Etruscan Burials: Tombs, Cremations and Necropolises | Early European History And Religion

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ETRUSCAN CREMATIONS AND BURIALS

Tomb of the Leopards

Etruscans practiced cremation and inhumation (burying the dead). For cremations, the Etruscans placed the ashes of the dead in jars with smaller vases and ornaments and buried them in pits; or for the wealthy, tomb-chambers were built and arranged to resemble rooms in the houses of the living, the cinerary urns being set in niches, or the bodies being laid out on biers. Their urns in the earlier periods were frequently made in a very rude imitation of a human being with portrait head, and were often placed in terracotta chairs. Curious trays of dishes, probably used for offerings to the dead and known as “focolari,” are not uncommonly found in tombs. In later times rectangular stone boxes, sculptured or painted, with a reclining figure of the deceased on the cover, were used. l. [Source: “The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans”, Helen McClees Ph.D, Gilliss Press, 1924]

The earliest inhabitants of Italy did not practise cremation. The custom was introduced in prehistoric times, with both cremation and burial use contemporaneously. A bronze chariot and the utensils were found with tomb furniture in the tomb of an Etruscan noble. A beautiful bronze table service and a table service of black-glazed pottery were also found in tombs. Toilet articles and utensils were buried in the grave of an Etruscan lady. Terracotta figurines were made to be placed in graves.

The funeral pyres were often placed near the tomb and offerings and possessions of the dead were often burned along with the body. The remains were placed in terra cotta jars and pots or decorated alabaster and terra cotta chests with effigies or reliefs on the top. These were placed in cylindrical well tombs dug in the rock or earth. A variety of food stuffs and grave goods were buried with the dead. An urn with cremation remains of women found in a tomb in Chiusi is topped by a head and has arms coming out of the handles.

Early inhumations have been found in plain wood sarcophagi in shallow trench graves. Later ones, starting around the 7th century B.C., were placed in more elaborate sarcophagi made from a variety of materials. These were placed in chamber tombs, both above ground and below ground, with a variety of food stuffs and grave goods. Often the dead were placed on special funerary beds, which could be both real beds with pillows or fake ones carved of stone.

Etruscan Tombs

Some Etruscan tombs are entirely underground. Some are half above ground and are built up with masonry. Many are covered under conical mounds. Some of these are very complex, with false doors and pseudo-vaulted roofs held up by single pillars. A few have been found cut into cliff faces. The tomb art deals mostly with pleasant scenes: parties, dances, games, hunts.

Funerary home at Populonia

Some 6,000 Etruscan tombs have been found in the Tarquinia region. Many of them have stairwells covered by tile roof structures. The Etruscan put much care into their tombs which were carved often out of solid stone. The tombs were like the inside of a normal house. About 200 of the tombs that have been excavated contain colorful painted walls and vaults. Mnay of the tombs have been ravaged by looters.

A fourth-century B.C. Etruscan burial in Aleria, on Corsica has stairs descending to a long corridor and a hypogeum — a rock-cut underground burial chamber normally reserved for high-status individuals. According to Archaeology magazine: “Sealed shut by clay, rocks, charcoal, and pieces of pottery, the intact tomb contained a skeleton surrounded by collapsed ceremonial furniture, a mirror, and various drinking vessels. “This discovery allows us to understand the internal arrangement of the burial,” says Catherine Rigeade, an archaeologist with France’s National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP). More than 100 tombs of this type were excavated in the 1970s and 1980s at Casabianda, another Etruscan cemetery just to the south. [Source: Benjamin Leonard, Archaeology magazine, July-August 2019]

King and Queen's Tomb of Tarquinia

In 2007, a team from the University of Turin began excavating the largest tomb in Tarquinia. Known as the Queen’s Tomb, it is 40 meters in diameter and is similar to another monumental tomb, 200 meters away: The King’s Tomb. The entrance of the Queen’s Tomb faces west-northwest , where according to to Etruscan religion , the gods of the underworld live. The staircase descends about 20 feet into an almost six -square-meter room. Made of large limestone blocks. Some of the wlls were plasters with a special kind of crystal-filled gypsum imported from Cyprus. There are trace sof paint thought to have be from a painting of a duck, which the Etruscans believed guided the dead to the afterlife. One unusual feature of the Queen’s tomb is an extra room which is believed to have been used in rituals, sacrifices and making offerings to the dead. In nearby tombs archeologist found some stone beds and broken cups from which wine was consumed.

Cervterie, which embraces hundreds of acres of Banditaccai tombs, is the most impressive Etruscan necropolis discovered so far. At the mains are several circular tombs that a topped by piles of earth. Flanking these are several terraces of flat box-shaped tombs that are covered with bushes and trees. Most of the tombs have entrances.

In the Tomb of the Reliefs a model has been set up that depicts what the home of the a typical Etruscan dead person looks like. Hanging from carved rectangular pillars are axes, urns and knives. Around the burial chambers are carvings of three-headed dogs and hunters.

Etruscan Necropolises of Cerveteri and Tarquini

According to UNESCO: “These two large Etruscan cemeteries reflect different types of burial practices from the 9th to the 1st century B.C., and bear witness to the achievements of Etruscan culture. Which over nine centuries developed the earliest urban civilization in the northern Mediterranean. [Source: UNESCO World Heritage Site website =]

Etruscan tomb painting

Some of the tombs are monumental, cut in rock and topped by impressive tumuli (burial mounds). Many feature carvings on their walls, others have wall paintings of outstanding quality. The necropolis near Cerveteri, known as Banditaccia, contains thousands of tombs organized in a city-like plan, with streets, small squares and neighbourhoods. The site contains very different types of tombs: trenches cut in rock; tumuli; and some, also carved in rock, in the shape of huts or houses with a wealth of structural details. These provide the only surviving evidence of Etruscan residential architecture. The necropolis of Tarquinia, also known as Monterozzi, contains 6,000 graves cut in the rock. It is famous for its 200 painted tombs, the earliest of which date from the 7th century B.C.

Why the site is important: 1) The necropolises of Tarquinia and Cerveteri are masterpieces of creative genius: Tarquinia's large-scale wall paintings are exceptional both for their formal qualities and for their content, which reveal aspects of life, death, and religious beliefs of the ancient Etruscans. Cerveteri shows in a funerary context the same town planning and architectural schemes used in an ancient city. 2) The two necropolises constitute a unique and exceptional testimony to the ancient Etruscan civilisation, the only urban type of civilisation in pre-Roman Italy. Moreover, the depiction of daily life in the frescoed tombs, many of which are replicas of Etruscan houses, is a unique testimony to this vanished culture. 3) Many of the tombs of Tarquinia and Cerveteri represent types of buildings which no longer exist in any other form. The cemeteries, replicas of Etruscan town planning schemes, are some of the earliest existing in the region.:

Necropolis of the Pub in Vulci

In the early 2010s, Italian archaeologists excavated a large Etruscan necropolis at the site of Vulci, 120 kilometers (75 miles) northwest of Rome and 25 miles west of Viterbo, called, for reasons now unknown, the “Necropoli dell’Osteria,” or "Necropolis of the Pub." The team uncovered dozens of other tombs containing remains and grave goods belonging to Etruscan nobles and common folk alike who lived in this region of Italy more than 2,500 years ago. [Source: Marco Merola, Archaeology magazine, July-August 2014]

Marco Merola wrote in Archaeology magazine: “In the nineteenth century, the ancient tombs of Vulci were a stop on travelers’ Grand Tour of Europe. Since the late eighteenth century, when the first official excavations were undertaken on the orders of Cardinal Guglielmo Pallotta, numerous burials, ranging from the simple to the spectacular, had been found in the area. In the the “Necropolis of the Pub,” travelers encountered impressively built and richly decorated burials dating from the seventh to fourth centuries B.C. belonging to the Etruscan culture that had once inhabited the region. Some of the tombs had evocative names given to them in contemporary times in order to attract more visitors. There was the Tomb of the Sun and the Moon, the Tomb of the Inlaid Ceiling, and the Tomb of the Panathenaica, named after the sacred athletic and literary games held every four years in Athens to celebrate the goddess Athena.

Despite their popularity 150 years ago, however, the tombs were abandoned as a tourist destination and, ultimately, lost. “The Tomb of the Sun and the Moon was the most important funerary complex in the area, and we know the area was open for visitors until the middle of the nineteenth century,” says archaeologist Carlo Casi, who manages the Vulci archaeological park on behalf of the local archaeological superintendency of Etruria Meridionale. “But since then it has literally been swallowed up by nature.”

In 2011, Casi and his team set out to rediscover the Tomb of the Sun and the Moon using topographic maps of the area, some of which were drawn in the nineteenth century. “Unfortunately, we weren’t able to find the tomb again, probably because the people who drew the maps of the area made some errors in locating it,” says Casi. But as is often the case in archaeology, although they began looking for one thing, Casi and his team found something else entirely: more than twenty small graves and tombs and two larger funerary complexes, the most spectacular of which, both in contents and in name — the Tomb of the Silver Hands — rivals anything found previously at the site.

Etruscan burial stone

Tomb of the Silver Hands

The "Necropolis of the Pub" most spectacular burial has been been dubbed "The Tomb of the Silver Hands," after the discovery of a pair of a finely-made silver hands that had been placed on a type of wooden funerary dummy. In Chamber B, examples of a distinctively Etruscan fine pottery called bucchero was found. [Source: Marco Merola, Archaeology magazine, July-August 2014]

Marco Merola wrote in Archaeology magazine: “On a wintry day in 2012, Casi and his team were digging a 30-foot-long corridor. Eventually their excavations led them straight into a large tomb with three separate chambers. Based on its size and its location within the necropolis, which is known to contain other rich Etruscan burials, they believed the tomb must have belonged to a noble Etruscan family. One room on the right side of the corridor, which they called Chamber C, was completely empty, having been, like so many Etruscan tombs, ransacked by looters either in antiquity or more recently. But the other two rooms, Chamber A in the center and Chamber B on the left, were full of artifacts: large storage jars called pithoi, cups, and examples of bucchero, a distinctive, shiny black type of pottery made by the Etruscans beginning in the seventh century B.C. In Chamber B, Casi’s team also uncovered the remains of a chariot including at least one wheel, and hundreds of small pieces of bronze that once were part of the vehicle, and its trappings and harnesses. These are now being painstakingly pieced together. [Source: Marco Merola, Archaeology magazine, July-August 2014]

“While excavating Chamber A, Casi noticed something unusual lying on the ground among a variety of artifacts — two well-preserved silver hands with traces of gold on the fingers and gold-plated fingernails. “I knew immediately that these hands had once been part of a sphyrelaton, a kind of wooden funerary dummy that represented the dead and guarded his or her soul after the body had been cremated,” says Casi. Most often the dummy represented a warrior or a nobleman, but in this case the figure was probably a woman. Casi thinks this may demonstrate that the Etruscans granted equal status to high-ranking members of society regardless of gender. Near the hands on the ground, the archaeologists also recovered some purple threads that they believe were used to tie gold studs to a brightly colored garment that once clothed the dummy. They also found iron and bronze fibulae, little gold balls, pieces of faience, and amber and bone beads that likely were once part of several very fancy necklaces.

“When Casi and his team completed excavation in 2013, they took the artifacts from the tomb to a restoration and conservation laboratory in Montalto di Castro, near Vulci. There conservators cleaned and restored the iron, bronze, and gold jewelry, horse trappings, pieces of the chariot, and, of course, the silver hands. According to Teresa Carta, who is in charge of the lab, the silver hands are a “unique find.” Although other examples of funerary dummies’ hands have been discovered in Vulci, and in the town of Pescia Romana near Viterbo, “these were rough and made of bronze, never anything as refined as these,” Carta says.

Last Meal Found in 2,500-Year-Old Etruscan Tomb

In April, 2023, archaeologists announced the discovery of a 2,500-year-old Etruscan tomb with a rare last meal still inside. The tomb was discovered about 105 kilometers (70 miles) northwest of Rome. The necropolis was enclosed by large stone slabs and had been undisturbed since its construction in 6th century B.C., according to GreenMe, an Italian news site. It is believed to have belonged to a woman based on the presence of a weaving tool and a piece of pottery, according to the park. [Source: Brendan Rascius, Miami Herald, April 11, 2023].

Upon excavating the ancient tomb, archaeologists found pottery and a brazier. The Miami Herald reported: Coals and a spit were found inside of a bronze brazier, a cooking pan, TGR reported. The utensils would have been used to make meat skewers. Animal remains previously discovered in an Etruscan tomb were considered to be associated with a funerary ritual offering known as “food of the dead,” according to a study published in 2013 in the French journal Anthropozoologica.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated October 2024