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.