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.

 

The Etruscan Wagon in the Vatican

Even though some media often concern with italic prehistoric-culture outside Italy, the Italians still have some culture left “at home”.

In the Vatican Museum an Etruscan bronze chariot is exhibited in the “Museo Etrusco Gregoriano”-gallery.

This chariot is made in the same style as the one in the NY Met, mentioned earlier, but the bronze parts is not well preserved in this one (see photo right). Compared to the Met-chariot, the Vatican wagon is much reconstructed, but this only make it more clear how the people in the museum believe this wagon was constructed; wooden parts with bronze-plates as decoration.

This wagon is in a museum, where one could say it might not belong, since the Vatican State has an exclusive status in the Italian Republic, but I have not heard of any Italian authorities demanding this one back to some local museum in the old Etruscan area.. and why not? This wagon is not a part of the Hecht-Medici-case, but it could be argued that the Vatican-chariot belong somewhere else.

This said, the research on Etruscan chariots has a ”missing link”: An over-view! I think it is a “need to be done”-work to gather all information on Etruscan chariots in and outside Italy, and hereby try to establish, if possible, some kind of typology in this material. Almost all wagons exhibited, that I know of, are dated between 550-500 BC, but I do not think it possible to be the only period of Etruscan bronze-chariots. Maybe the purpose of these wagons has nothing to do with war..

 

The Etruscan Wagon at the NY Met

Yesterday, rogueclassicism had a piece from the Times which concerned the Etruscan chariot in the Metropolitan Museum, New York.

This post is only here to bring a photo (see left) of the wagon mentioned in the article. It is clearly another type of wagon than the one in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, mentioned in an earlier post, also in the media because the Italians want it shipped home to Italy.

More info on this wagon on www.metmuseum.org

 

Dejbjerg - Centraleuropean wagons in a Scandinavian context?

As I wrote the other day one of the research-areas to be followed on this blog in 2007 is the ongoing work and re-exhibition of the Dejbjerg-wagons in the Danish National Museum, Copenhagen (see photo (from the 1970s exhibition) in the “Summing up”-post from Saturday). The museum is now (until spring 2008) working on a new-exhibition of the part concerning the danish prehistory, and during this work archaeologists have the possibility to reexamine the wagons from Dejbjerg Bog in western Jutland. 

The Dejbjerg-wagons, excavated in the 1880s, belong to a group of six wagons found in western Denmark, from Limfjorden to Funen. They are all made in a Pre-roman central European (La Tène) tradition with bronze-fittings decorated in a way not seen likely anywhere in the Danish Iron-age material. The iron-parts, e.g. the wheel-rings, is probably made of European iron, and the wagons themselves is made in a non-Scandinavian tradition, compared to the rest of the Danish Iron-age wagon-material. 

But does this mean these wagons were actually driven all the way from, let’s say, Bohemia or Schwitzerland just to be bogged down in Jutland?

I think the situation about the Dejbjerg-wagons and the rest of this group, might be a bit more complex than that. The Chieftains in the southern Scandinavian area can easily have traded the foreign iron and bronze-parts to their area, and if they could get the metal-parts then why not also the inspiration or maybe even the craftsmen to construct these luxurious central European wagons?

The work on the wagons belonging to the Dejbjerg-group (all of them, not only the ones in the National Museum) will be followed intensively and any progress in the work and republication of them will be reported here.

 

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.