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.

 

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 Etruscan Wagon in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

Troels Myrup (at iconoclasm) had, Sunday, a post on the ongoing investigation of “stolen” artefacts from Italy, asking if the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is standing next in line. One of the artifacts in question is the newly re-exhibited Etruscan wagon from a Sabine-village.

The wagon, as seen in the exhibition “Middelhavshorisonten” (here on the left), is some kind of a “ritual-wagon”, but only metal-fittings from the wagon are now to be seen, along with other artifacts from the grave, in the large exhibition case. As seen on the photo, the wagon is reconstructed in a glass/metal-like material with most of the original iron-parts placed on the floor. The exhibition of this wagon is a job done in co-operation with the Italian archaeological authorities and the local museum from the Sabine-area, with whom the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek have had a good collaboration since the 1970’s.

It is nice to see so much energy and attention put into this, in danish collections, unique wagon, but I think the exhibition is missing a model of this wagon, in which non-preserved parts (of wood) should be reconstructed as good as possible. This wagon does not look like most preserved wagons and chariots from the Etruscan area, which is why, I think, it is important to “bring the wagon to life” and show the museum-guests the meaning and function of this wagon, before it was stashed away in a tomb.

 

Paper on roads and praesidia

Saturday, Adam Bülow-Jacobsen was one of the scholars giving a paper at a theme-day on “Roman Egypt” held in the association of classical archaeologists (Danish: Klassisk Arkæologisk Forening) in Aarhus, Denmark. He was especially concerned with the road between Coptos (on the Nile) and Berenike (at the Red Sea) and the Praesidia, like road-stations, on this road.

Being a papyrologist Bülow-Jacobsen was not so much concerned with road-construction, but more with “literary” finds. It was interesting to follow his work on the road system in the eastern desert, though.

For more information please check out what Troels Myrup Kristensen, who also gave a paper here, writes on his blog.

 

Roman traction systems

Searching for articles on wagon-construction in roman times, a much referred hit is Dr. Judith A. Weller et al. on the “Roman Traction System“. It is an article on www.humanist.de, but so far the only article here related to roman wagons and land-transportation. A lot of pages concerning the roman empire has a link to this article. Now I’ve made this link, too.

The article is most concerned on the traction systems, but it has a chapter on wagon-construction, which, besides a few errors, is interesting reading. Including good pictures.

 

The archaeological evidence 3 - The roman roads

Working with roman wagons you have to make a note on the roads. A lot of scholars around the world have been working on this subject and therefore I will not spend that much energy on the roads themselves.

The roman roads are, no doubt, one of the greatest works of engineering in the ancient world, not alone for their stability and longtime durability but also for what they carried along ex. bridges, tunnels and caves in mountain-areas. The roads are also one of the main reasons why the romans could keep the control of an empire stretching from the River Rhine to the Sahara dessert and from the Atlantic Ocean to the River Euphrates, because they guarantied the infrastructure and thereby secured the possibility of moving large troops a long distance in a short amount of time. (Click here to find out more about the roman roads)

However, my interest in the roman roads concern the tracks of usage discovered in many original road-pavings around the Mediterranean. Here below are some examples of roman roads with marks of wagon-usage. These four roads, and the one shown in the blog-header, are all roman roads found in Italy, but there are also known roads from the roman provinces around the Mediterranean. The roads are, from the left; from Pompeii (the city area), Via Amerina (outside Falerii Novi), Rusellae (the forum area), Vulci (the road towards Ponte Rotto) and the header is from Ostia Antica (main road). All photos are my own.

 

The archaeological evidence 2 - The “roman pictures” of roman wagons

The romans made a lot of pictures of how they saw the world and everything in it, and this gallery include pictures, in different quality, style and medium, of various kinds of roman wagons. Therefore we have a large material in this category of archaeological evidence. 

The roman pictures include carvings, paintings and mosaics showing roman wagons, two and four-wheeled vehicles, with/without people and/or goods, wagons in (or in no) motion and pictures with various kinds of wagonparts, mostly wheels. Some of these pictures happen to be very detailed and they are therefore, in my opinion, great evidence in the study of roman wagons.

Here below are some examples of roman picture-work showing roman wagons. All photos are my own.

1. Detail of roman wheel. Carving, Arlon, Belgium

2. Detail of roman wagon. Carving, Budapest, Hungary. 

3. Mosaic showing a fourwheeled wagon, photo in Saalburg, Germany.

4. Bronzemodel of lower part of a wagon, Bonn, Germany

 

The archaeological evidence 1 - The wagonparts

First thing first; In a thesis concerning roman wagons the first set of evidence need to be the wagons themselves.

In this part the archaeological evidence is, in my opinion, grouped in three different kinds of material:

1. The wooden parts
2. The iron fittings
3. The wagonbronzes (decorative)

The wooden part is the greatest part of the wagon, but it is actually the group of material of which we have the weakest knowledge because of the bad preservation of wood in most archaeological areas and excavations. Luckily we do once in a while find wooden material and in a few cases these bits are wagonparts. Often the wooden wagonparts found is some part of a wheel. It might be because we know how the wheel or a part of it should look like and we therefore recognises it, or it might be due to the fact that wagonwheels in roman (and medieval) times where used to form the bottom part of wells in more areas, which means they had perfect conditions for preservation and thereby survive to our days modern excavations.

There are some known pieces of wooden wagonparts in Italy, but most of the preservated wagonmaterial of wood is found in the northern roman provinces and is therefore now located, among others, in Germany and The Netherlands.

The iron fittings on the other hand is mostly known from archaeological finds in graves or deposits, especially from graves in Hungary and Bulgaria, and from the roman limes in Germany, where a deposit of iron fittings from parts of roman wagons have been found by Neupotz.

The iron parts are used to strengthen the wagon, which means most wagonfittings are used around the wheels and movable parts. Some ironfittings are also used as plates on the upper part of the wagon, but such plates are more common in the next group of wagonparts; the wagonbronzes, which are, for the larger part, ornamental elements in the construction of roman wagons.

The wagonbronzes are often seen as a decorative element in the wagon construction but they sometimes have a more important role to play in the wagons function and comfort.

Wagonbronzes are usually found with other wagonparts in graves and deposits, but because of their economic and ornamental value some are also found in houses and as single finds without any relevant context. On the function of some interesting bronzes I shall return in another post. 

 

Working on roman wagons - the archaeological evidence

The study of roman wagons has more entrances in the material culture, meaning, the evidence from the “real wagons”, or what’s left of them, does not alone complete the picture of what the roman wagons actually looked like or how they worked. Therefore my study takes set in three different parts of the archaeological evidence concerning roman wagons. These are:

1. The actual wagon-parts
2. The “roman pictures” of roman wagons
3. The roman roads

In my next posts I will try to explain my thoughts on the three entrances, define their differences and there-next give my view on why each of them is important in the study of roman wagons.