, whether male and female, with a possible extension over time of the range of age classes included. It is not conceivable, in my opinion, that cremation burials in formal cemeteries can possibly be ascribed to non-free individuals (Pacciarelli 2000: 270).
The limited anthropological data make it difficult to come to a reliable estimate of age-class percentages, and most investigations remain based on grave good associations, compared where possible to anthropological data (Zifferero 1995; Bartoloni 1997; Iaia 1999; Pacciarelli 2000). The impression is that the lower age groups (infants) were excluded from formal burial but that at least partial access was granted to non-adult age groups (20–30%; Bartoloni 2003). Inhumation burials have partly but hypothetically been attributed to non-adults, both in cemeteries where they were present from the beginning (e.g., Populonia and Cerveteri) and in most other Etruscan centers where they appeared at the beginning of EIA2. The few anthropological analyses of cremated human remains that have been realized have, however, yielded surprising results such as a significant percentage of double or multiple burials, some including non-adults. Such results warn against generalizations and suggest specific social strategies as well as individual, situational, and emotional behavior under a shared norm.
The Social Construction and Negotiation of Gender
Gender and specific ages have been regarded as the structuring principles of the funerary image as reflected by grave goods and spatial organization. The traditional contrast between, on the one hand, male warriors as denoted by the EIA1 helmet lid, sometimes associated with a razor or ‘serpentine’ fibula, and later by weapons, and, on the other, women associated with spinning and weaving as signaled by fibulae or brooches of the arc, leech, or ‘arco-rivestito’ types, and ornaments is complicated by age factors and by ritual instruments in some male and female graves. It is not only the available analyses of human remains that point to these complications, but there are also some cases in which traditional gender indicators occur in the same burial (Toms 1998). Such cases should be evaluated within each individual context and especially for children, juveniles, and perhaps older people, the allegedly gender-specific contrast between fibulae and ornaments needs careful consideration (Bartoloni 2003). As many burials lack gender indicators or grave goods altogether and are homogeneously distributed by gender and age group, it has also been proposed that the reputedly gender-specific fibulae, razors, and textile tools signal rank and distinction rather than gender (Toms 1998; Riva 2010).
Where spatial organization is recognizable (Veii, Tarquinia, Bisentium, Vetulonia; Bartoloni 2003), graves often appear clustered around a pair of male and female burials since the beginning of EIA1 that are associated with grave goods such as the helmet lid, hut-shaped urn, or cult instruments. One suggestion is that these grave pairs were a married couple (Bartoloni 2003). Despite the conventional emphasis on the adult male warrior encouraged by the EIA1 helmet lids and the abundant EIA2 weapons, the funerary customs and spatial arrangement of cemeteries point to a notable degree of complementarity and dialectic between genders in funerary representation.
Ritual, Cult, Gender, and Kinship
Ever since the EIA1, ritual and cult reflected distinct but parallel discourses in which social distinction is not necessarily associated with the display of wealth but is rather more qualitatively based on a departure from the norm. Ritual and cult are evoked by the anthropomorphic modeling of the ossuary, the hut-shaped urns, and, in a later phase of the EIA1, specific material culture in male and female burials. They suggest a gender dialectic that was connected to both the power of groups and individuals and a relation with the underworld or afterlife, cosmological order, and natural and supernatural forces more generally. The distinctive features include:
- various types of cultic and ritual vases, often decorated with highly symbolic anthropomorphic handles that may represent the deceased, ancestors, or deities (Bietti Sestieri 1992; Damgaard Andersen 1993; Torelli 1997);
- boat-shaped vases or boat models, often decorated with ornithomorphic or zoomorphic protomes, which represent a type associated with the well-known central European theme of the sun-boat (at Bisentium, these boat models are always associated with hut-shaped urns);
- miniature carts drawn by animals;
- knives;
- so-called wheeled incense burners. These are most common in EIA2 (e.g., tomb 6 of Tarquinia-Arcatelle);
- hut-shaped urns;
- grave markers and other forms of monumentalization associated with ritual and group strategies or kinship ties such as networks of tunnels connecting small shafts at Tarquinia, Vulci, Bisentium; the stone circles (circoli di pietre interrotte) at Vetulonia; stone-slab enclosures at Veii; and chamber tombs at Populonia (Iaia 1999; Bartoloni 2003).
Hut-shaped urns, I suggest, are of crucial importance for understanding the socio-ritual and gender dialectics, even if they are relatively uncommon. Who were buried in hut urns? A general study of this type of urn has used grave good associations and, in some cases, anthropological data to demonstrate that they contained the ashes of both male and female individuals, as well as non-adults (Bartoloni et al. 1987). In both Etruria and Latium, these ossuaries did not represent innovations, as they were inherited from the Final Bronze Age and remained in use throughout the EIA1 until the eighth century BC. Their deposition in graves might therefore indicate a conservative attitude or perhaps specific individual or group privileges.
At Vetulonia and Veii, hut-shaped urns apparently denote individuals of both genders as belonging to special groups, because many of these urns are found in specific funerary areas such as the so-called circoli di pietre interrotte of Vetulonia (‘discontinuous stone circles’). The only known hut-shaped urn made of sheet-bronze with studded decoration and appliqués comes from the Osteria cemetery at Vulci. The elaborate decoration with bird-shaped protomes and a sun disk suggests a special sacred function for this object. In the Vulci area, impasto urns had a removable base of perishable material, which must have played a particular role in certain rituals, perhaps involving offerings to the underworld. At Bisentium, there are very small hut-shaped urns that may belong to children, while a special ritual significance has been suggested for ‘boat-shaped’ vessels that occur in some graves (Bartoloni et al. 1987).
At Tarquinia, hut-shaped urns were mostly used for male warrior burials such as tombs 16 and 17 of Arcatelle, and thus offer an opportunity to explore gender biases and ambiguities between gender and specific socio-ritual functions (Iaia 1999). Both burials included both inside and outside the urn status symbols and grave goods such as ‘female-type’ fibulae and ornaments, a razor, and spearhead that are traditionally associated with the opposite gender. The few partially preserved bones (tomb 17) have tentatively been identified as belonging to a single female individual (Bartoloni et al. 1987: 233). Both burials nevertheless continue to be seen as belonging to high-ranking male individuals (e.g., Iaia 1999), as a double burial indicating certain specific age-group passages, or as the offering of a woman to the (male) deceased. Much less attention has instead been given to the cult and ritual aspects of the depositions that are underscored by bronze tables in both burials and a torch in tomb 17. Given the uncertainty of the anthropological analyses, I believe that the gender of the individuals buried in these urns must be regarded as uncertain.
The hut-shaped urn, meanwhile, is associated by many scholars with the oikos (home), pater familias (head of household), and new forms of landed property (Menichetti 1994; Torelli 1997), while others have stressed sacred and magical aspects (Bartoloni et al. 1987; Colonna 2005) or political authority beyond the family (Carandini 1997). As noted above, however, I would emphasize that it seems far more significant that, in Etruria, hut-shaped urns seem to have been the near-exclusive prerogative of specific groups and used by these group members regardless of gender and age. It is thus possible that these urns represented specific (sacred?) privileges rather than newly acquired powers, and that the few groups allowed access worked with the magical and sacred sphere, ancestors, and deities. It cannot be ruled out, in fact, that such magical and sacred privileges and duties were acquired at birth.
The Construction of Identity and the Representation of Non-Adults
As far as non-adults are concerned, archaeological research has often neglected variations in the funerary landscape that concerned new conceptions of childhood and new norms for access to formal burial (Moore and Scott 1997; Sofaer Derevensky 2000; Cuozzo 2003). Recent excavation results, as well as anthropological analyses and studies of grave good associations, have, however, yielded unexpected and in some cases surprising outcomes. Fertility, reproduction, group continuity, and strategies to counter high mortality may have been invoked in a range of ways, including differential treatment of the body (cremation or inhumation), exceptional funerary honors such as hut-urns, ossuaries with helmet lids, miniature ossuaries, double burials, and sarcophagi, especially when bestowed on younger age groups (Bartoloni et al. 1987; Bartoloni 1997), spatial organization as seen in separate clusters of non-adult burials at Bisentium, Veii-Grotta Gramiccia, Tarquinia-Villa Bruschi Falgari, and other types of ‘symbolic apparatuses.’ It is thus possible that the complex behaviors described in the foregoing denote ritual prescriptions and prohibitions that were observed and imposed by prominent groups to protect individuals and the lineage.
The presence of weapons, certain tools, textile accessories, and sometimes other status symbols have mostly been interpreted in terms of hereditary rank, and tomb HH6–7 at Quattro Fontanili has, for instance, been highlighted because of the spear-head, razor, axe, spit, horse bits, and bronze cup deposited with the burial (Guidi 1993; for similar high-ranking female non-adult burials, see Pacciarelli 2000: 266). These objects may be understood as symbolic tools that compensate or anticipate certain crucial moments in people’s life-cycle-like initiation (Cuozzo 1994), and it would seem possible in this way to explain the peculiarities of juvenile burials (Bietti Sestieri 1992). A series of small metal pendants have likewise been interpreted as precursors of the later Roman bullae or badges of nobility worn by Etruscan and Latin male and female children alike (Zifferero 1995). In many cases, therefore, concern with the continuity of the group and the lineage seems to go hand in hand with individual, situational, and emotional factors.
Early Iron Age Phase 2
In the EIA2, which is the eighth century down to 725 BC, the funerary evidence shows the rise of structuring principles that reflect new conceptions of the body and the individual, gender distinctions, and descent. By the end of the period, inhumation had completely replaced cremation, leaving few exceptions such as the Chiusi area. These changes went hand in hand with the prevalence of group and individual strategies over the field of action of the community and the ritual interdictions imposed by the collective norms of EIA1 self-representation.
Cemetery layouts and grave good associations have mainly been interpreted in terms of a generalized increase in wealth, population numbers, and land use of the main Etruscan centers (Guidi 1993; 2000; Iaia 1999; Pacciarelli 2000). The onset of the EIA2 was certainly a decisive stage in the formation of Etruscan aristocracies, as the appropriation and concentration of land and wealth in the hands of a few groups can be regarded as complete by the final phase of the period.
The Etruscans developed formidable economic capacities through the exploitation of the significant mining resources of their territories and trade, as is evident from their contacts and exchanges with Phoenicians and Greeks, mostly from Euboea and the Cyclades, who frequented the shores of south and central Italy from the late ninth century BC. A dense web of relations is documented by the appearance in burials of middle and late Geometric Greek pottery, especially drinking cups (D’Agostino 1999b). The impact of these early contacts on funerary ideologies should not be overestimated, however, as in many cases the earliest Greek vessels were only ‘accepted’ in female graves or in burials without particular signs of distinction (Guidi 1993; Bartoloni 1997). The cultural and political landscape was further enriched and complicated in the course of the eighth century by the foundation of the first Greek–Euboean settlements in the west, namely Pithekoussai and Cumae (Guzzo 2011). The former, in particular, became a hotbed of cultural interaction as both Phoenicians and indigenous Italians joined the island community (Ridgway 2000; Cuozzo 2007; D’Agostino and Ridgway 1994). The usual ideological and structural norms of a Greek city-state (polis) did not apply, and the island became a key site in the Mediterranean koine and Tyrrhenian milieu, as constant and long-lasting exchanges with the Etruscan communities of the coast resulted in ongoing exchanges of people, ideas, and technology, and resulted in extensive phenomena of métissage and hybridization or ‘middle ground’ (Amselle 1990; Buchner and Ridgway 1993; D’Agostino 1999b; Gras 2000; Horden and Purcell 2000; van Dommelen 2006a; 2006b; Malkin 2011).
The later half of this period (EIA2) stands out because of a series of exceptional warrior tombs dating between the second half and the end of the eighth century. These burials featured exceptional panoplies that included a crested helmet, shield, spear, short sword, and pectoral, all of which may be seen as notable status symbols (Iaia 2005). The best-known examples are the warrior tomb at Tarquinia and tomb 871 at Veii (Grotta Gramiccia), which was paired with a female tomb of equivalent prestige.
Quite a few female burials show signs of status that reflect privilege and power in the priestly and sacral sphere, albeit perhaps not exclusively so. The main status symbols are associated with textile instruments and sets of precious ornaments such as axes with a knife, a knife and spits, particular bronze vases such as the tripods with horse figures from Veii-Grotta Gramiccia (Bartoloni 1997), horse bits, incense burners on wheels, and other objects with ritual and ceremonial functions (Figure 34.4).
Figure 34.4. First Iron Age ritual objects (left: after Iaia 1999) and the carrello of tomb 2 at Bisentium-Olmo Bello (right: after Menichetti 1994).
It remains unclear what the meaning and role were of enigmatic objects such as the so-called ‘command staff’ or scepter, which some scholars assumed to be similar to the later Etruscan and Roman lituus, which was a prime symbol of sacred authority and political power. It is in any case worth nothing that they have been found in both male and female burials, which has resulted in varying interpretations of their role.
Equally remarkable is the variable distribution of imported objects, notably Greek ones: sometimes they appear mostly in female burials, as at Quattro Fontanili, but at Grotta Gramiccia their occurrence in female tombs is exclusive – and both cemeteries are in Veii. Such behavior may denote negotiation by women (Hodder 1982; Gilchrist 1999) and can be traced back to the EIA when Phoenician imports were associated with other indicators that suggest innovation and mobility in female funerary representation as, for instance, in the already-mentioned Tomba dei Bronzetti Sardi in Vulci (Iaia 1999). In some cases, it may be the case that women acted as go-between to introduce innovations initially rejected by conservative males, a pattern observed elsewhere in Italy (Bagnasco Gianni 1998; cf. Cerchiai 1995: 36; 2010: 51–53).
Lineage continuity and the married couple dominate some of the most complex and controversial figurative representations of the transition between the EIA and the Orientalizing period. The ritual carrello of tomb 2 at Bisentium-Olmo Bello is a wheeled small vehicle, possibly an incense burner, that is decorated with a scene that shows a male–female couple and a female–male–non-adult triad (Figure 34.4). The explicit sexual symbolism appears to refer to the sphere of fertility and reproduction. The males, including the child, are all armed and the women carry a storage jar and an open vase. The first woman is taller than the male figure, while the second one rests her arm on the man’s shoulder. Some scholars regard the other subjects depicted (hunting and games) as initiation scenes. Others propose that the female figures, especially the first one, should be understood as deities (Menichetti 1994; Torelli 1997). Beyond these uncertainties, we can read the main theme as representing a social cosmology in which high-status women appear as guarantors of agrarian wealth and of the reproduction and continuity of house and lineage, either along men or as alternatives to them. Ever since the First Iron Age, female tombs often express a status above and beyond the norm through attributes, some unique ones, with sacred associations that also point to particular groups and specific prerogatives.
The Orientalizing Period: Reinventing Tradition and Symbolic Violence
In most Etruscan cemeteries, the transition to the Orientalizing period took the form of an act of ‘symbolic violence’ and ‘reinvention of tradition’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1984). I elaborated this interpretation in my study of the Orientalizing cemeteries of Pontecagnano (Cuozzo 2003). It is possible that the lead to construct a renewed social imaginary was not taken by newly constituted elites but, on the contrary, by social groups rooted in the long preceding transformation process of the EIA2. They nevertheless did seek to represent themselves as new by reworking ideas, artifacts, technologies, and spatial patterns to express new meanings. An often-underestimated phenomenon is the abandonment of earlier EIA burial grounds, which is well documented in south Etruscan centers such as Cerveteri (Banditaccia, Sorbo, Monte Abatone), Veii (Monte Michele, Vaccareccia, Macchia Comunità), and Tarquinia (Monterozzi, Doganaccia, Macchia della Turchina) (Bartoloni 2003). In my opinion, this is one of the clearest signs of elite attempts to mark their distance from the past and to create a fictitious discontinuity with the EIA. From the late eighth century BC, and especially during the seventh century BC, several dominant groups inaugurate new burial grounds. These groups seem to have sociopolitical and economic power firmly in their hands, while competing among each other for the control of ritual forms and the collective imagination.
The construction of a funerary representation and of an idealized but highly selective material culture exclusively reserved to the elites can be regarded as an obvious instance of ‘symbolic violence,’ especially as it went hand in hand with the virtual disappearance of subordinate social groups from formal burial and thus effectively reinforced a strict division between a visible elite and a largely invisible majority (Morris 1995; Cuozzo 2003).
The purpose of the new symbolic framework and attire was not just to exhibit power but even more to merge the group and community relation system with the cosmological sphere, the gods, and the external world, i.e., the Mediterranean. Ideologies conventionally labeled as ‘princely’ provided the basis for new forms of collective imagination and processes of social reproduction, which took over at a time of crisis of from the older Iron Age symbols. EIA symbolism, even in its expanded form of the final EIA2, was no longer adequate to express the new forms of power, and required a shift in the social imaginary toward an ideology that we may define as that of the ‘living ancestor’ (Helms 1998; Antonaccio 2002). This ideology aims at ‘naturalizing’ aristocratic groups’ political and sacral authority by projecting their origins in a mythical past and by fabricating their tradition and memory in material culture and power rituals. As in many other contexts, the institution of ancestor (‘gentilitial’) cults and forms of heroization is not so much about reviving and celebrating a distant past but rather about projecting onto the past a cult of elites during and after their lifetime (D’Agostino 2005). The ‘accurately selected and largely fictitious past’ (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1984: 3–4) that accompanied the new social imagination was founded on a symbolic construction that drew on a vast Mediterranean koine. As Oriental and more specifically Phoenician and Greek ‘icons of power’ were massively reworked, the label of ‘Orientalization’ aptly describes this period (Knapp 2006; 2008; Riva and Vella 2006).
As the notion of ‘Orientalization’ has become the object of debate and diverging theories (Riva and Vella 2006), some scholars deny the usefulness of the term because of its diffusionist and historical-cultural origins, and because it places too much emphasis on seventh-century BC phenomena and thus overshadows the continuity of older Mediterranean connections. Others, however, have adopted a broader Mediterranean perspective and consider the term a useful synthetic characterization of a phenomenon that is mainly related to the construction of elite ideologies (Knapp 2006; Riva 2010).
Another topic of debate concerns social organization and rulers in Orientalizing Etruria. According to one widely held view, a patronage-based organization of clans not unlike that of the Roman world, with a leading clan head recognized as primus inter pares, existed in Etruria as early as the later EIA and the Orientalizing period (Colonna 2000; Torelli 2011). I cannot but share the concern expressed by some scholars about the risks transposing the historical tradition and language of the Roman gens to the Etruscan milieu (Smith 2006; Riva 2010; Cerchiai 2012), let alone applying these categories to archaeological burial evidence (D’Agostino 2005). While it is certainly the case that the adoption of the nomen gentilicium (clan name) in Etruria in the Orientalizing period recalls the clan-based organization of the Roman world (Colonna 1977; Torelli 2000), there is no trace in the archaeological record of subaltern or intermediate social classes comparable to the Roman clients. It is, indeed, this contrast between elites and invisible majorities that underlies the present chapter.
Despite these uncertainties, the ‘princely’ terminology may usefully serve to summarize the complexityof representing the leading figures in the Orientalizing period, as the ‘living ancestors,’ even if their power was inherited, may be more aptly described as the principes, leaders of aristocratic groups competing for political and social hegemony, rather than as kings with centralized authority. It has been argued that Etruscan aristocracies drew on a variety of cultural inputs to build their identity, and that Etruscan society may thus be defined as ‘open’ (Ampolo 1981) and marked by a high cultural dynamism that is characterized by ‘active appropriation,’ interaction, and competition, as well as ‘métissage’ or hybridization (Amselle 1990; Bhabha 1994; D’Agostino and Cerchiai 1999; van Dommelen 2006a; 2006b). Within this complex process of transition, restructuring, and redefinition, the social image is dialectic and dynamic. It appears to have been dominated at the ideological level by elite groups, and the community structure itself appears to have been determined by competition and contrasts between groups (Cuozzo 2003). In the end, it is these dynamics that provided a new stimulus for the formative process of urban society (Cerchiai 2005). Etruscan aristocracies thus offer a classic example of a funerary ideology based on display, competition, consumption, and destruction of wealth.
Recent debates have rightly emphasized the indigenous roots of the sociopolitical and economic processes that underpinned the rise of the Orientalizing aristocracies and highlight the complex ethnogenetic processes at work since the EIA. It is argued that these were complete by the time of the conventional beginning of the Orientalizing period, when land and property had become concentrated in the hands of a few groups (Guidi 2000; Herring and Lomas 2000; Pacciarelli 2000; D’Agostino 2005). Self-representation in burial was a rather different matter, however, as there is clear evidence that the process was an ongoing one of active and conscious appropriation, reworking, selection, and reinvention. While the influence of the ‘Orientalizing-style’ Phoenician, Oriental, and Greek ideas and techniques is obvious, the Orientalizing material culture displayed by Etruscan ‘princes’ is a construct of the aristocratic groups of each Etruscan center, as they consciously selected and elaborated on these Mediterranean inputs to create new imaginaries to immobilize social space and time (Cuozzo 2003). It is, indeed, no coincidence that most of the splendid gold jewelry and precious vases, as well as most of the symbols of power and items of bronze or exotic materials such as ivory, were created by craftsmen working in Etruria (Figure 34.5). Even if they were surely inspired by Greek or Oriental models, they should be regarded as products of Etruscan rather than Greek or Oriental craftsmanship and art (Bartoloni et al. 2000; Torelli 2000).
Figure 34.5. Gold pectoral from the Regolini-Galassi tomb (Cerveteri; after Cristofani and Martelli 1982).
The set of symbols conventionally defined as ‘princely’ is partly based on the circulation of gifts among aristocrats (Ampolo 2000) and reinforced and amplified by a manifold increase in craft products. As they denote connections and competition between the elites of the Tyrrhenian area, including the principal centers of Etruria (Cerveteri, Veii, Tarquinia,Vetulonia, Volterra) as much as those of Latium (Palestrina, Decima, Laurentina), as well as the Greek colonies (Cumae) and ‘Etruscanizing’ centers of Campania (Pontecagnano), these symbols reflected a process that transcended ethnic and gender distinctions. It is therefore no exaggeration to claim that the Tyrrhenian elites of this period were connected by similar luxury material cultures and symbolic discourses (D’Agostino 1977; Hall 1997; Bartoloni 2003; Malkin 2011). They made reference to a ‘Homeric’ material culture and heroic rituals, as well as to the same ceremonial insignia of power and the sacred (throne, scepter, or lituus) and involved ceremonial wine drinking, sacrifices, and meat banquets (Vernant 1984b), multifunctional tool sets, exotic metal products, and carriages. A striking example of the fluidity of ethnic and cultural boundaries between Tyrrhenian elites is the active appropriation of Etruscan shields as lids for the bronze cauldrons that contained the precious urn with the ashes of the earliest Greek colonists of Cumae. The best-known case is that of the tomb 104 (Fondo Artiaco), the ‘hybrid’ archaeological appearance of which has variously been argued as the resting place of a Greek, Etruscan, or indigenous chief (Cuozzo 2007). Etruscan elites nevertheless also drew on conservative and highly specific local references in rituals and objects used, in particular ‘old-fashioned’ fine impasto bruno wares and innovative ones such as bucchero (D’Agostino 1999a; Bartoloni et al. 2000).
Living Ancestors
At the heart of the new funerary ideology in Etruria lies a structural and ideological innovation, which is embodied by the monumental tumuli possibly of Near Eastern origin with their chamber tombs. Built to accommodate burials over several generations, these prominent monuments were usually domed, often constructed on a raised basis (crepido), and accessed through a long corridor (dromos). Together, they are formidable visual and conceptual instruments to inculcate social asymmetry and to achieve a long-term immobilization of social time and space. They are a conspicuous feature as much around the main Etruscan towns (Figure 34.6) as in the countryside, where they represent true ‘landscapes of power’ (Zifferero 1991).
Figure 34.6. The ‘living ancestors’ of the Orientalizing period (from left to right): the Pietrera tomb in Vetulonia, the Banditaccia cemetery, and the tomb of the Cinque Sedie in Cerveteri (after Bartoloni et al. 2000).
As various scholars have argued, the ritual transposition of the home to the afterlife may have its precursor in the hut-shaped urns of the EIA and the often explicit references to ancestor cults are likely to have been intended to guarantee the continuity of the community (Menichetti 1994; Riva 2010). The elites sought to establish domination over social time and space through the amplification, multiplication, and repetition of ceremonies such as processions, sacrifices, offerings, and ritual banquets that involved both participants and spectators of the rituals performed inside and outside the tomb. The new monumental appearance of the burials with the tumuli and access corridors offered the spaces required for the performances of such rituals (Parker Pearson 1999; Colonna 2005). Images of male and female ancestors moreover provided a structuring principle for many of the tombs. A good example is the Tomba delle Cinque Sedie at Cerveteri (Figure 34.6), where five terracotta statuettes represented male and female ancestors seated in front of tables, alongside a small altar for bloodless sacrifices and a food basket for the ceremonial meal. A pair of empty seats has been interpreted as intended for the couple for whom the tomb was made and whose juxtaposition with their ancestors legitimized and guaranteed the continuity of their kinship group. Other examples are the stone statues representing male and female ancestors at Cerveteri, Vetulonia, Volterra (Casale Marittimo), and the traditional impasto ‘canopic’ jars in the Chiusi area (Bartoloni et al. 2000) (Figure 34.6).
Grave Goods and the Body between Innovation and Conservatism
In many cases, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fieldwork methods caused the loss of important information about both grave good associations and the persons buried, often including the skeletal remains themselves. The few available instances of anthropological analysis have provided evidence of elaborate rituals and a rich variety of body treatments and thus suggest that the loss of information is substantial. A telling example of the ambiguity of Orientalizing rituals and the coexistence of innovative and conservative drives is offered by tomb 5 in the Monte Michele cemetery at Veii (second quarter of the seventh century BC), which forms the core of a group of later burials (Sgubini Moretti 2002).
Tomb 5 is a square chamber tomb with two smaller rooms opening onto the dromos (Figure 34.7). It contained three or possibly four burials. In the room on the left, a child had been deposited, inhumed and without grave goods, except for three lead sheets. These may have held in place a shroud to cover the body. The room on the right held a cremated young man of 18–20 years old, whose ashes had been collected in an Italo-Geometric jar along with two iron spearheads. There was also a large impasto dolium that contained a Proto-Corinthian ovoid aryballos (datable to 670 BC). The main chamber is believed to have been reserved for a couple of ‘princely’ status. It is widely assumed that on the left there was a body of a woman, whose skeletal remains have not been preserved but whose presence has been inferred from ‘female-type’ brooches of precious materials, textile tools, including a knife, and an elaborate set of vases. On the right was a cremated adult identified by the grave goods as male. The number of individuals in this tomb is very small, as has also been noted in other contemporary burials such as those of the Regolini-Galassi tomb.
Figure 34.7. The Monte Michele tomb 5 in Veii and plan of the tomb with some of the grave goods (after Sgubini Moretti 2002).
Tomb 5 at Monte Michele is important because the combined archaeological and anthropological evidence demonstrates that burial rites were carefully differentiated for adults, non-adults, and juveniles, and because it documents the disappearance of a chiefly lineage group in less than a generation. Nevertheless, along the path leading from ‘biological death’ to ‘social death,’ the individual and collective tragedy of the group was negotiated, obscured, and reinterpreted by the local clan in accordance with the funerary ideology that celebrated and upheld the myth of continuity of the lineage. This was achieved by means of the symbolism of grave goods and ritual and the action of the aristocratic group as ‘living ancestors.’
No less important is the elaborate ritual treatment of the corpse, although most of its details and stages elude us at the majority of Etruscan sites. Wherever we have information, however, we are reminded of the pivotal role of the human body, which in most archaeological discussion has been obscured by the prominence given to grave goods and funerary architecture (Cuozzo 2003; cf. Thomas 1991; Parker Pearson 1999). In Monte Michele tomb 5, the ‘prince’ was cremated, but his charred bones were reassembled in anatomical order and placed in a cloth pinned with precious affibbiaglio (‘fastener’) and ‘serpentine’ fibulae. The bones were then placed in a bronze box with a double-pitched roof that recalls EIA burial customs but that had been made in metal and decorated with a Greek-type Gorgon head. The ossuary was in turn placed on a four-wheeled carriage. The funerary ceremony and body treatment were thus defined by both the active appropriation of Homeric ‘heroic’ rites, as preferred by many Mediterranean and Tyrrhenian elites, and a reluctance to accept the loss of the body as a material and connected and indivisible entity (Cerchiai 1995: 86; Bartoloni et al. 2000). A similar dialectic between appropriated Mediterranean power symbols and conservatism may be discerned in the grave good associations of burial 5, as they include not only symbols of power and social privilege such as a scepter, weapons, a sacrifice-hearth-banquet set, a grater, and imported Orientalizing-style objects, but also a large typically local drinking and dining set in brown impasto and thin-walled bucchero sottile wares (Sgubini Moretti 2002).
Visible Elites and Invisible Majorities
An integral part of the ‘symbolic violence’ enacted by Etruscan aristocracies in the Orientalizing period is the virtual exclusion of subordinate social groups from formal burial. Although the absence or low visibility of burials of different social classes may be a partial consequence of a lack of systematic excavations in Orientalizing cemeteries, recent excavations have managed to shed some light on selective burial strategies and have produced tangible evidence of symbolic violence to a large majority of local communities. It thus would appear that the relevance of the funerary evidence is limited to the ideological image fabricated by a restricted elite.
Significant evidence in this regard comes from a group of burials that were brought to light in recent excavations (1988) at Casale Marittimo near Volterra and that are associated with a nearby settlement site that comprised a palatial structure (Maggiani 2000; 2006) (Figure 34.8). The burial ground is small and self-contained, and is a symbol of social time and space sealed by a very restricted elite: the cemetery is the exclusive reserve of just 10 burials of different types, including a single but unfortunately looted chamber tomb, which cover little more than a century. The burials are all, if variously, defined by signs of prestige and may be ascribed to both male and female members of the same aristocratic household. Non-adults of the first age grades are excluded from formal burial, with a single exception (double-burial tomb G); juveniles are buried in three tombs (G, B, and C). Tomb G stands out because of ceremonial and sacral equipment and especially by offerings associated with fertility and a concern for the reproduction of the lineage.
Figure 34.8. Casale Marittimo (Volterra): site plans and some of the grave goods (after Maggiani 2006).
The most plausible hypothesis suggests that the burials clustered around two or three stone cists, namely tombs A (a male cremation of the last quarter of the eighth century BC), E (looted), and C in its first phase. The second cist must have contained prestigious grave goods, judging from a few fragments of ivory, amber, and bronze, and may have been a female burial; the earliest stone cist tomb in this area is a prominent female grave at Badia near Volterra (Torelli 2000: 540; Maggiani 2006). Tomb E has yielded remains of furniture and a ritual meal or offerings, including a remarkable three-legged bronze table and a unique cylindrical vessel showing the underworld (Figure 34.8). The cemetery was given a monumental makeover around the middle of the seventh century BC, when an underground chamber tomb was built that remained in use until the early sixth century BC. Two life-size stone statues in mourning posture stood guard to guarantee the continuity of the lineage and the assimilation of the aristocratic group with its ancestors. Some scholars consider them a male–female couple (Von Hase 2002), but for others they are two males (Maggiani 2000; 2006).
Gender Dynamics and the Representation of Women
Gender is as prominent an aspect of the interpretation of Etruscan cemeteries as elsewhere (Gero and Conkey 1991; Gilchrist 1999; Díaz-Andreu 2000; Cuozzo and Guidi 2013), if not more so given the wider debate about the position of women in Etruria. Scholars have long drawn attention to extensive archaeological, iconographic, epigraphic, and literary evidence that, unlike elsewhere in the ancient world, women in Etruria did not occupy a subordinate role, especially from the Orientalizing period onward (Rallo 1989; D’Agostino 1993; Rathje 2000; Cuozzo 2003).
Recently, however, some of this evidence has been called into question as one-sidedly focused on foregrounding women’s roles at all costs (Spivey 1991; Izzet 2007; Riva 2010), and I therefore propose to examine the issue afresh from a careful examination of gender dialectics and negotiation in Iron Age and later burial customs. Díaz-Andreu and Tortosa (1998) and Arnold (1996) have proposed a gender-based perspective that I find particularly interesting and relevant, as they investigate the ‘semantic ambiguities’ that arise from the overlap between gender and status. In their case-studies, the high-status female gender represents itself through an appropriation, negotiation, and reworking of typically male symbols on the one hand and iconographic codes usually reserved for female deities on the other. In the remainder of this chapter, I will use their approach to highlighting several Etruscan cases and aspects, although space precludes an exhaustive discussion of women’s roles in Etruria.
In Etruscan society, ancestor tombs and images could be both female and male, which raises important questions about competition between elite groups, the perception of women, and descent systems; it could even be interpreted as evidence of bilinear descent (Cuozzo 2003). The ladies of the Regolini-Galassi tomb or the Camera degli Alari tomb in Cerveteri (Colonna and Di Paolo 1998) must be understood as the ancestors of the group rather than the princes’ wives (‘princesses’), as no male individual of these aristocratic groups was allowed to carry the same power symbols (Cuozzo 2003) (Figure 34.9). The high status of women as ‘living ancestors’ appears to be an integral part of the political and social strategies of groups, whose lineage continuity appears to have been guaranteed in some cases by the female rather than the male line. Elsewhere, however, following a pattern already recognizable in EIA funerary evidence, these privileges seem to signal female agency and complex negotiations.
Semantic ambiguities surrounding the appropriation of typically male symbols and the overlap between status and gender symbols are the cause of a number of interpretive controversies. The Tomba del Tridente in Vetulonia has, for instance, alternately been interpreted as a dual, female, or male burial (Cygielman and Pagnini 2006), while the Regolini-Galassi tomb in the Sorbo cemetery of Cerveteri has recently been associated with a female ancestor on the basis of a convincing reconstruction of the burial ritual and its symbolic attire (Colonna and Di Paolo 1998; figs 9 and 10). The plurality of signs of status and prestige, the sacrifice-cum-fireplace set (D’Agostino 1977; 1999a; Vernant 1984b), and the lady’s splendid costume and jewelry, including a gold pectoral, all allude to special powers and priesthood (Cuozzo 1994; 2003). Classical authors highlighted the mimetic character of the relationship between gods and their ministers (Holderman 1985), and the splendid attire of these ladies may well demonstrate visually codes usually reserved to female deities as a kind of ‘epiphany of the queen and the goddess’ (Colonna and Di Paolo 1998: 167). A visual special effect is created by the multiplication of shields along the walls, of which there were eight in total (Figure 34.10). As a typically male sign of warrior rank during the EIA, the shield became a symbol of female empowerment in the Orientalizing period. The female splendor in this tomb contrasts with the sober male cremation burial, deposited in a simple jar with a single spearhead, for whom a relationship of descent may be assumed. The importance of the female line for descent is widely documented in both the archaeological and epigraphic records, as matronyms occur regularly in funerary inscriptions since the Orientalizing period: a famous example is the Aule Theluske stele from Vetulonia (Colonna 1977; Bartoloni 2003; Cuozzo 2003). Another striking example is offered by a bucchero jug from Veii, probably from the same context as the so-called Chigi Olpe, which bears a remarkable dedicatory inscription by a woman with a female lineage name (Bartoloni et al. 2012: 44–46).
Figure 34.10. Grave goods from the Regolini-Galassi tomb in Cerveteri (after Cristofani and Martelli 1982; not to scale).
The importance of women and the female lineage is attested among very different societies throughout the ancient world and beyond that share a concern with the long-term continuity of lineages and inheritance; this concern may be particularly prevalent among communities ruled by oligarchies (Sordi 1981; Torelli 1997; Fabietti 1999; Cuozzo 2003). Ancient sources mention many cases of uxorilocal marriages of princely or royal rank, especially at critical times of transition. It is therefore tempting and certainly interesting that the construction of female-oriented landscapes of power and the attribution of specific prestige symbols in Etruria could, in certain Etruscan contexts, denote a transitional female prominence in the management of (political?) power, possibly at one of those crucial moments of transition and crisis, which the literary tradition tends to associate with a temporary shift in the balance of power (Rathje 2000; Bartoloni 2003).
Conclusions
The current debate on the interpretation of cemeteries emphasizes that the reading of funerary contexts involves multiple and often contradictory aspects. The focus on ‘symbolic violence’ moreover brings out the dialectics and tensions between community norms and sheds light on strategies and negotiations deployed by individuals, elite groups, or social groups as defined by gender or age.
Godelier has argued that monopolizing the social imaginary and the imaginary means of reproduction of life and society guarantees power and legitimacy over the mid to long term, more so than wealth or physical violence (Godelier 1985; 1999). As Bourdieu has noted, if we agree that symbolic systems are social products that (re)produce the world, i.e., that do not merely reflect social relations but continuously work to re-establish them, we cannot but admit that ‘it is possible to change the world by changing its representation’ (Bourdieu and Waquant 1992: 21).
Following Bourdieu (1972; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992) and Godelier (1985; 1999), it can be argued that it is first and foremost through forms of symbolic violence that a social order based on long-term aristocratic hegemony may be legitimized or at least have its instability concealed. Symbolic violence is exercised through practice and habitus, i.e., everyday practical representation of a balance and an irreplaceable guarantee in social reproduction. A key aspect that I have investigated in this chapter concerns the strategies to control the collective imagination in burial practices in Iron Age central Italy. I have argued that this was achieved by gaining control over society’s relations with both the outside world and the sacred (Godelier 1999).
As the many dimensions of symbolic and material culture are part and parcel of strategies to maintain control over the imaginary, the so-called structuring practices of burial and of representing elites as ‘living ancestors’ may first of all be traced in the tight competition for control over the group’s symbolic and sacred heritage, its relationships with cosmological and divine powers, and the web of connections with the Italic, Greek, and Mediterranean worlds. It is my contention that this monopoly over the imaginary rather than mere display of wealth or violence offered elites the best opportunity to maintain their prominence in the medium and long term.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Peter van Dommelen and Bernard Knapp for the invitation to contribute this chapter and for valuable suggestions and advice. My sincere thanks are also due to Bruno D’Agostino and Luca Cerchiai for much fruitful discussion. I am also grateful to F. Poole and especially to Peter van Dommelen for revising my English.