The Volterran Dead-wagon

One wagon-type seen in Volterra might be interesting to the research of roman travel-wagons.

As mentioned in the latest post some Etruscan ash-urns in Volterra has a certain type of wagon in their “front-scene”, a scene showing transportation into death.

The type of wagon on these urns is a covered wagon, Carpentum, (see photo right) in which the dead person is lying down, and it is most often shown with a cross on the wagon-side (only in one case is the wagon-side covered with what looks like a fish-scale-decoration). The fact that this wagon has something to do with the death-cult or ritual, is guarantied in the use of the wagon as decoration on ash-urns and since the wagon-type is (to my knowledge) only to be found in and around the Etruscan city of Volterra, we might deal with some kind of local ritual or at least wagon-type in the carvings found here.

The wagon-type, as it is seen on the Volterran ash-urns, is nowhere-else to be found in the Etruscan or Centraleuropean area on carvings, but in the “Kunsthistorisches Museum” in Vienna, Austria, an interesting ceramic-wagon is exhibited (see photo right). This wagon has the same characteristics as the Volterran carvings, but the cross on wagon-side is not to be seen in this model, which is why it might be difficult to conclude anything on the meaning and spread of this cross-ornament, if we only look at wagons of the exact same type as the ones in Volterra. Other wagons must be taken into discussion.

Here an interesting carving showing a type of cross-ornament on the wagon-side is one of the most famous carvings dealing with roman wagon-transportation; the carving from Maria-Saal, Austria, showing a roman travel-wagon (see photo left). This carving is used as an example of the roman travel-wagon and it is used in reconstructing models of this wagon-type, e.g. the heavy wagon on display in Cologne.

Whether the cross on this last wagon has anything to do with the ones from Volterra is not likely, but I do find it interesting that this particular ornament is deliberately showed on wagon-carvings from the later Etruscan period and the roman imperial times, and both representing some kind of death-transportation.

 

Transportation-Carvings - Etruscan Wagon Types

Not only roman sarcophagi has carvings on their front-side showing wagons.. this tradition is much older.

In the post on “ships and carvings” i launched some photos from the archaeological museum in Volterra, Tuscany, showing some ash-urns with ship-scenes on the side. Some of these scenes are made in the “same” mythical tradition as later the roman sarcophagi are, and therefore this kind of transportation-scenes might be of the kind showing the dead persons transport into afterlife.

Transportation-scenes on the Etruscan sarcophagi is not only represented in carvings concerned  with ships and sailing, but also in scenes showing the dead-transport in a wagon. In the Etruscan carvings, especially two types of wagon are seen; a two-wheeled triumphant-like wagon (see photo above) and a covered wagon, looking a bit like a house-wagon (see photo right). 

Of the first kind more examples are known since it is a standard motive in Etruscan and later in Roman art. The main person is transported on the wagon in a procession-like scene. Two sarcophagi, one from Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen (above) and one from the Vatican museum (see photo below) are here set to represent this theme.

The second type of wagon is, as mentioned above, more like a house-wagon, where the travellers are (often) seen lying in the wagon. This particular wagon was put on the ash-urns in Volterra, Tuscany, and so far I haven’t found it anywhere else in Etruria. In my next post I will try to deal some more with this; the Volterran Dead-Wagon.

 

Ships and Carvings - combined methods?

Working with roman wagons, especially as they are seen in carvings, it is necessary to get an idea of how far this material works. Therefore I have chosen two different angles in which to work with roman carvings; one concentrating on ships and how they are seen in the iconographic material, and one concentrating on everyday-life-scenes in provincial roman carvings from the Rhine-Danube borders of the roman empire. The first one is treated here.

Much literature on ancient ships is available in most countries, but what about the iconographic material on ships? I know of only one article dealing with this problem of research (see “Höckmann” in bibliography).

Höckmann is looking at carvings and paintings of ships in an Etruscan and pre-Etruscan context and comparing them to what little is known of real ship-parts most often found around the Tyrrhenian Sea. Where focus in his early chapters are on vase-paintings and small-scale models of Etruscan ships, it moves, for the 4th century BC, to concentrate on carvings and especially on the ones found on the ash-urns from Volterra, Tuscany (see photo right). After a discussion of the iconographic material, where he propose the Etruscans as being the inventors of the ship-Ram (la. Rostra) he ends up concluding that the pictures shown in the early periods are good evidence of Etruscan ship-construction, whereas the carvings on the Volterra Urns, which again often show scenes with mythical themes (see photo below), not are to be taken as evidence for the Etruscan fleet of the 4th or 3rd centuries BC.

This leads to the questions: For what use are articles on the iconography of ships, then? .. and is it actually possible to transfer these working methods into wagon-research?

So far, I am (unfortunately) no longer sure! Höckmann proved in the article that the ancient painter and stone-mason actually was interested in the details of ships in their work, even though they did “misplace” some details in the later carvings. Therefor I do think it is worth working with an idea giving the ancient artist some credit for (and interest in) the details reproduced in the carvings found in Rome as well as in the more provincial areas. 

 

Transportation-Carvings - Desert edition

So far, the series of transportation-carvings has concentrated on wagon and water transport, with a small view to transportation in mountainous areas, but an other field of interest also regarding the Roman period, has so far not been mentioned; the Desert. Large areas of the southern and eastern parts of the Roman Empire was desert-land, which required extraordinary skills to survive and even more to deal with transportation.

The old Egyptians used wagon-transportation, but since the sandy ground is not well fit for heavy wagons, it is difficult to believe that their use of wheeled transportation went beyond the chariots used in war. In stead of wagons, camels were (are) used for transporting goods in this dry climate, and more roman carvings actually show pictures of this peculiar kind of transportation.

One carving in the Capitoline museum (see photo right) show the camel with a saddle and in front of it the owner pulling a rope. This carving has no inscription or modern sign saying what it is or where it come from, but the idea that it might stem from a monument dealing with trade or a tradesman in the desert-region is supported by another carving, this time in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. This carving also show the camel and the owner, but here the camel is showed in the background and focus is on the man.

This latter carving (see photo right) is more easily recognised in type, since it is carved in a style known from the Roman province of Syria, which again, especially, is widespread in the area around Palmyra. Roman Palmyra was for many years one of the most important cities in the Roman east and it got rich due to its location as desert trade-station on the silk-road. Therefor a lot of tradesmen lived here and took care of the difficult and dangerous transport of goods through the desert, and when they died, they where buried in different types of tombs/monuments. The type of carving shown here is often seen as a portrait of the buried person in the tomb of which the carving stem, and carvings of this type are exhibited in more museums around Europe. In this example we have a representation of a man and his work, which can be compared to the carvings from the northern provinces showing the “daily-life”-scenes, and therefor this, along with the carving from the Capitoline Museum, can be categorized as Transportation-Carvings.

Nowadays researchers has successfully tried to find some of the old/Roman Caravan-routes in north Africa, and one of these field-projects is based at the University of Bergen, Norway. For more info please check: www.hist.uib.no/ and click “Antikksider” under the “links”-menu.

 

Transportation-Carvings - the 20th century

The tradition of letting pictures “tell the story” has been practised ever since ancient times. e.g. in churches. An interesting, to the subject here, ”modern” picture is seen on the Vittorio Emanuele Monument in Rome, the big white monument on the northern slope of the Capitoline Hill.

About halfway up, the monument has a platform with a statue and on the statue-base a large carving with “instruments of war” is placed. On one side of the base the carving shows a very detailed four-wheeled wagon for transporting goods. This wagon show details of the traction system and many construction-details, which is very interesting, since here we have an evidence showing how the wagon was constructed in the beginning of the 20th century.

The details are pretty clear on the carving on this monument build in 1911, and since the workmen here were able to make details in their carving, then why not the Romans, too? It is not possible for us to know what the ancient stone masons used as measurement in their carvings, but once in a while we do find details, perhaps not as clear as the ones on the Vittorio Emanuele Monument, but still clear enough to conclude that these carvings where not all made as “free-hand-carvings”.

 

Transportation-Carvings - Water Transportation

As in the case with the wagons, carvings on water transport are found in various kinds of roman art and spread all over the roman empire. In the “Land Transportation II”-post I ended up showing a scene from the Column of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, where land and water transportation is joined together, here in a pontoon-bridge. Therefor this post starts with the same type of “joined scene”, also from the Column of M. Aurelius, but this time a boat is transported on a wagon over land (see photo right). The scene is some kind of victory-scene, where trophies are gathered and carried in a boat, and therefor it is not really a scene showing water-transportation.

Scenes of real water-transport are visible in the roman art and carvings, though. In Rome some sarcophagi show scenes of ships, both on full sail and in harbour-areas, and some of these even show some nice details in ship-construction. Here, a good example on that type is a sarcophagus in Copenhagen (see photo right) showing three different ships on the front.

In the provinces ships are also seen in the burial-art, e.g. in the Trier-Moselle-region. The large monument in Igel, show scenes which refer to river-transport (see drawing right), since they clearly show small ships without mast or sail and some men pulling the ships up-stream. The Igel-monument is close to the river Moselle, and the carvings are therefor likely to show scenes from the roman transport on the rivers in Gaul. From another burial-monument by Trier are some sculptures of ships with wine-barrels (see photo left). These are reconstructed as having been some kind of top-figures on the monument, but now the ships are on display individually in the Trier Landesmuseum. These ships are made as sculpture in the round, but I think they are relevant to put in this context as yet another type of Transportation-Carvings.

 

Transportation-Carvings - Land Transportation II

Since I am working with roman wagons it comes natural to me, to place land-transportation on an equal footing with transport on wagons. There are other means of land-transportation, though, and they are visible in the roman carvings, too.

Especially two kinds of transport pop into mind as alternatives to wagon-transport; walking and transporting on a pack-animal, often a donkey or a mule. On the latter a scene on a burial-monument in Igel by Trier, Germany, illustrates it quite well (see drawing). Here, a man and his animal are seen (twice) crossing a mountain area, which is one of the great advantages in this type of transport, since not all wagons can cross these areas and those who can will need some kind of road.

The other kind of land-transportation is best exemplified in carvings showing transportation of troops. The roman army had a need for transporting large amounts of soldiers very fast between various places in the empire, which again might be one of the main reasons for the road-network. These troops where walking and carrying all their goods, I believe some 25-30 kg each, themselves. Scenes where troops are seen walking together, are especially common on the larger monuments in Rome, where the two columns telling the stories about the Dacian Wars of Emperor Trajan (98-117) and Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180) wars against some Germanic tribes, probably the Marcomanes, carry more scenes of different aspects of war. One scene in particular is interesting here since it combines land- and water-transportation (see photo right). It is from the column of Marcus Aurelius and show the soldiers crossing a bridge made of boats, a pontoon-bridge. It was necessary for the army to cross the Danube, and therefor the roman engineers made a “floating” bridge during the night.

 

Transportation-Carvings - Land Transportation

Actually, these more thorough posts were intended earlier than the discussion on the Suspension-system in November, and they were thought as an introduction to the carved material found in the northern roman provinces and in Rome herself.

In Rome some of the most prominent buildings show wagons in more scenes, e.g. The Column of Marcus Aurelius on the Piazza Colonna, and the Arch of Septimius Severus (photo right) in the Forum Romanum, but wagons are also represented on sarcophagi, in both mythical and “every-day-life”-scenes.

These are all nice carvings contributing in different contexts, but my personal field of interest is on the carvings from the northern roman provinces, especially from Pannonia (around modern Hungary) and Gallia Belgica (around Germany and Belgium). Most of these stem from burial monuments of some kind, but we do not know that many details about most of the monuments. In Arlon, Belgium, a lot of carvings were found build into a fortifying wall from the end of the third century AD, without any traces of origin or inscription to let us know more about the story of the carvings.

In the roman province of Pannonia, according to the National museum in Budapest, there was a “pre-roman” tradition saying, that dead people was transported into death on a wagon, which is why many tombstones/stelai show a carved wagon along with the grave inscription. Often the type of wagon used is the four-wheeled transport-wagon, as seen on the photo left, but in a few cases, where supposedly dealing with more wealthy persons, the two-wheeled wagon-type, as seen on the photo right, is used. This latter wagon-type is also seen on some city-roman sarcophagi, in a bit different output, though. Here the type is called “Sessel-wagen” in German, but I have not been able to find neither the English nor Latin word for the wagon-type yet. The Latin name would be crucial, though, if one were to make a full typology of the roman wagon types.

 

Types in Roman “Transportation”-Carvings - Intro

A roman carving is not only a marble-plate with a few cut-marks, it is a piece of art designed to play a part in a given context, which means the motive shown on a carving (most often) deliberately is put there to “tell a story”. In triumphal art scenes with triumphal processions and captured enemies and goods (trophies) is showed, and burial art can have carvings showing mythical scenes, often with dying or sleeping persons, or they can show scenes from the life of the buried person. 

In most kinds of roman art, transportation-carvings (scenes with some kind of transportation) are represented, and they are therefor treated as one group here. The group has two parts, each concentrating on land-transport and water-transport, which will be treated separately. In the case of land-transportation more carvings from the roman empire, mostly from the burial art though, are taken into discussion, and the same goes more or less for the water-part.

In both parts more types of vehicles are shown, to prove that any picture given on a marble-plate not necessarily is some kind of “standard” carving.

 

The Roman Suspension System - an other angle

In my post on the suspension system I was most concerned with what I see as evidence for the system - especially from the iconography. In this post I will introduce another carving, which, to my knowledge, haven’t been used in the discussion on roman wagon-construction.

The carving, as seen here on the left, is a small carving originally from Rome, but now in the Swedish nationalmuseum in Stockholm. It shows two persons driving a four-wheeled wagon in a city-area. Besides details of the buildings in the background and the traffic in the street, the carving has some interesting details on the wagon itself. Underneath the wagon, what might be two construction-details are visible: the axle between the rear wheels and an interesting part (detail on photo below) bending upwards, close to the front wheel, from underneath the wagon. The last wagon-part might be the wooden part of the suspension system, shown without the Gurthalter or ropes, but in the right place and angle according to the reconstructions made of roman wagons.

Naturally a wagon this side would need more than one “wooden arm” to give the needed suspension, but this detail could indicate, that the carving is dealing with (rich?) people in an above average wagon. At least it is safe to state that the roman stone-worker, in this case, was concerned with details.

If the detail we see in this carving really is a part of the suspension system, we can add yet another carving to the iconographic material showing the Roman Suspension System, only this time - it is seen from an other angle..