The Invisibility of Etruscan Infants in the Archaeological Record and the Sociocultural
Implications of Etruscan Age-Based Differential Burial
by Marie Nicole Coscolluela
An Undergraduate Honors Thesis presented to the Department of Classics,
Johns Hopkins University
Advised by Dr. Emily Anderson and Dr. Herica Valladares
April 29, 2013
Copyright © Marie Nicole Coscolluela 2013. All rights reserved.
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Acknowledgments
This thesis would not have been possible without the aid, guidance, and support from my
thesis advisors, Drs. Emily Anderson and Herica Valladares. With their expertise and advice, I
learned how to effectively manage and execute a lengthy scholarly research project. It is also
vital to acknowledge the assistance of Jean Turfa, Marshall Becker, Anthony Tuck, Simon
Stoddart, and Larissa Bonfante who were not only willing to share their knowledge and their
opinions but also were kind enough to pass on to me several of their articles, some of which are
still yet unpublished. I especially have to recognize Dr. Turfa for her kind offer to give me a
personal tour of the Etruscan Gallery of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology
and Anthropology. Additionally, I am indebted to the opportunity the Krieger School of Arts and
Sciences Office of the Dean generously granted to me to conduct my research. My Dean’s
Undergraduate Research Award allowed me to travel to Italy and parts of the United States to
visit Etruscan sites and the Etruscan collections of numerous museums, an invaluable experience
that surpassed merely reading about the material from books.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... ii
List of Figures .................................................................................................................... iv
Preface................................................................................................................................. 1
The Issues with Determining Age and Identifying Children and Childhood in
Archaeology ........................................................................................................................ 3
Defining Terms ................................................................................................................... 9
The Archaeological Data .................................................................................................. 10
Sociocultural Foundations for Exclusion .......................................................................... 16
A Failure ............................................................................................................. 18
Mothers and Motherhood in Etruscan Society ..................................................... 29
Where, Then, Are All the Infants? .................................................................................... 40
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 51
Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 53
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List of Figures
Figure 1. Sample Age Categories from Anglo-Saxon Cemetery Reports ...................................... 4
Figure 2. Children 16.5 years and younger from tombs at Tarquinia excavated between 1982 and
1995 ....................................................................................................................................... 12
Figure 3. Children 16.5 years and younger identified in five Hellenistic tombs at the Casacce
Necropolis at Etruscan Blera (Viterbo) ................................................................................. 12
Figure 4. A model of heterogeneous frailty and selective mortality............................................. 13
Figure 5. Children 16.5 years and younger from graves at Pithekoussai ..................................... 15
Figure 6. Osteria Dell’Osa Phase IIIB and IV distribution of burials by age-classes .................. 16
Figure 7. Images of swaddled infants from the Villa Giulia and the Museo Nazionale, Tarquinia,
excavated from various shrines and sanctuaries around Etruria…………………..……….20
Figure 8. Age at death in Etruscan epitaphs.………………………….…………………………28
Figure 9. Tomb 5636, Monterozzi Necropolis, Tarquinia…………………………...…………..29
Figure 10. Representation of the body in words……………………..…………………………..29
Figure 11. Images of mothers with child, from the Villa Giulia…………………………………31
Figure 12. Images of childbirth..……………………...………………………………………….32
Figure 13. Infant burial area of the 6th-7th c. CE located within the abandoned bathhouse at
Cazzanello………………………………………………………………………………..48
Figure 14. Schematic drawing of locations of possible children’s burials within the urban area of
ancient Tarquinia…………………………………………………..................................48
Figure 15. Infant skeletons in contexts of houses 5a and 5c from the Ramsautal excavations….49
Figure 16. Infant skeletons in the contexts of houses 3b and 3f from the Ramsautal excavations
…………………………...……………………………………………………………………….50
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Preface
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
– Carl Sagan
Typically, the late astronomer would be correct. In archaeology, interpretations are made
possible by the physical data obtained from excavations. Despite the emergence of postprocessual archaeology in the 1980s and its theoretical approach, via hermeneutics, semiotics,
and other theoretical approaches, to culture development and social function, archaeologists
continue to rely on empirical methods to lend credence to their assertions which range in their
degrees of subjectivity. Even the hyperrelativists, who reject absolute truth and believe that
interpretations cannot be communicated (arguing that since all knowledge is subjective, one
cannot force another to think the same) deconstruct text and the archaeological record to
illuminate logical weaknesses and biases (VanPool and VanPool 1999: 36). Phenomenology, the
method of determining how groups of people experienced and used the landscape and their
physical environment, though highly conceptual and subjective, utilizes data from the lived
world. These approaches to archaeological research, however subjective the interpretations they
produce may be, nevertheless are supported by tangible evidence. Dr. Sagan’s statement was a
reaction to the traditional “negative evidence = negative occurrence” stance of science. As
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science stresses representative sampling, it uses the hypothetico-deductive method which
scrutinizes a body of data to produce conclusions that either refute or support initial hypotheses.
Consequently, if there is no evidence for a phenomenon, then, traditionally, scientists would
conclude that that phenomenon never occurred. Archaeologists use this method, a byproduct of
the processual movement of the 1960s, as well. Moreover, the current educational and political
climates stress the benefits of science with the realization of ever-growing environmental
pollution. The desire for evidence, or “proof,” controls political policy and public support.
Therefore, in light of the world’s ‘proof-positive’ mindset, people fail to address the significance
of absence - the nonexistence of a corpus of material can share as much information about a
society as its presence. Archaeologists must consider that this nonappearance may be conscious
and not merely a circumstance of time and disturbance.
Accordingly, in this thesis I argue that the complete absence of an entire age group from
the Etruscan archaeological record is suspect. In Iron Age Italy, infant mortality rates were high,
up to 50% at the highest end (Becker 2007: 286), thus to have no physical remains of Etruscan
infants in burial sites is a significant phenomenon that should not be disregarded due to the lack
of data – absence can be data itself. The thesis’ examination of artistic and epigraphic
representations of and references to children, in particular votive sculptures, tomb paintings,
epitaphs, mirrors, and tomb groups, illustrates a concern for the healthy birth and early life of a
child in addition to the fertility and subsequent survival of the mother during childbirth. The
artistic emphasis the Etruscans placed on the production and rearing of children demonstrate the
perceived social potential and importance of children both as future child bearers and as future
citizens. Therefore, it is incorrect to assume that the absence of infant remains does not relate any
social or cultural information. Rather, archaeologists must ask “why are they not present?” and
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“where are these infants?” To use taphonomic factors as an excuse is insufficient because the
magnitude of the statistical deficiency is too great to blame merely on the effects of nature and
time. This thesis attempts to answer such questions and to address the inattention to Etruscan
children.
The Issues with Determining Age and Identifying Children and
Childhood in Archaeology
The central issue that arises when studying infancy and childhood in archaeology is that
terms pertaining to age are “fluid” – they are unfortunately not set which complicates research
results and discussions. There are numerous definitions and temporal parameters of the word
“child” and other age terms (Scott 1999; Gowland 2006; Lewis 2007). In a particularly fine
example, Figure 1 (Scott 1999: 92) presents the confusion born of using various terms to
indicate a young person from a number of Anglo-Saxon sites – infant, child, subadult, juvenile,
young adult, adolescent - all of which overlap and are without an explanation to make the reader
understand why specific expressions were chosen. They span biological, chronological, and
social age, thereby complicating the process of identifying boundaries of transition and any
potential particularized treatments of age groups (Gowland 2006). Archaeology should be more
consistent in its use of analytical terminology than it is now, or at least give reasons for the
preference of some terms over others. Indeed, this is challenging because of the multidisciplinary
nature of archaeology – should the practice adhere to scientific (i.e. biological) terms or be
arbitrary with explanations provided by the archaeologist? The tension partially stems from the
argument concerning whether archaeology is a discipline belonging to science or the humanities.
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Figure 1. Sample Age Categories from Anglo-Saxon Cemetery Reports (Scott 1999: 92)
On the one hand, there is a struggle in whether or not to use commonly accepted,
culturally-loaded Western terms (i.e. child, infant, adult) that do not necessarily apply to the
society in question. Megan Perry (2005) calls for archaeologists to cease using these Western
definitions because they reinforce the modern Western child/adult binary. Meanwhile, Mary
Baker (1997) argues that since such terms are essentially masculine and phallocentric in nature,
they render females and children archaeologically invisible. Certainly, with the advent of
postprocessual archaeology, and with it the rise of feminist archaeology and the archaeology of
gender and identity, archaeologists gave more focus to previously unstudied portions of the
population, namely females and children, because they actively looked for their signatures in the
archaeological record, such as weaving implements and rattles (Ruttle 2010: 65). However, this
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is problematic in itself since these signatures are deemed to be signatures based on the
archaeologists’ experiences. Therefore, these analogous markers are biased representations.
Likewise “child,” “childhood,” “adult,” and other like expressions are contingent upon their
temporal, cultural, and social contexts. Archaeologists themselves have been encultured, hence
they see archaeological data from a predisposed lens in which they relate what they excavate to
what they know. Moreover, the use of the generic term “children” can hide the sub-categories
within it that past groups of people may have recognized (Fahlander 2011: 14). For example, we
can certainly see such sub-categorization within the traditional educational system of the United
States – “children” progress through from nursery school to elementary school to middle school
and then to high school before they enter college as socially recognized “adults.” Indeed,
Fahlander explains that, in most societies, within “childhood” there are a series of corporeal,
mental, and social developmental stages, which I will later argue were present in Etruscan
society based on the study of the mortuary profiles in conjunction with the material culture.
Furthermore, when it comes to physically identifying “children,” or rather “subadults,”
there are practical considerations that inhibit proper or accurate identification of both age and sex
from human remains in the archaeological record (Chapeskie 2006; Lewis 2007). There is the
idea that subadult skeletons are softer and more fragile than their adult counterparts, therefore
they do not survive for the archaeologists to recover centuries later (Waldron 1994; Mays 1998).
Skeletons of young individuals contain more cartilage than adults; cartilage, as a flexible
connective tissue, decomposes faster than bones, and there is a greater degree of ossification in
older individuals. Lewis rejects this argument of fragility; instead, she proposes that these
remains are more easily dispersed and missed during excavations (2007: 186). This is plausible
when one considers the small size of infant bones, notably the metatarsals and metacarpals.
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Secondly, due to the extensive variety within populations, male and female bodies could at times
be difficult to distinguish firmly. The same could be said of age since skeletal development
occurs gradually and bodies are frequently in transition, thus an accurate age assessment is not
realistic; typically only age ranges can be attained. Socio-cultural factors can also affect physical
attributes; diet, exercise, and ideals of beauty can shape bodies. Figure 1, again, illustrates the
heterogeneity of age cut-offs utilized by archaeologists. Additionally, indicators of age are not
always reliable. For example, Harris lines, or growth arrest lines, can be reabsorbed (Danforth
1994: 94). Lewis further supposes that remains of young individuals could be located in the areas
of the excavation site not sampled, an opinion also shared by Tim White (2000: 437). Lastly,
environmental factors, including soil acidity and burrowing animals, can disturb the site and/or
accelerate decomposition. Occasionally, there are no bones due to these extrinsic factors (K.
McSweeney 2011, lecture, 11 November). These inaccuracies and variables skew mortuary
profiles to the extent that archaeological picture of the dead population cannot ever precisely
reflect the living population. Yet, with the Etruscans, one cannot point to taphonomy alone as an
explanation for the absence of infants because of the frequency of age-based differential burial
patterns across Etruria.
The uncertainty, vagueness, and inconsistency of osteological analyses often leads to
misleadingly coarse labeling, therefore, archaeologists tend to clump children together as
opposed to identifying certain groups within this broad age category, a topic upon which
Fahlander expounds (2011: 15). Chapeskie even asserts that it would be professional to remain
without an osteological diagnosis rather than to use unsound methodology where the data is
inconclusive (2006: 44). I argue that archaeologists, while maintaining rigorous empirical
standards, should consider sub-categorization because I believe that past societies differentiated
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certain-aged children from others – the Etruscans are an example of this phenomenon. There are
many modern-day examples, such as the Jewish bris and Maasai naming ceremonies for 3 yearolds. The Roman lustratio, an ancient example of the practice, conferred names to girls eight
days after birth and nine days for boys, indicating the socio-cultural recognition of distinct stages
and associated events within childhood. Likewise, in Rosemary Joyce’s study of 16th century
Aztec children, she observed that childhood was divided into three uniform segments, illustrating
that childhood changes were socially-regulated and determined (Joyce 2000). Clearly, past
societies, like present ones, had divisions within what we consider “childhood.”
Identification in the archaeological record of “childhood,” the social and developmental
stage before sexual maturity and/or the entrance into the adult world with its privileges and
responsibilities, is an especially challenging task that relies on the problematic process of
recognizing markers of this life phase. The difficulty is attributed to the varied concepts of what
constitutes “childhood” and how this relates to the equally wide-ranging idea of “adulthood.”
Reider Aasgaard (2009) explains that though “children’s culture” can be non-material, there are a
number of ways it can be displayed: toys, pets, games, and so on. Children see and relate to the
world in their own way with their own meanings, far differently from adults (Sofaer Derevenski
1997; Baxter 2005). For example, children do not initially understand the concept of gender,
therefore they may respond with different answers on separate occasions when asked what
gender they are. Additionally, they may turn everyday items, such as boxes and stones, into toys.
According to Baxter, toys are indicative of the negotiation between childhood and adulthood
(2005: 41). Children could be originators and adults attest to this by their expressions of
embarrassment when children say or do what they deem unbecoming things (Aasgaard 2009:
25). They actively appropriate and transform themselves (Prout 2000) and one should consider
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that children have a sense of self and demonstrate agency. The unique experiences of children
are formed into the adult world through experimentation, play, rites of passage, etc. They
develop games to mimic the actions of adults, the knowledge they gain later being employed
when they themselves become adults. For example, in the Trobriand Islands of northwestern
Melanesia, Malinowski argues that sexuality dominates almost every aspect of culture, including
childish games where boys and girls engage in physical contact (e.g. hand-holding and bathing)
in preparation for future rituals and future intercourse (Malinowski 1929). Children are not mere
passive figures in society; they play an important role in the furthering of their society’s culture
through their shaping of their environment to ways they can understand.
During childhood, a child undergoes biological, mental, emotional, and intellectual
developments. Archaeologists therefore should examine how transformations of the body were
remembered and the materiality of the body should be acknowledged. Stoddart (2009) and
Meskell (2000) advocate a body-oriented approach to archaeology because changes in the
treatment of the body can illuminate shifting socio-cultural perceptions of that body. Scott (1999)
uses a similar approach by looking at how infants were manipulated, idealized, and excluded to
determine the extent to which infancy is a process of meanings. There must then be a focus on
the study of age since it is a significant aspect in the construction of social relations and identity,
as gender/sex, sexuality, and ethnicity are (Gilchrist 2007; Meskell 2007). By studying a
society’s children and analyzing its notions of childhood, one can ascertain what processes create
a mature and aged body as well as the society’s associated views on gender identity, gender
roles, and gender ideology (Sofaer Derevenski 1997; Lorentz 2003).
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Defining Terms
For my argument, it is imperative to elucidate the difference between the various stages
of childhood and explain what terms I will use to denote sex. For present purposes, it is judged
that “male” and “female” are the most apt expressions for denoting sex. In an attempt to be
neutral and objective, I will avoid using “gender” and gender-based terms such as “girl” and
“boy” when discussing human remains, instead utilizing “male” and “female” as biologically
determined classifications. “Sex” is more appropriate. However, when studying social identities,
“gender” is essential to convey cultural constructs. With regards to age, I will base my age
divisions on Piaget’s Theory of cognitive development in order to avoid arbitrarily choosing cutoff points. Jean Piaget argued that children from birth contribute to their own development,
mentally and physically, through their activities (Siegler et al. 2006). He hypothesized that
children undergo four stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor (birth to 2 years),
preoperational (2 to 7 years), concrete operational (7 to 12 years), and formal operational (12
and over). The sensorimotor stage expresses intelligence through sensory and motor abilities and
is comprised of six increasingly complex substages. Piaget theorized that a child’s thinking
develops the most rapidly within the first few years, which is corroborated by the tripling of the
brain’s weight within the first three years of life. The second stage, preoperational, is notable for
the inclusion of symbolic representation and recognition in addition to egocentrism and
centration (the focus on a striking object or feature to the exclusion of other objects or features).
In the concrete operational stage, children are able to logically reason about tangible aspects of
their environment. Meanwhile, the last stage, formal operational, is where individuals are able to
think about hypothetical and abstract concepts and situations.
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This approach is plainly a cognitive approach to defining age, however, it corresponds to
stages of physical development. The first two or three years of a child’s life are marked by rapid
growth, therefore, I will use “infant” and “baby” interchangeably to signify individuals 2 years
old and younger, with “neonate” and “perinatal” as expressions within this age group to indicate
at the time of birth and shortly after the time of birth, respectively. Infantia literally means
“unable to speak.” This age group corresponds to Piaget’s sensorimotor stage. I will then use
“young sub-adult” to encompass the ages from 2 years to 12 years, when puberty usually begins.
This span is marked by the preoperational and concrete operational stages. Those older than 12
and less than 20 will be called “older sub-adult” as this is the period of sexual maturity and the
formal operational stage. The wide-ranging temporal nature of sexual development necessitates
separate categories for younger and older “children,” the term which incorporates all of these
biological stages under one umbrella.
The Archaeological Data
Marshall Becker studied the mortuary profiles of the burial sites at Tarquinia and other
Etruscan and Etruscan-era sites, such as Blera and Pithekoussai respectively, and observed the
conspicuous absence of children aged five years and younger (Figures 2 and 3, 2007). In
comparison, there was normal sub-adult morbidity (between 5.5 to 16.5 years old) which was
approximately 10% (2007: 286). Apparent lack of deceased young individuals is problematic
considering the aforementioned extraordinary pre-industrial infant mortality rates. Lewis cites
34% as the normative figure in archaeological populations from many periods all over the world
(2007: 22). Golden proposes a 30-40% mortality rate for the first year of life in Greek and
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Roman societies (1988: 155). Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, in his M. Aurelius Imperator Ad
Se Ipsum (Meditations), quotes the Greek philosopher Epictetus:1
Καταφιλοῦντα τὸ παιδίον δεῖ, ἔλεγεν ὁ Ἐπίκτητος, ἔνδον ἐπιφθέγγεσθαι: αὔριον ἴσως
ἀποθανῇ.—δύσφημα ταῦτα.—οὐδὲν δύσφημον, ἔφη, φυσικοῦ τινος ἔργου σημαντικόν: ἢ καὶ τὸ
τοὺς στάχυας θερισθῆναι δύσφημον.
(Marcus Aurelius, M. Antonius Imperator Ad Se Ipsum, 11.34.1).
It is necessary to kiss tenderly the child, said Epictetus, and to call out: perhaps tomorrow he
may die away. – These are words of ill omen. – Nothing is a word of ill omen, he said, signifying
some work of nature: and but [to say] for the ears of corn to be reaped is a word of ill omen.
(Translation by author; emphasis mine)
From these words, parents hoped their child would live but it was not surprising for him or her to
die suddenly. By attributing the deaths of children to nature, Epictetus implies that some children
seemingly pass without an observable cause; their lives are to an extent out of the parents’ hands
and their fates determined by other entities. These deaths were a common occurrence and part of
ancient life. Figure 4 measures age-specific frailty and hazards (Wood et al. 1992). Where each
child’s health is assumed to be constant and proportional to its individual level of frailty (z),
frailty is considered to be uniform among infants. Therefore, deaths are highest in the first-week
of life and steadily decrease with each passing week because the frailty decreases. Also, as the
aggregate level of hazard of death at a certain age is proportional to the number of survivors at
that age, then aggregate-level hazard declines even though individual-level hazard remains
constant. According to this concept of frailty, there should be more infant remains than adult
1
st
nd
1 to first half of the 2 c. CE
12
remains since they are more susceptible to vectors of death or ill health. However, in Etruscan
cemeteries, the opposite is suggested by the recovered mortuary data.
Figure 2. Children 16.5 years and younger from tombs at Tarquinia excavated between 1982 and 1995
(Becker 2007: 287)
Figure 3. Children 16.5 years and younger identified in five Hellenistic tombs at the Casacce Necropolis at
Etruscan Blera (Viterbo) (Becker 2007: 288)
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Figure 4. A model of heterogeneous frailty and selective mortality (Wood et al. 1992: 346). Z =individual
level of frailty, gt (z) = the probability density function specifying that distribution at age t where the mean
hazard for all the childrenalive at age t is
The Archaeological Data Continued
The early Iron Age Necropolis of the Villa Bruschi Falgari at Tarquinia exemplifies the
age bias. The 11th-9th c. necropolis contains 246 burials with 239 of them being cremations and
the rest inhumed in pits (pozzo). 70% of the remains are adult while 18% are of individuals
between 6 years and 12 years old. What is noticeable are the low numbers of individuals under 6
years of age and the complete absence of neonates and perinatals (Soprintendenza Arch. 2001).
Similarly, at Poggio Aguzzo near Poggio Civitate, although currently only a small sample exists
(nine burials), all are adult (Tuck in press). Hopefully, later excavations at the site will produce
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larger samples. Interestingly, during the Iron Age in Central Italy (outside of Etruria), age-based
differential burial was common. At the Greek colony of Pithekoussai on the island of Ischia off
the coast of Naples, children below two years are missing from burial sites (Figure 5). Another
contemporaneous comparandum is ancient Latium where age-based differential burial was
common practice. On the Capitoline Hill, eight burials differentiated according to age dating to
the early Iron Age (circa 10th-8th c. BCE) were found in the Roman Garden.2 Tombs 12 and 6
contained infants under 1 year of age, which were deposited in dolia, large storage vessels, while
the older children were buried in pits. Meanwhile, in the Inhabited Area of the Orientalizing
Period (circa 7th-6th c. BCE), also on the Capitoline Hill, the same pattern is present.3 The
method of burial was distinguished by the age of the dead - individuals under 1 year were placed
in vessels whereas those older were placed in pits. Likewise, the Latin site Osteria dell’Osa
(Figure 6), whose cemetery is the largest Iron Age sample in ancient Latium (around 600
graves), features a statistical bias against the inclusion of infants, defined as 1-5 years in the
study, within the main burial complex (Bietti Sestieri 1992; Tuck in press). It is notable to
observe that children ages 0-1 year are missing. Lastly, at Murata in the area of Vagli di Soprain
in the Apuan region abutting Etruria, a tomb of a 14 year-old girl interred with rich burial goods
was not located within a cemetery complex and there were no nearby burials (Ciampoltrini and
Notini 2011 in Becker 2011). The temporal range of the mortuary arrangements in ancient
Latium illustrates that differential burial did not merely occur within a two-century span, but
rather extended to at least four centuries.
Due to Latium’s shared borders with Etruria, it is possible they shared similar burial
practices as an instance of cross-cultural influence or diffusion. Etruria was an active participant
2
3
Information gathered at the exhibition at the MuseI Capitolini
Ibid.
15
in the Mediterranean trade, especially as a consumer. During its Orientalizing Period (8th-7th c.
BCE), there was a market for Greek Geometric ware, of which there is evidence of at Etruscan
sites (De Puma 1986). The Etruscans, therefore, were exposed to foreign ideas and tastes and,
moreover, it is demonstrated that these ideas and tastes appealed to them by the presence of
Greek, Near Eastern, Phoenician, and Baltic objects placed inside their tombs.4 In the Bocchoris
Tomb at Tarquinia (circa 7th c. BCE), there are items made of faience.5 At the “Isis” Tomb in
Vulci (circa 7th-6th c. BCE), ostrich eggs are present.6 Furthermore, the Etruscan language itself
adopted the Euboean Greek alphabet. If the Etruscans were open to external influences, then it
could also have extended to the cultural realm where they may have adopted Italic burial
practices. Or, it is also a possibility that Italic tribes were inspired by the Etruscans.
Figure 5. Children 16.5 years and younger from graves at Pithekoussai (Becker 2007: 291)
4
Determined by visits to museums in the United States and Italy
Museo Nazionale Archeologico, Tarquinia
6
From the British Museum, inventory number: AN140747001
5
16
Figure 6. Osteria Dell’Osa Phase IIIB and IV distribution of burials by age-classes (Bietti Sestieri 1992:
101)
Sociocultural Foundations for Exclusion
There is an idea in scholarship of ancient cultures that due to the high infant mortality
rates, parents did not care whether their children died and simply had the expectation that the
deceased children would be easily replaced by more (Golden 1988; Karl and Löcker 2011; Scott
1999). There is the idiom “throw the baby out with the bathwater,” whose original meaning is the
disposal of something important with something unimportant, but that is sometimes applied in
the literal sense in archaeological scholarship to readings of ancient treatment of children (Karl
and Lӧcker 2011). In fact, there is evidence of babies who seemingly were thrown out with the
bathwater. From the late-Roman and early-Byzantine stratum in Ashkelon (circa 220-450 CE),
the skeletons of around 100 infants were found in a sewer (Hoppe 2011: 48). Some past
civilizations treated their young in what is considered, to a modern Western mindset, a
thoughtless manner unbecoming to parents. The Romans are known to have practiced expositio,
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or exposure, the act of leaving one’s child out in the open to have their fates decided by Nature.
Meanwhile, the Carthaginians had their tophets, sites of infant sacrifice. Also, in Phoenicia, there
was an entire economy based on infanticide – a trade for babies existed where rich parents could
buy the offspring of poor parents as a source for sacrificial rituals, substituting their own children
(Scott 1999). In this particular example, monetarily-distressed parents were willing to not only
A) sell their children, but also to B) knowingly sell them to individuals intending to have them
killed. From a modern Western perspective, this is shocking behavior, the exact opposite of what
parental ethics prescribe. Yet, to consider these practices deplorable is ethnocentric and one has
to consider the extent and frequency to which babies were dying and being born, a fact of life
almost routine (Golden 1988: 154). Thus, one must further take into account the space required
to deposit such a number of corpses. One solution, evidenced by Roman communities was to
bury the dead underneath the eaves of houses (suggrundaria), which Naomi Norman (2002: 310)
argues is testament to the marginal status of infants in Roman society.
At Poggio Civitate, infant remains have recently been excavated among the debris of the
site’s manufacturing area, which Tuck interprets as stemming from actions related to infanticide
(in press), though I will present a contrasting interpretation of this discovery in the last section of
this thesis. The Etruscans cared for their children and were concerned with whether they lived or
died. Some scholars assert that they did not practice infanticide or expositio but raised all their
children. Larissa Bonfante supports this idea by pointing to the presence of a gold ring near the
body of a woman signifying that she has given birth, which indicates the importance of childbirth, child-rearing, and children in Etruscan society (in press). I will argue that an infant death
would have been especially tragic and thus excluded from other burial practices for one main
reason: Death of an infant would have been seen as a failure on a social level in raising a
18
productive member of society. Exclusion, then, enabled other special burial treatments by the
family to denote attachment to the deceased.
A Failure
Indeed, there is a lack of direct burial evidence for Etruscan children within main
cemetery complexes, but this does not necessarily suggest a negative valuation or conception of
very young individuals in Etruscan society. Instead, it suggests a separate notion of this age
group in relation to the adults. Potentially, the absence could in fact imply a positive valuation of
infants. An examination of Etruscan depictions of infants reveals a venerated concept of what an
ideal infant should be. It is posited that when that infant died, the death was seen to break that
ideal – death had proven it to be unfit – and thus did not deserve a place within the main burial
complex. The numerous votive sculptures excavated from shrines and sanctuaries attest to the
Etruscan desire for thriving infants with the implication that a negative result of the offering (i.e.
death) would bring grief. In other words, since parents wished for healthy children and made
provisions to ensure for this to happen, when those children died, it was an event that brought on
mourning and sadness.
Within the collections of Etruscan museums and galleries around Italy, especially the
Villa Giulia, there are numerous sculptural representations of babies from shrines and
sanctuaries, many of them swaddled (Figure 7). As Rosemary Joyce’s study on Aztec bodily
signs and childhood demonstrates (2000), studying bodily adornment is a crucial task when
approaching the examination of children’s statuses in past societies. In her examination of 16th c.
Aztec children, she opines that repeated traditional “citational precedents,” which include body
ornamentation and costume, result in social gender embodiment. Applying Joyce’s notion to Iron
19
Age Italy and keeping in mind the infant mortality rates there, analyzing the swaddling in
Etruscan depictions of infants is key since the envelopment of an infant’s body with cloth
suggests a distinct recognition of the special care an infant needs due to their fragile states. The
Etruscans were acquainted with the relative ease in which an infant could die. Swaddling
decreases the infant’s individual measure of frailty by providing warmth, inhibiting wild flailing
when the infant is irritable, and prolonging peaceful sleep. The restrictive nature of swaddling
cloths keeps the limbs close to the body, retaining heat more effectively than if the bindings were
loose (van Sleuwen et al. 2007: 1099). It is a practical strategy that aims to increase the chances
of survival, therefore, the Etruscans did not literally “throw out their children with the bathwater”
as Tuck argues as explanation for the infant remains within the industrial debris. Rather, the
swaddling illustrates their concern for the well-being of their newborns. The smile, signifying the
infant’s happiness, in the second image of Figure 7, implies that swaddling was understood to be
good for the baby and suggests that it was seen as a comfortable position for the infant to be in.
Using Scott’s approach (1999), the infant in these instances is idealized to its most desired form,
that of a healthy and happy child. Their bodies are manipulated to be fit enough to survive their
environment, yet they are excluded from cemeteries. This is a contradictory paradox that may
elucidate a reason for their exclusion.
20
Figure 7. Images of swaddled infants from the Villa Giulia and the Museo Nazionale, Tarquinia, excavated
from various shrines and sanctuaries around Etruria (Photos by N. Coscolluela)
The infant body is the intersection between the collective and the individual, cause and
meaning, the biological and the social, structure and agent (Meskell 2000). Infants, unlike adults,
are new bodies which one, namely parents and society, is able to form and “socialize” (Baxter
21
2005: 3). They are born tabula rasa and are gradually engendered and encultured as they grow
and develop (Baker 1997: 194). The idealization of infants reveals the parent’s or society’s
optimism that the infant will grow to be a contributive member of society. Idealism illustrates
that hope and gives the impression that children are seen as the future of the society; they have
their own particular role as students in the sense that they learn the customs, laws, beliefs, and
practices of their culture in order to actively engage in social activities and then to pass their
knowledge on to subsequent generations. For instance, games of both modern and non-industrial
children are mechanisms of such socialization and echo the preparation children undergo to
become adults. They impart social roles and are a means in which adults define children in
different categories from adults (Baxter 2005: 27). Children are not merely passive entities in the
structures of culture, rather they are active agents in cultural transmission – first, they receive
information, then, they transmit the information. Thus, an infant body holds the collective within
its individual being. From birth, they are immediately molded to exemplify the attitudes and
behaviors of their society, thereby sustaining social practices. The collective social identity is
reflected in this one person, imbuing him/her with prominence in the continuation of the culture
and maintaining the society’s existence. In short, the infant is considered an unfinished person
both biologically and socially. Childhood is the crucial stage in which the child begins to be
considered a whole person (Prout 2000). In Prout’s words, “the body is understood not as an
underlying reality but as a form of knowledge shaped by the social circumstances of its
construction” (2000: 6). Infants bear within them the knowledge, the hopes, and the future of a
society, making their deaths significantly poignant as they are a threat to the very survival of that
society. Infant death in Etruscan culture, then, likely signified a failure on the part of the parents
and society to develop an individual fit enough to both survive the rigors of Iron Age life and a
22
failure in their responsibility to construct the child as a model of Etruscan ideals and mores. They
somehow did not do enough to please the gods to warrant a healthy child. Burying them outside
the main cemetery may then have been a method for the parents and society to forget this
disappointment and the stain of displeasing the gods and to start with a clean slate. One can also
say that the lack of a principal space for their burial and subsequent memorial may have served
as a sort of punishment for the parents. For failing to do their social duty, they were not
permitted to undertake actions that fostered social memory of that infant. An infant body is full
of meanings, from the emotions and feelings projected upon it by its parents to the potential
placed upon it by society as a productive member of the community, which was possibly its most
important meaning for the Etruscans. Hence, its worthiness to be included in the cemetery
depended upon its survivability. When the child passed the infant stage, this event represented its
fitness and therefore merited inclusion. In contrast, death during the infant stage meant an
automatic loss of that potential, thus the child, at least in society’s eyes, lost its value.
Intriguingly, a study of the age profiles of epitaphs across Etruria also demonstrates a
conspicuous absence of infants (Figure 8) similar to the burial sites. Where age was noted or at
least survived clearly enough to be read, no children under the age of two years were mentioned
in the epitaphs (Turfa in press). Likewise, in Pithekoussai, two years was the cut-off age for
inclusion in the burial complexes (Figure 5, Becker 2007: 292). The exclusion from main
cemetery sites and epitaphs illustrate that the Etruscans deliberately “forgot” dead infants. By
neglecting to mention them, or their ages on epitaphs, society denied their prior existence as a
means of not remembering their failure. A case of societal “forgetting” is present in the cultural
tradition of the Sora tribe in Orissa, India, an important modern comparandum to the Etruscan
phenomenon that delves into the ramifications of preventing memorial access to the dead. It is
23
customary for the living Sora to engage in dialogues with their ancestors via an entranced
shaman. Today, there is a problem on the familial and social level as the young generations do
not “talk” to their ancestors, leaving their parents afraid of dying lest they be neglected (Vitebsky
2008). Many young Sora are Baptist while their older relatives still follow the traditional Sora
shamanistic “ancestor worship,” therefore there is a generational rift that threatens the very
existence of Sora culture. While the impulse and the means by which to not memorialize the
deceased may be different, the effect of forgetting is similar to the Etruscans. The Etruscans
appeared to have deliberately chose to dismiss the memory of the youngest individuals, and, in
fact, seemingly went so far as to wipe away evidence of their lives so that others would not
comprehend what had occurred, because in comprehending they would thereby remind the
greater social body of the negative event.
In Vitebsky’s article “Love and Forgetting,” Paranto, a Christian, suddenly sobbed when
asked about his deceased father and began to utter an old shamanistic funeral lament which he
did not do when his father died (2008: 244-245). This example shows that a reminder, in this
case a simple inquiry, has the power to open a flood of memories and extant feelings of remorse
and responsibility. Vitebsky explains that Paranto was torn between his Christian sensibilities
and the love for his father, the latter of which occasionally manifested itself even though Paranto
outwardly suppressed it (245). Therefore, in an attempt to bypass any emotional outburst that
may betray his shamanistic ancestry and contradict his new religion, Paranto does not talk to the
dead. In an apparent paradox, however, though the Sora have a particular vocabulary they use in
verbal engagement with the dead, they do not have any material representations of the dead
(ibid.). Instead, they erect a stone that relatives and friends may lament over for a few weeks, but
eventually the stone becomes a regular stone, with no vestige of its original memorializing
24
purpose (ibid.). In the same vein, the Etruscans expressed public forms of forgetting by not
having material representations of infants that had died. Epitaphs serve as a technique where the
deceased can be solidified; though the stone itself is only representational, it is a tangible object
in which the living can maintain connections with the dead - they touch it as if touching the dead,
they talk to it as if conversing with the dead. However, the epitaph is merely a stone. People
imbue the stone with meaning that gives it its significance. In the case of infant death, the
Etruscans removed this object, a conduit of communication, preventing individuals from
establishing connections with the young dead. This common social practice, called social instead
of familial because of its widespread occurrence across Etruria, is unusual for a culture known
for its burial practices.
In a culture that typically has elaborate displays of remembrance, in the form of tombs,
burial goods, and tomb paintings, the absence of such displays for a particular segment of the
population calls for examination. It is also worthy to note that tomb paintings do not depict
infants. Even images of sub-adults are rare. Tomb 5636 of the Monterozzi Necropolis (Figure 9)
features a young sub-adult male greeting his deceased relatives and the Tomb of Hunting and
Fishing features the antics of males, who look to be older sub-adults or adults, but the corpus of
tomb paintings neglects representations of infants (Steingräber 2006). The materiality of
remembrance is closely tied to the concept of memory, thus when the materiality is removed,
memory is as well at a social level (though memory on the individual level has not necessarily
disappeared).
The idea of infants being excluded due to their unfinished conditions begs the question
“What constituted personhood in Etruscan society?” Though the Etruscans did recognize infants
as humans, which is evident in the votive figures, we should examine the possibility that they did
25
not recognize them as “people” within society. Hence, one must be a “person” to be interred in a
cemetery meant for people. A human comprises different levels of scaled identities – the
individual, the family or gens, the community, and the supra-community (Stoddart 2009).
Stoddart argues that the main definition of Etruscan identity is rooted in both the family and the
community, exemplified by monuments (which include walls and foci for collective ritual) for
the latter and the scenography of tombs for the former that celebrated the continuity of the
descent group, later reinforced by the increasing number of inscriptions (2009: 139-140).
Applying the Meskell-Joyce approach to the study of the Etruscan body, exploring the
materialities of the body, mind-body distinctions, the remembrance of transformations, and the
process of death, he analyzed the emic terminologies of the body and discovered the body’s
centrality in Etruscan lexicography with personal names dominating the body lexicon and age
classes being second most prevalent (Figure 10). In many societies, naming an infant often
signifies acceptance as a fully-fledged member of the community. The Roman ritual lustratio
occurred eight days after birth for a girl and nine days after birth for a boy, the conferring of
names denoting the official existence of the baby (Becker 2007: 283). In Western society, a baby
is normally named right at the point of birth, if not before birth. Infant mortality rates have
improved due to increased hygiene and sanitary standards, causing parents to expect their new
baby’s survival. In this scenario, parents do not withhold the name in wait for the worst to occur,
but rather confer the name quickly in order for the baby to be acknowledged by the family and
society as soon as possible. Thus, to many societies, a name is understood to grant (social) life.
In another example, the German-Jewish naming ritual of Hollekreisch sought both protection
from Frau Holle’s terror and the invocation of her benevolence (Hammer 2005). By requesting
her guardianship, the parents and family supply the means by which the infant can live. They
26
ensure the baby’s life through the process of ritual, which is the physical incarnation of a plea for
its safety. Going through the motions is akin to a negotiation – in exchange for adhering to the
procedure, Frau Holle shows her goodwill.
Naming does not appear to be the determining factor for inclusion within Etruscan
cemeteries. Inclusion instead seems to have concerned the fulfillment of a more drawn out
socializing process. Raising an infant in Etruscan society was a negotiation in social
construction. By conceiving a child, parents made a tacit promise to the Etruscan gods and their
community that they would shape their child’s life course by educating and socializing their
child of normal social practices (i.e. recapitulate their ideology) with the aim of the child’s later
development into the average, yet ideal, citizen. Infants were understood to have not yet reached
“person” status because they were incomplete beings; an infant body was not yet shaped and
therefore did not fully reflect what it meant to be an Etruscan. To be deemed a “person,” an
Etruscan individual had to undergo a transition. Given the mortuary profiles of Etruscan sites and
the age profiles of the epitaphs, it appears that in Etruscan society this transitional period
between infancy and sub-adulthood ranged between 2 and 5 years. At the same time, the epitaphs
lend strong support for the turning of two as the age of transition; this is also reinforced by
comparison with other cultures, which indicate that this age range determined one’s treatment in
death. In writing the biography of Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, in his Βίοι
Παρaλλńλοι (Parallel Lives), Plutarch describes a lack of formal mourning for children who die
under 3 years of age:
27
αὐτὸς δὲ καὶ τὰ πένθη καθ᾽ ἡλικίας καὶ χρόνους ἔταξεν οἷον παῖδα μὴ πενθεῖν νεώτερον
τριετοῦς, μηδὲ πρεσβύτερον πλείονας μῆνας ὧν ἐβίωσεν ἐνιαυτῶν μέχρι τῶν δέκα, καὶ
περαιτέρω μηδεμίαν ἡλικίαν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ μακροτάτου πένθους χρόνον εἶναι δεκαμηνιαῖον…
(Plutarch, Numa 12.2)
And also he arranged the times of grief by age, for instance to not mourn over a child younger
than 3 years, indeed not [to mourn] over one older [than that] more months than one was living
in years until 10, and no age to be mourned longer than that, but 10 months is the longest time to
be mourned…
(Translation by author)
In another distinct example, in the New Testament, Herod calls for all boys two years old and
under to be killed in Bethlehem and its vicinity in what is called “The Massacre of the
Innocents:”
When Herod realized that the visitors from the East had tricked him, he was furious. He gave
orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its neighborhood who were two years old and
younger – this was done in accordance with that he had learned from the visitors about the time
when the start had appeared.
(Matthew 2:16)
Numa arbitrarily chose 3 years of age as the threshold for mourning, signifying that he
considered that those under did not necessitate expressions of grief, thereby implying that this
28
group of children were regarded less than other children. Centuries later, Herod decided boys
under two years old had to die as he was told that the King of the Jews was born. For Herod to
immediately specify children under two years indicates his definition of the term “infant” - that
is, a child under two years. Clearly, in history, infancy appears to be constrained within a
particular age range, a range that is similar across several ancient societies. The delineation was
significant because it governed burial treatment and, for the Etruscans, it seems crossing the
boundaries of infancy garnered the privilege of being memorialized epigraphically, visually, and
materially.
Figure 8. Age at death in Etruscan epitaphs (Turfa in press): Series 1 = total; Series 2 = males; Series 3=
females
29
Figure 9. Tomb 5636, Monterozzi Necropolis, Tarquinia (Photo by N. Coscolluela)
Figure 10. Representation of the body in words (Stoddart 2009: 139)
Mothers and Motherhood in Etruscan Society
Children have a unique bond with their mothers as mothers sacrifice their bodies for the
sake of their children, from providing nutrients that would otherwise be for themselves during
the gestation period to giving birth. One type of votive figure in Etruscan assemblages,
kourotrophoi, combine infants with their mothers, depicting them being held, sitting in their
mother’s laps, or being nursed (Figure 11). It is a distinct representation of the particular
attention paid to the welfare of both the mother and child during pregnancy, childbirth, and early
30
rearing. As opposed to isolated representations of infants, these votive statues are a conscious
decision to depict the union of the mother and child, demonstrating the special bond between the
one who bears and the one who is born. Votive uteri have also been found at sanctuaries – the
emphasis on the anatomical body connotes a desire for the health of that specific body part.
Since the Etruscans produced anatomical votives, they had knowledge, or at least a basic
understanding, of the organs and how the body operates. As the uterus holds the fetus, votive
uteri reflect a plea to the gods and other supernatural entities for the successful conception and
gestation of a child. A further indication of the specific Etruscan view towards who or what
deserved recognition in the production of a child was found at Poggio Colla. Here archaeologists
uncovered a fragment depicting childbirth – the head and shoulders of an infant emerge from a
squatting mother (Figure 12, left). The bucchero fragment, possibly from a votive vessel, dates
to around 600 BCE. Poggio Colla is one of the few Etruscan sites to offer a glimpse into nonfunerary contexts. The site comprises an acropolis and a sanctuary where many votives have
been found. Owing to the number of weaving implements and gold jewelry present at Poggio
Colla, the investigative team postulates that the sanctuary might have been the center of a cult
worshiping a female fertility deity (Lorenzi 2012). The vessel fragment is the only piece of its
kind in Etruria, however, there are similar images depicting a woman in birthing posture which
lack the baby (Figure 12, right). This particular corpus of material – votive figures of mother
and child, votive uteri, images of childbirth – collectively show the importance of the woman in
bearing and caring for healthy children even when children themselves are not depicted; for the
child to be born in good health, the mother must be in good health as well, a point which this
material indicates the Etruscans appreciated. They embody a reverence for females as bearers of
31
future contributors to society, which is supported by the complexity of female burials compared
to their male counterparts.
Figure 11. Images of mothers with child, from the Villa Giulia. Clockwise from top left: A mother standing
carrying child, a mother sitting holding her child, sitting mothers with infants sitting in their laps, a mother
breastfeeding her baby (Photos by N. Coscolluela).
32
Figure 12. Images of childbirth: left, Poggio Colla fragment; right, Lastrone a scala, Tarquinia (Lorenzi
2012: 17)
In a likely acknowledgement of the special role of women, female burials contain more
elaborate parures than males. The loss of a young female would have been especially tragic
because the death was a loss not only of her own life but also of any future offspring she might
have born. Her ornate burial was a performative event staged by the living as a reflection of their
perceptions of her loss. I would argue that the elaborate nature of female burial goods represents
items not only for the deceased but also her future offspring. The proportionally large amount of
grave wealth in young female burials reflects a sense of the appreciation of the deceased
female’s value which is manifested in material objects. In order to accommodate the greater
significance of female burials then, the mourners required more and/or more valuable objects to
show their lamentation. For example, a young girl’s (no age given but the dimensions of the
sarcophagus suggest a young sub-adult) sarcophagus in the Monterozzi necropolis at Tarquinia
was full of jewelry, fibulae, amber pendants, and gold. Her burial is exceptional not only because
of its wealth but also because of its location – she was entombed within the main cemetery
33
complex. The richness of her adornments afford her a unique status. Her or her family’s wealth
and/or status permitted her to be included; therefore degree of wealth appears to be a factor in
ascertaining a child’s, or at least a sub-adult’s, placement inside or outside cemeteries.
Nevertheless, there still remains a difference even between less richly adorned “regular” female
graves and male graves. Tomb 64 at Monterozzi housed the remains of a “child” aged 4-8 years
old. Though no sex is provided by the Museo Nazionale Archeologico di Tarquinia, the urn was
wrapped in a container bearing numerous studs, spirals, chains, and a necklace made of more
than 400 bronze rings, denoting a female. The most common items within female parures around
this time were bow fibulae and spirals for plaits with winding ends. Also common were rings,
chains, studs, bracelets, and glass and amber beads. Male parures typically consist of a single
winding fibula (with catch-plate) or a pin; the exceptions being very wealthy individuals like
Tomb 871 from the Cesale del Fosco Necropolis at Veii and its assemblage of weapons and gold.
But one must also take into account examples such as Monterozzi Tomb 62, which belonged to a
15-25 year old male who was buried with no personal apparels. Similarly, the ditch grave of the
Two Lads (“Dei Due Giovinetti”), older sub-adult males aged 14-20 years old and 13-18 years
old, lack fibulae and personal apparels apart from a thin silver wire around the right ankles of
each individual and a spear next to each skull. Likewise, by looking at the epitaph data once
more (Figure 8), one can see the higher numbers of females versus males in the 2-10 year range.
The greater quantity of females similarly suggests that females between two and ten were
memorialized and commemorated more often than males of the same age. The 10-20 range also
has more females but the disparity is very slight; the margin of difference is too small to be able
to conclude that the Etruscans had the same gender-centered ideas about this age group as for the
first cluster. Nevertheless, with that being said, the variance in the sex profile illustrates that
34
young sub-adult females were seen to warrant more public invocation of memory than males, at
least as reflected in wealth invested in the memorials that are graves.
The differential burial treatment of young females in Etruscan contexts contrasts with the
disdain for female children evidenced by some societies where infanticide of female infants
occurred (Scott 2001). In most cases, male children were preferred, especially in patrilineal
societies, because family wealth and property stayed within the family. The Etruscans differ with
their emphasis on material memorialization of female sub-adults in death.
Etruscan women appear to have enjoyed the same privileged treatment in life that they
experienced in death, a contrast to the practices Roman and Greek women maintained. Etruscans
scandalized the Greeks and the Romans with their degree of female participation in social
activities, in particular banquets. From tomb paintings, Greeks and Romans saw Etruscans
women as promiscuous and luxurious as they appeared to freely mingle with men (Bonfante in
press). Bonfante cites a passage from Athenaeus’7 Deipnosophistae (Sophists at Dinner):
Among the Etruscans, who were extraordinarily pleasure-loving, Timaeus8 says...that the
slave girls wait on the men naked. Theopompus,9 in the forty-third book of his Histories, also
says that it is normal for the Etruscans to share their women in common. These women take
great care of their bodies and exercise bare, exposing their bodies even before men, and among
themselves: for it is not shameful for them to appear almost naked. He also says they dine not
with their husbands, but with any man who happens to be present; and they toast anyone they
want to.
And the Etruscans raise all the children that are born, not knowing who the father is of
7
nd
rd
2 -3 c. CE
8
th rd
A Greek historian born in Sicily, lived in the 4 -3 c. BCE
9
th
Theopompus of Chios was a Greek historian who lived in the 4 c. BCE
35
each one. . .
It is no shame for the Etruscans to be seen having sexual experiences... for this too is
normal: it is the local custom there. And so far are they from considering it shameful that they
even say, when the master of the house is making love, and someone asks for him, that he is
"involved in such and such," shamelessly calling out the thing by name. When they come
together in parties with their relations, this is what they do: first, when they stop drinking and
are ready to go to bed, the servants bring in to them – with the lights left on! – either hetairai,
party girls, or very beautiful boys, or even their wives.
When they have enjoyed these, they then bring in young boys in bloom, who in turn
consort with themselves. And they make love sometimes within sight of each other, but mostly
with screens set up around the beds; these screens are made of woven reeds, and they throw
blankets over them. And indeed they like to keep company with women: but they enjoy the
company of boys and young men even more.
And their own appearance is also very good-looking, because they live luxuriously and
smooth their bodies; for all the barbarians in the West shave their bodies smooth...They have
many barber shops. 10
(Bonfante in press)
Passages such as this present Etruscans as hedonistic and vain, the freedoms the women
had being indicative of this. However, what was seen as luxurious may actually have been a
show of the privileged status that Etruscan women (i.e. female adults) had due to their roles as
citizen-bearing individuals. Female sub-adults may have been honored for their potential to
fulfill this role. Unlike their Roman counterparts, they had their own names, not merely a female
10
English translation, Gulick 1927, 41, 12.517-518.
36
form of their father’s name. Women may also have passed down their wealth, status, and/or
property to their children, presenting Etruscan society as a mixture of patriliny and matriliny. A
vase/cinerary urn in the British Museum11 bears the inscription “Larthia Levei Fastis Aneinal
sec,” meaning “Larthia Levei, daughter of Fasti Aneina.” What makes this piece particularly
fascinating (and rare) is that it does not mention the father’s name. This is in direct contrast to
the Tomb of the Partunu at Museo Nazionale di Tarquinia where sarcophagus No. 7, containing
the remains of the male sub-adult Arnth Spurinas, was inscribed with both parents’ names (“son
of Thanchvil and of Vel Spurinas”). Whereas the latter reflects the typical Etruscan practice of
acknowledging both parents, to not include the father’s name in the first case is significant since
it represents that Etruscan women had some autonomy – the vase suggests that Etruscan mothers
occasionally harbored some, if not all, control of the household and were acknowledged to have
that power (Bonfante in press). Moreover, to mention only the mother may perhaps have been a
conscious disregard of the presence or role of the father. Female identity was not built upon the
identity of the father as it was in Roman society – their own personal name signified their own
identity. Thus, property and/or status may not have just passed from the father to his children, the
mother may have also contributed to the prosperous continuation of her line.
To the Ancient Greeks, mothers have a different connection to their children than the
fathers do. They symbolize affection, love, and care while the father’s contribution is more
defensive and material in nature. Euripides demonstrates the contrast in Alcestis, his tragicomedy which repeatedly juxtaposes Alcestis’ goodness and noble character with Admetus’
cowardice and disrespect. Alcestis addresses this distinct relationship when she speaks to her
young daughter as she prepares to sacrifice her own life in exchange for the life of her husband,
Admetus, when no one else was willing to do so:
11
th
rd
British Museum, Inventory Number: 1946, 1012.1; dates from the 4 -3 c. BCE, found in Arezzo
37
οὐ γάρ σε μήτηρ οὔτε νυμφεύσει ποτὲ
οὔτ᾽ ἐν τόκοισι σοῖσι θαρσυνεῖ, τέκνον,
παροῦσ᾽, ἵν᾽ οὐδὲν μητρὸς εὐμενέστερον.
(Euripides, Alcestis, ll. 317-319)
For your mother will not ever attend you as a bride
nor being present, encourage you in childbirth, child,
where no one is friendlier than a mother.
(Translation by author)
Alcestis stresses her role of mother when she calls on Admetus to take her place: σύ νυν γενοῦ
τοῖσδ᾽ ἀντ᾽ ἐμοῦ μήτηρ τέκνοις (ll. 377). While the role of the Greek mother is one in which to
comfort, support, and nurture, the role of the father involves providing for his family and
mediating between his house and the outside world. Admetus must do both after his wife enters
the Underworld. The dialogue between Admetus and his father, Pheres, illustrates the dissimilar
role of father. Pheres was unwilling to die for his child and did not believe it was part of his
fatherly responsibility to do so, which strongly contrasts with Alcestis’ sacrifice and indeed the
sacrifices many mothers had to make for the sake of their children. In antiquity, a great number
of mothers died during childbirth while their newborns were able to survive.
ΦΕ.
ἐγὼ δέ σ᾽ οἴκων δεσπότην ἐγεινάμην
κἄθρεψ᾽, ὀφείλω δ᾽ οὐχ ὑπερθνῄσκειν σέθεν.
οὐ γὰρ πατρῷον τόνδ᾽ ἐδεξάμην νόμον,
38
παίδων προθνῄσκειν πατέρας, οὐδ᾽ Ἑλληνικόν.
(Alcestis, ll. 681-684)
Pher. And I was born having been raised [as] master of your house,
but I do not owe to die for you.
For I did not accept the custom as fatherly,
Fathers dying for their children, nor [the custom] as Hellenic.
(Translation by author, emphasis mine)
Outside of classical literature, the respect and admiration Etruscan children had for their mothers
seem to have been quite real. There is physical evidence of this attachment in the Northampton
Mirror (called so after its modern owner, the Marquess of Northampton). This bronze handmirror
was a gift from a Tite Cale to his mother in the 4th c. BCE etched with a special engraving, a rare
dedicatory inscription: tite cale: atial: turce malstria: cver, which is generally taken to be “Titus
Calus to his mother gave [this] mirror as a gift” (Izzet 2005: 1). On the reverse of the object is
an image of Turan and Atunis, the Etruscan Aphrodite and Adonis, half-embracing. Turan, a
common figure in Etruscan mirrors, often takes part in the beautification of other individuals,
thereby conferring beauty onto the owner of the mirror (ibid. 7). Atunis is also a figure of beauty.
The choice of subject illustrates the son’s wish for his mother to see and realize her own physical
attractiveness, an indication of his concern for her confidence and emotional or mental wellbeing. This mirror represents a highly complimentary gesture, from the act of gift-giving on the
one hand to the implications of its subject matter on the other – Titus Calus, or Tite Cale, fulfills
39
his role of son by reciprocating the care and love his mother had shown him his entire life by
giving her this item that reflects his warm regard for her.
The close relationship between children and mothers is also demonstrated by modern
scientific studies. Such studies have concluded that breastfeeding plays a part in establishing
mother-child attachments that are unique to other types of relationships (McNeilly et al. 1983;
Pineda 2011). Oxytocin, a hormone that facilitates labor and milk ejection, was found to be
released not only during suckling but also before suckling in a study conducted by a team from
the University of Edinburgh and the MRC National Institute for Medical Research. Despite a
small sample of research subjects in early postpartum (10 women), the plasma oxytocin
concentrations in all 10 women increased just prior to suckling, stimulated by three particular
activities – the baby crying, restlessness due to the expectation of feeding, and the mother’s
preparation for feeding (McNeilly et al. 1983). Oxytocin is also known to be the “biological
basis of social recognition, trust, love and bonding” (Higashida 2010: 373); it is part of the
“complex mechanism of mother-infant responses associated with the process of direct breastfeeding that perhaps has not been fully realized” (Pineda 2011: 543). Scientists know that
oxytocin plays a physical share in the formation of the mother-child relationship, yet they do not
know the extent since the hormone produces intangible and unquantifiable results. It is akin to a
seed – it is the seed of care from which love grows, a love which cannot be scientifically tested
but is only felt. The Etruscans would not have been familiar with the concept of hormonal
foundations for human emotions as modern technology has facilitated oxytocin research, but
they perhaps witnessed and recognized the special nature of the relationship between mothers
and their children. Since they practiced breastfeeding, as the kourotrophoi demonstrate, they
would likely have been acquainted with some of the same emotions and feelings modern mothers
40
have towards their children. In light of such probable emotions, I would argue that Etruscan
parents would have had a response to the social collective practice of “forgetting” that would
have prevented them from burying their deceased babies within the main burial complex and
precluded memorializing them. This response may have been driven parents to resort to their
own methods of remembrance.
Where, Then, Are All the Infants?
If the Etruscans cared for the livelihood of their infants and attempted to provide them
with good chances of survival, such as praying to the gods and swaddling them, then where can
they have placed them in the event of their death? The proscription of including the young in
main cemeteries, as an assertion at a societal level that these young “failed” lives had to be
forgotten, left little option for the parents for the internment of their babies. It has already been
discussed that the Etruscans removed any material reminders of a deceased infant’s life as a
socially-sanctioned practice, but parental reactions to the deaths of their children must also be
investigated (Garnsey 1991), such as grief and feelings of loss and despair despite infants being
considered unfinished and incomplete beings by society. The Roman Funerary Stele of Lucios
Aulios Melitinos12 (2nd c. CE) from the Vigna Caracciolo (“cemetery of the Campus Veranus”)
in Rome provides a relevant example of parental attachment:
Q(eoi?~j) D(ai&mosin) / L(ouki&w|) A_ili&w| (!) Meliti&nw| / te&knw| glukuta&tw| / fnli~kla
(!) mh&thr kai( Mu& / rwn path_r a&tuke&stat / toi e)po&nhsan (!). E@zhsen / mhsi_n de&ka trisi&n /
12
Exhibited at the Musei Capitolini, Rome; NCE 172
41
h(me&raij e)nne&a. Mh_ / e)noxlh&sh|j tw~| ta&fw| / mh_ toiau~ta pa&qh|j / peri_ te&knwn. Ne sis /
molestus, ne patiarus hoc / et ollas inclusas cave.
For the souls departed. The sorrowful parents Felicula and Myron saw to [the making of
this tomb] for their sweet son Lucios Aulios Melitinos [who] lived 13 months and nine days. Do
not violate [this] tomb and may this not happen in the future with your children. That you do not
molest, nor permit the molestation of this tomb and be careful of the urns that lie [here].13
Felicula and Myron clearly were aggrieved at the death of their infant. The use of the
glukuta&tw| (“sweetest” though translated here as merely “sweet”) and appeals for the safekeeping of the burial illustrate that the parents desired to show care for their son in death as they
presumably did in life and for their son and his burial place to be treated with respect. Etruscan
parents, however, appear not to have been able to commission steles like this for babies dead
before two years as Lucios Aulios Melitinos was fortunate to have.
Becker proposes that the Etruscan infants were afforded separate cemeteries pointing to
the fact that there are known infant cemeteries in Italy, in particular Cazzanello and Poggio
Gramignano (Becker 2004, 2007; Soren 1999). However, both are Late Roman, dating to the 6th
and 7th centuries CE, and thus they do not necessarily reflect Etruscan customs practiced nearly a
thousand years earlier. At Cazzanello, at the site of the abandoned bathhouse, there were only 12
infants, a small sample. Based on Cazzanello being a cemetery near Tarquinia and on the
observation that separate burial for infants continues to the present day in Italian cemeteries
where specific areas are demarcated for both perinatals and foreigners (2007: 290), Becker
13
Translation on the item caption at the museum
42
theorizes that this specific mortuary pattern may have endured from the Etruscan period into the
Roman period. Supporting this idea, Poggio Gramignano in Umbria, has many of its 50 children
buried in amphorae like the individuals under one year buried on the Capitoline Hill during the
Iron Age, thus, there is evidence that age-based differential burial did occur in both the Iron Age
and the Roman Period. Nevertheless, there is no direct evidence for Etruscan infant cemeteries.
Cazzanello may lie in Etruria proper, but it does not date to the Etruscan period.
A stronger hypothesis is that infant burials were placed along the walls or in the vicinity
of domestic structures, evidence of which is found at Roman, Iron Age Italian, Iron Age
European, and Etruscan sites (Becker 2004; Jovino 2010; Karl and Lӧcker 2011). I propose that
burying deceased infants in close proximity to living spaces was a way for grieving parents to
keep their dear children near. In the same way that infants were potentially not considered
“people,” a premature death was possibly also seen as a child being taken too soon, before they
were able to reach their potential. Parents, therefore, may have buried their children close by
because they were not able to “let go” and, furthermore, by keeping them near, they were able to
“remember” them in a discreet fashion, in a manner that was, nevertheless, not allowed for at the
social level. The practice of burying Etruscan infants near the domestic space thus would have
provided a compromise between parental feelings and adherence to cultural beliefs. As Golden
asserts with reference to child burials in the ancient Mediterranean, “The burial of children
within the house, for example, need not be regarded only as a sign that a child is too unimportant
to receive a more elaborate burial. It may also be a form of sympathetic magic, a statement that
the household welcomes children; or a mark of the parents' unwillingness to give up a treasured
child completely” (Golden 1988: 156). Such motivations and emotions may have been involved
in the placement of deceased Etruscan infants by their parents.
43
With this new hypothesis in mind, it is in fact possible to rethink the extant burial data
discussed by Becker and others dating to later periods, as well as to question the assertions made
concerning Etruscan practices. In another interpretation of the Cazzanello perinatal cemetery, the
graves’ location adjacent to two cisterns in the bathhouse might not be an indication of an actual
separate cemetery but instead an example of a community burying their infants within areas of
daily life. Naomi Norman concluded that a general statement could be made regarding Roman
infant burial practices after examining literary commentaries by Pliny, Juvenal, and Fulgentius:
“neonates less than 40 days old are buried in domestic contexts and those under six months are
not buried” (Norman 2002: 310). This generalization is substantiated by archaeological evidence
as “many neonates have been found buried in or around Roman houses and many infants found
in cemeteries are inhumed next to the cremated remains of adults” (ibid.). Scholars of the
Etruscans do not have the benefit of literary sources describing their burial practices. However,
by looking at the placement of infants at Etruscan sites, a pattern emerges.
At Poggio Civitate, fragmentary infant remains were discovered in the vicinity of and
among the debris of the site’s industrial area, as mentioned earlier. The placement of burials near
industrial space is not unusual as, similarly, on the Capitoline Hill, the remains of children were
excavated around metal-working, weaving, cooking, and storage spaces. In 2009, a right ilium
was excavated from Locus 5, which mainly consisted of a stratum associated with the demolition
of the Orientalizing Complex Building 2, also known as the OC2/Workshop (Tuck in press).14 In
1983, within a few centimeters of the workshop’s floor, a distal left humerus and a proximal
right ulna were found (ibid.). Upon osteological analysis of these particular bones, all were
determined to be from neonates, defined in the study as less than 40 weeks old (ibid.). From
2007 to 2009, large quantities of material associated with manufacturing were uncovered in the
14
th
Dated to the second quarter of the 7 c. BCE
44
area immediately north of the OC2/Workshop. All of these human bones were recovered in areas
with high concentrations of animal bones, leading Tuck to suppose that these remains were
discarded in a similar fashion as the animal bones: “Troubling though it may be to modern
sensibilities, it seems probable that a rigidly hierarchical social system at Poggio Civitate is
reflected in the discarding of this infant’s remains” (in press). He argues that Poggio Civitate was
controlled by a socially elite class, thereby concluding that these infant remains were the remains
of individuals from the lower classes. The hierarchy Tuck mentions is suggested by the
Orientalizing Complex Building 1, or OC1/Residence, which is thought to be the home of a
ruling or aristocratic family due to its relative opulence – namely, its size and akroteria – an
opulence shared by the design of the other Orientalizing Period structures. Furthermore, the
Orientalizing Complex Building 3, or OC3/Tripartite Building, features a series of four terracotta
revetment plaques – a banquet, a procession, a horse race, and an assembly. These reliefs are
notable for the prominence of two main figures, a male and a female, which intimates that the
site of Poggio Civitate was the residence of a powerful couple or family (Rathje 2007: 177).
There are other interpretations including understanding the site as neutral ground for political
activity of the Etruscan League or as a sanctuary, an opinion based on the ritualized destruction
of the Archaic Period structures15 (Turfa and Steinmayer 2002; Wallace 2008).
Despite having been found in the same context as the animal bones, the infant remains
are not the result of “being thrown out with the bathwater.” Instead, I argue that their association
is circumstantial. The Orientalizing Complex16 was destroyed by a fire in the late 7th to early 6th
c. BCE. Afterward, structures were built during the Archaic Period. These events are occasions
of great soil disturbance, hence the remains likely mixed with the animal bones, especially
15
16
th
6 c. BCE
th
Ceramics from the floors of the buildings date them to the second quarter of the 7 c. BCE
45
during the construction of the later buildings. The forelimb fragments show evidence of postdeposition or postmortem fracture – they have complete transverse fractures in the middle of
their shafts (Tuck in press). The volume of animal remains point to the area north of the
Orientalizing Complex Building 2, or OC2/Workshop, as an animal butchering and processing
center. I would argue that the infants may have been buried in this area prior to its use for animal
butchering. Diagenic processes would have subsequently disturbed the infant remains. It has
already been discussed that the practice of burying children near industrial places was wellestablished by this time. Due to the Etruscan custom of “forgetting” infants, there would not
have been any physical markers to delineate this site as an infant burial place, therefore the site
was likely, and perhaps unknowingly, re-used for practical purposes.
Meanwhile, at Tarquinia, the Tarquinians were burying their children within the cityproper. Tarquinia is famous for its necropoleis, thus to have individuals buried within the ancient
city limits is unusual. Maria Bonghi Jovino’s excavations yielded several neonates and subadults that predate the 7thc. BCE (Jovino 2010). One of these sub-adults, buried in Area Alpha,
was a male sub-adult approximately eight years old whose feet were buried underneath the walls
of the Orientalizing Monumental Complex (Jovino 2010: 114).
Walls appear to have been of some significance to the Etruscans in addition to other Iron
Age civilizations. During excavations in the Ramsautal on the Dürrnberg bei Hallein in 1988,
infant skeletons were found exclusively in the context of building features and were oriented
along the walls and fences (Karl and Löcker 2011: 38). They were located:
A) In the entrance areas
B) Along the building axes
C) Below the floor levels
46
D) Between house and drainage ditches
E) Within the drainage ditches
Indeed, at Cazzanello, infant remains likewise were oriented along the walls of the bathhouse
(Becker 2004: 290). The choice of place and orientation can aid in imagining how Etruscans saw
the infant body. This will become clearer upon first considering Naomi Norman’s re-assessment
of the positions of infant remains within Roman settlement spaces as being indicative of their
perceived socio-symbolic role. In Roman Carthage at the Yasmina Cemetery,17 children were
segregated into the center of the excavation site, surrounding earlier 2nd c. CE funerary
monuments, the most impressive of which is the Tertullus monument. They were inhumed – in
sandstone cists, in cobble-lined graves, and in amphorae – around this monument that appears to
have served as the keystone about which they were clustered. Norman makes a parallel to
Roman Britain by citing Eleanor Scott’s observation of increasing infant burials in villas in the
4th c. BCE (Eleanor Scott in Norman 2002: 307). As they were interred within the agricultural
processing sections of the villas, Scott suggests that they were buried there as a response to
economic and cultural stresses of the time and that infants may have formed a link between
death, fertility, and agricultural activity (ibid.). Norman concludes then that the Tertullus
monument may have served as a “fulcrum of memory” (ibid.).
The Iron Age and specifically the Etruscan association of infant remains with walls
immediately brings to mind the liminal status of these young. On the one hand, this can be
appreciated in terms of how infants may not have been viewed as having reached personhood (as
discussed above). On the other, walls were important to facilitate parental remembrance.
Etruscan Infants were in a state of limbo between being human and potentially not being
considered people. In this light, the wall-infant relationship would be a metaphor for the infants
17
th
Dated to the 5 c. CE, perhaps later (Norman 2002: 305)
47
being at the cusp of entrance into personhood but failing to pass over that threshold. Moreover,
infants did not seemingly have the rights afforded to “people” such as the right to being interred
within the main cemetery and being memorialized at death. I argue that their liminality initiated
the practice in which they were buried in the vicinity of living spaces. Etruscan parents could not
bury their infants with the rest of the population, therefore they were compelled to resort to
alternative places of burial and alternative approaches to remember their dead infants. Their
solution, I believe, was to bury them near the areas of daily activity as a way of keeping their
memory alive as if they were still living while observing the societal mandate not to formally
memorialize or remember these young dead. Following Eleanor Scott’s train of thought, when
one problematizes the domestic context in which infants were buried, this may represent the part
infants play as the conductors of the present and the future, in the sense that infants have the
responsibility of carrying the weight of the family line and the existence of their community’s
culture on their little shoulders. Also, they were both part of the family and yet not. Death
removed their social significance. However, death likely did not remove the affection parents
had for their young children. Just as the Tertullus monument, and by the same extension,
epitaphs, were fulcra of memory, walls served as physical bearers of memory. Walls facilitated
interaction between parent and child after death. They were tangible reminders of these
individuals’ prior existence and extant presence, thereby communicating that they were liminal
figures worthy of being remembered.
48
Figure 13. Infant burial area of the 6th-7th c. CE located within the abandoned bathhouse at Cazzanello
(Becker 2007: 290)
Figure 14. Schematic drawing of locations of possible children’s burials within the urban area of ancient
Tarquinia (Becker 2007: 289)
49
Figure 15. Infant skeletons in contexts of houses 5a and 5c from the Ramsautal excavations (Karl and
Löcker 2011: 39)
50
Figure 16. Infant skeletons in the contexts of houses 3b and 3f from the Ramsautal excavations (Karl and
Löcker 2011:40)
51
Conclusion
The Etruscans were not a people that held their infants in disregard. Despite living in a
time when death took the lives of 30 to 50% of the babies born, they took pains to increase the
survivability of their newborns, including swaddling and making offerings to their gods. The
continuation of familial lines and social customs depended on their existence as future childbearers and citizens, especially the females. Females, and their health, were essential to ensure
that these children, who would eventually hold and later transmit the knowledge of social
practices and ideology, lived. Their great perceived value is reflected in their elaborate and richly
adorned burials, which are a testament to the high regard society held them in and their important
role in child-rearing. As a result of the care and the energy expended to produce a healthy infant,
the death of that infant would have spelled tragedy, a tragedy significant enough to warrant
intentional societal forgetting. Thus, infants were purposely excluded from cemeteries in order to
remove the memory of their existence.
The study of the absence of these Etruscan infants has only been cursorily touched upon
(Becker 2007; Tuck in press). Surprisingly, so far Etruscan studies lack an in-depth investigation
as to why this pattern exists and what it illuminates about the Etruscan civilization. A plethora of
information can be gleaned through the study of the social treatment of infants in death, which is
important to diagnose their social perception in life. The Etruscan practice of differential burial
and the positioning of infants in the domestic space and along walls reveal a tension on the social
and the familial scales. On the one hand, Etruscan society prescribed infant segregation and
exclusion due to the notion that infants have not only failed to reach personhood but also that
their deaths represented disappointment and a break in the social ideal in that they were not
strong enough to survive despite divine aid. On the other hand, societal forgetting does not
52
necessarily translate to parental forgetting. Parent-child relationships are unique, as ancient
literature and modern studies attest, therefore Etruscan parents adopted other methods to
memorialize their young in spite of social mandates regulating otherwise.
The widespread nature of age-based differential burial across regions in Iron Age Italy
necessitates an exploration into its roots and an examination of the possible cross-cultural belief
systems regarding social identity and practices of enculturation. The same can be said of the
child-wall relationship, which is a distinctive phenomenon that enters the realm of memory
studies and the anthropology of death and dying. This research would benefit from further
archaeological excavations in Etruscan and Etruscan-era sites in order to determine the extent of
the burial pattern and if it was common across all of Etruria. Currently, only the major sites have
been excavated and published. An investigation of smaller towns would be helpful to ascertain if
there was a difference between “urban” and “rural” treatment of infants. Admittedly, there are
logistical issues in this endeavor. The Romans entirely subsumed the Etruscans by the 3rd to 2nd
centuries BCE, turning Etruscan towns and cities into Roman municipalities and building upon
existing structures in the process. Compounding the problem is the presence of medieval and
modern edifices on top of the Roman period construction. It would not only be impractical but
also impossible to try to excavate down to the Etruscan strata at these sites. Nevertheless, there
are only a few of these places. New information would likely be achieved from more excavation
projects in the Italian hills and more archaeologists asking provocative questions about the
Etruscans, who often bask in the shadows of ancient Rome and Greece.
53
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