Architecture in Ancient Central Italy: Connections in Etruscan and Early Roman Building (British School at Rome Studies) [New ed.] 9781108845281, 9781108955232, 1108845282

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Architecture in Ancient Central Italy

Architecture in Ancient Central Italy takes studies of individual elements and sites as a starting point to reconstruct a much larger picture of architecture in western central Italy as an industry, and to position the result in space (in the Mediterranean world and beyond) and time (from the second millennium bc to Late Antiquity). This volume demonstrates that buildings in pre-Roman Italy have close connections with Bronze Age and Roman architecture, with practices in local and distant societies, and with the natural world and the cosmos. It also argues that buildings serve as windows into the minds and lives of those who made and used them, revealing the concerns and character of communities in early Etruria, Rome, and Latium. Architecture consequently emerges as a valuable historical source, and moreover a part of life that shaped society as much as reflected it. charlotte r. potts is the Sybille Haynes Associate Professor in Etruscan and Italic Archaeology and Art at the University of Oxford and Woolley Fellow and Tutor in Archaeology at Somerville College. She is also the author of Religious Architecture in Latium and Etruria, c. 900–500 bc (2015), and has published multiple articles and chapters on Etruscan and Roman archaeology.

British School at Rome Studies Series editors Barbara Borg Chair of Publications of the British School at Rome Abigail Brundin Director of the British School at Rome Rosamond McKitterick (to 31 December 2021) Chair of the Faculty of Archaeology, History and Letters and Member of the Council of the British School at Rome Roey Sweet (from 1 January 2022) Chair of the Faculty of Archaeology, History and Letters and Member of the Council of the British School at Rome British School at Rome Studies builds on the prestigious and long-standing Monographs series of the British School at Rome. It publishes volumes on topics that cover the full range of the history, archaeology and art history of the western Mediterranean both by the staff of the BSR and its present and former members, and by members of the academic community engaged in top-quality research in any of these fields. Architecture in Ancient Central Italy: Connections in Etruscan and Early Roman Building Edited by Charlotte R. Potts Roman Port Societies: The Evidence of Inscriptions Edited by Pascal Arnaud and Simon Keay The Basilica of St John Lateran to 1600 Edited by Lex Bosman, Ian Haynes, and Paolo Liverani Rome in the Eighth Century: A History in Art John Osborne Rome, Pollution and Propriety: Dirt, Disease and Hygiene in the Eternal City from Antiquity to Modernity Edited by Mark Bradley, with Kenneth Stow Old Saint Peter’s, Rome Edited by Rosamond McKitterick, John Osborne, Carol M. Richardson, and Joanna Story The Punic Mediterranean: Identities and Identification from Phoenician Settlement to Roman Rule Edited by Josephine Crawley Quinn and Nicholas C. Vella Turin and the British in the Age of the Grand Tour Edited by Paola Bianchi and Karin Wolfe

Architecture in Ancient Central Italy Connections in Etruscan and Early Roman Building

Edited by

charlotte r. potts University of Oxford

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108845281 DOI: 10.1017/9781108955232 © The British School at Rome 2022 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2022 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-108-84528-1 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of Figures [page vi] List of Maps [x] List of Charts and Tables [xi] Notes on the Contributors [xii] Acknowledgements [xv]

1 Introduction: Building Connections [1] charlotte r. potts 2 The Silent Roofing Revolution: The Etruscan Tie-beam Truss [31] jean macintosh turfa 3 Architectural Terracottas of Central Italy within Their Wider Mediterranean Context [62] nancy a. winter 4 The Connective Evidence for Early Roman Urbanism: Terracottas and Architectural Accretion [95] john hopkins 5 Connecting Foundations and Roofs: The Satricum Sacellum and the Sant’Omobono Sanctuary [125] patricia s. lulof and loes opgenhaffen 6 Architectural Choices in Etruscan Sacred Areas: Tarquinia in Its Mediterranean Setting [148] giovanna bagnasco gianni 7 Connections in Death: Etruscan Tomb Architecture, c. 800– 400 bc [174] stephan steingrä ber Index [200]

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Figures

0.1

2.1

2.2

2.3

2.4

2.5

3.1

3.2

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Generic roof with elements labelled. (Drawing by R. Sponer Za for Winter, Symbols of Wealth and Power, 2009, frontispiece) [page xx] Poggio Civitate (Murlo). Plan of upper or courtyard building, c. 580–575 bc, showing the north flank at top, with rooms with widest span. Conjectured remaining posts marked with X, and conjectured lines of eroded mud-brick walls marked with broken lines. (Redrawn after Turfa and Steinmayer 2002, 2, fig. 1) [41] Theoretical sketch of structural wooden beams of a roof truss fastened with mortise and tenon joint to form a tension beam. Notch A is the mortise cavity for the crucial joint, formed with drills and chisels. (Redrawn after Turfa and Steinmayer 1996, 21, fig. 4) [45] Castione, Bronze Age palafitte settlement. Caissons (gabbioni) constructed of wood, serving as flood bulwarks. (Pigorini 1883, pl. IV) [47] Variety of wooden posts, fastening and anchoring techniques found in palafitte and similar pre- and proto-historic sites in Italy and southern Europe, based on the typology of Balista and Leonardi 1996. (Redrawn after Balista and Leonardi 1996, 209, fig. 8) [49] Pariana, Protovillanovan metal hoard from the tenth century bc. Assorted types of woodworking chisels: (a) rod chisel; (b) leafbladed chisel (not to scale). Viareggio, Museo Civico inv. 88155 and 88156. (Redrawn after Cateni 1984, 25–7, figs 9 and 11) [50] Corinth, early Temple of Apollo. Reconstruction of the Protocorinthian roof, 670–660 bc. (Drawing by K. Iliakis for Winter 1993, fig. 1a) [63] Sparta, early Temple of Artemis Orthia. Reconstruction of the roof, 650–620 bc. (Drawing by K. Iliakis for Winter 1993, fig. 11a) [66]

List of Figures

3.3

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3.5 3.6

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Raking simas with cavetto profile: (a) Thermon, 625–600 bc (drawing by S. Stewart); (b) Poggio Civitate (Murlo), 600–590 bc (drawing by R. Sponer Za for Winter 2009, ill. 2.1.1); (c) Acquarossa, 600–580 bc (drawing by R. Sponer Za for Winter 2009, ill. 2.1.2); (d) Delphi, Roof 9, 580–570 bc (drawing by K. Iliakis for Winter 1993, fig. 5.1); (e) Rome, Phase 2 Regia, 590– 580 bc (drawing by R. Sponer Za for Winter 2009, ill. 3.1.1); and (f) Poggio Civitate (Murlo), courtyard building, 580–575 bc (drawing by R. Sponer Za for Winter 2009, ill. 3.1.2). [67] Poggio Civitate (Murlo). Reconstruction of the OC2/ Workshop roof, 630–620 bc (Drawing by R. Sponer Za for Winter 2009, ill. Roof 2–2, eaves) [70] Acquarossa. Reconstruction of Roof G:1, 640–620 bc (Drawing by R. Sponer Za for Winter 2009, ill. Roof 2–4, eaves) [72] Roof reconstructions: (a) Cumae/Pithecusae roofs, 590–570 bc; (b) Rome, roof of the Phase 2 Regia, 590–580 bc (Drawings by P. Filippi for Winter 2006, figs 1b and 2b) [77] Revetment plaques: with warrior’s departure scene (a) Veii, oikos on Piazza d’Armi, 580 bc (drawing by R. Sponer Za for Winter 2009, ill. 4.6.2); (b) Caere, Vigna Marini-Vitalini, 550– 540 bc (drawing by R. Sponer Za for Winter 2009, ill. 4.12.1); with cart procession (c) Poggio Civitate (Murlo), courtyard building, 580–575 bc (drawing by R. Sponer Za for Winter 2009, ill. 3.7.2) [79] Rome, Comitium. Plan of site in (A) the fifth century and (B) after fourth-century renovation. (Redrawn after Gjerstad 1941, fig. 6) [96] Rome. Acroterion found on the Esquiline. Antiquarium Comunale, inv. 14944. (By permission of the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali) [103] Rome. Female-head antefix found on the Esquiline. Museo Nazionale Romano inv. 62649. (By permission of the Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali e per il turismo – Museo Nazionale Romano) [105] Rome. Two antefixes from the Tiber embankment excavation: (a) late fifth or fourth century, Museo Nazionale Romano inv. 4479; (b) fourth or early third century, Museo Nazionale Romano inv. 4479bis. (By permission of the Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali e per il turismo – Museo Nazionale Romano) [107]

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List of Figures

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5.3 5.4 5.5

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Rome. Torso from a temple on the Capitoline Hill, Musei Capitolini, inv. 44708. (By permission of the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali) [108] Rome. Female-head antefix from a temple on the Capitoline Hill, Musei Capitolini, inv. 44718. (By permission of the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali) [109] Satricum. Plan of the remains of the temples with Sacellum I in red. (Drawing by L. Opgenhaffen) [128] Satricum. Sacellum I on top of the remaining foundations. (Image by L. Opgenhaffen and J. Waagen. Copyright Satricum Project University of Amsterdam) [129] Satricum. Sacellum I: wattle-and-daub-panelled timber-frame construction. (Image by L. Opgenhaffen) [130] Satricum. Interior of Sacellum I. (Image by L. Opgenhaffen) [132] Satricum. Plan of the remains of the temples with Sacellum I in red and Sacellum II in blue. (Drawing by L. Opgenhaffen) [134] Satricum. Sacellum II: structure of walls in wood. (Image by L. Opgenhaffen) [135] Satricum. Sacellum II: full reconstruction. (Image by L. Opgenhaffen) [139] Tarquinia. Map of the ancient walls, gateways, and roads. (After Bagnasco Gianni, Marzullo, and Piazzi 2021) [149] Tarquinia. Measurements of the whole and the parts of the ‘monumental complex’. (By architect A. Garzulino, after Invernizzi 2001) [152] Azimuths of the Etruscan temples measured by A. Pernigotti in his field campaigns of 2013. Red: temples oriented along the southern sky arc that extends between the points where the sun rises and sets at the winter solstice. Green: temples oriented along the eastern sky arc between the sunrise points at the solstices. Blue: temples oriented along the northern sky arc between the points of sunset and sunrise at the summer solstice. Orange: temples whose orientation towards sunset at the winter solstice is off the main range by a few degrees. (After Pernigotti 2019) [155] Tarquinia, Ara della Regina sanctuary. Reconstructed view of the front of Temple II and of the sunrise on 9 March 2012, 6.41 am. (Archivio di Etruscologia, Università degli Studi di

List of Figures

6.5 6.6

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7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7

Milano: reconstruction of the temple by M. Bonghi Jovino, B. Binda, and M. Legni; photograph of the sunrise by A. P. Pernigotti) [156] Tarquinia, Museo Nazionale Tarquiniense, Bocchoris Tomb set. (After Bagnasco Gianni 2018) [158] Tarquinia, Museo Nazionale Tarquiniense, ‘monumental complex’. Gem. 2.4 × 1 × 1 cm. (After Bagnasco Gianni 2017) [160] Tarquinia. Reconstruction of the subject represented on the pediment of the third phase of the Temple of the Ara della Regina sanctuary (Temple III). (After Bagnasco Gianni 2011) [162] Caere, Banditaccia necropolis. Tumuletto (small mound). (Photo by the author) [177] Caere, Banditaccia necropolis. Cube tombs. (Photo by the author) [178] Caere, Banditaccia necropolis. Tomba delle Cinque Sedie: cult chamber with table. (Photo by the author) [180] Tuscania, Pian di Mola necropolis. Reconstructed façade of the house tomb with porticus. (Photo by the author) [184] San Giuliano, Loc. Valle Cappellana. Tomba Margareth (Valle Cappellana 1). (Photo by the author) [185] San Giuliano, Caiolo necropolis. Porticus tombs. (Photo by the author) [190] Norchia, Fosso Pile necropolis. Cube and half-cube tombs. (Photo by the author) [190]

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Maps

1 2 3 4

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Sites mentioned in the text: overview. [page xvi] Sites mentioned in the text: Italy. [xvii] Sites mentioned in the text: western central Italy. [xviii] Sites mentioned in the text: Greece and Asia Minor. [xix]

Charts and Tables

Chart 3.1 Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 5.1

Diffusion of terracotta roof technology, 670/660–600 bc. [81] Dimensions of monumental buildings in Etruria and Latium, seventh to second century bc. [38] Sizes of terracotta revetments indicating beam sizes in Etruscan and Italic buildings. [52] The different sacred buildings and roofs at Satricum and their chronologies. [127]

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Notes on the Contributors

xii

Giovanna Bagnasco Gianni is Professor of Etruscan Studies at the Università degli Studi di Milano, and director of the excavations at Tarquinia conducted by the Università degli Studi di Milano. Her research ranges from archaeological work at Tarquinia to cultural transmission between ancient cultures in the Mediterranean, through the analysis and interpretation of archaeological and epigraphic evidence. She is a member of the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Etruschi ed Italici, co-director (with Maria Bonghi Jovino) of the series Tarchna, (with Federica Cordano) of Aristhonothos. Rivista per il Mediterraneo antico, and (with Nancy de Grummond) of the International Etruscan Sigla Project. She has published numerous articles and books on Tarquinia, Etruscan archaeology, and epigraphy and has assisted with several major exhibitions. John Hopkins is Associate Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Art and Archaeology at New York University. He is the author of the prizewinning book The Genesis of Roman Architecture (Yale, 2016) and is currently working on a new book on the instability of Roman art. He is also co-editor of Object Biographies: Collaborative Approaches to Ancient Mediterranean Art (Menil Collection and Yale, 2021), a volume examining the provenance and social history of ancient Mediterranean artefacts. Patricia S. Lulof is Associate Professor of Classical and Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Amsterdam, and the Scientific Director of the 4D Research Lab of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Amsterdam. She has research interests at the sites of Acquarossa and Satricum, and is an expert on architectural terracottas and decorative roof systems. She has written and edited multiple books on architecture, pre-Roman Italy, and digital reconstruction, including The Age of Tarquinius Superbus: Central Italy in the Late Sixth Century bc (BABesch, 2013), edited with C. J. Smith, and The Ridge-Pole Statues from the Late Archaic Temple at Satricum (Le Ferriere) (Amsterdam, 1996). She co-edited the proceedings of the

Notes on the Contributors

Deliciae Fictiles conferences, the most recent volume of which, Deliciae Fictiles V: Networks and Workshops (2019), focused on networks between elite patrons and specialist craft communities between 600 and 100 bc. Jean MacIntosh Turfa is a Consulting Scholar in the Mediterranean Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum. She has taught at universities in the United States and the United Kingdom and has excavated at sites including Poggio Civitate (Murlo) and Corinth. Her prolific scholarship includes articles on Etruscan architecture, shipbuilding, trade, Etruscan-Punic relations, votive offerings, and divination, while recent books include The Etruscans and the History of Dentistry: The Golden Smile through the Ages (Routledge, 2017), Divining the Etruscan World: The Brontoscopic Calendar and Religious Practice (Cambridge, 2012), and A Catalogue of the Etruscan Gallery of the University of Pennsylvania Museum (2005). She is also the editor of The Etruscan World (Routledge, 2013). Loes Opgenhaffen is a PhD researcher at the University of Amsterdam, ACASA Department of Archaeology. In her PhD research she explores how both past and present practices respond to the introduction of new technology. As case studies she investigates the uptake and transmission of the potter’s wheel in existing potting strategies in the Aegean Bronze Age, and the adoption and adaptation of 3D technology into archaeological visualization practice. This research is part of the larger structure of the ‘Tracing the Potter’s Wheel’ project, directed by Dr J. R. Hilditch. Loosely related to her current PhD research is her interest in how 3D visualization can enhance research into Late Archaic construction practices in central Italy. She was 3D visualizer for the 4D Research Lab of the University of Amsterdam, directed by P. S. Lulof, between 2012 and 2015, and is currently a member of the scientific board. Charlotte R. Potts is the Sybille Haynes Assistant Professor in Etruscan and Italic Archaeology and Art at the University of Oxford, and the Katherine and Leonard Woolley Fellow in Archaeology at Somerville College. Her research interests include the social aspects of architecture and continuities between Etruscan and Roman material culture, as well as the use of ancient material in museums. She is the author of Religious Architecture in Latium and Etruria, c. 900–500 bc (Oxford University Press, 2015), and multiple articles and chapters on Etruscan and Roman archaeology.

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Notes on the Contributors

Stephan Steingräber is Professor of Etruscology and Italic Antiquities at the University of Roma Tre and was Director of the Archaeological Museum of Barbarano Romano (VT). He has worked at the German Archaeological Institute in Rome and taught at the universities of Munich, Mainz, Tokyo, Rome, Padova, and Foggia, and has been a visiting professor in Denmark, Italy, and the United States. He has published extensively on historical topography, urbanism, architecture, and tomb painting in Etruria and southern Italy. He is the author of Etruskische Möbel (Bretschneider, 1979), Etrurien: Städte, Heiligtümer, Nekropolen (Hirmer, 1981), Etruscan Painting: Catalogue Raisonné of Etruscan Wall Paintings (Johnson, 1986), Volterra: Etruskisches und mittelalterliches Juwel im Herzen der Toskana (Von Zabern, 2002), Abundance of Life: Etruscan Wall Painting (J. Paul Getty Museum, 2006), Orvieto (Von Zabern, 2009), Tarquinia: Stadt und Umland von den Etruskern bis in die Neuzeit (Von Zabern, 2012), Antike Felsgräber: unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der etruskischen Felsgräbernekropolen (Von Zabern, 2015), and Monumenti rupestri etrusco-romani (Associazione Canino Info Onlus, 2018). Nancy A. Winter is a Distinguished Senior Researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara who has excavated at Poggio Civitate (Murlo), Corinth, Kourion, and Morgantina. She is an expert on architectural terracottas, author of Symbols of Wealth and Power: Architectural Terracotta Decoration in Etruria and Central Italy, 640–510 bc (University of Michigan, 2009) and Greek Architectural Terracottas from the Prehistoric to the End of the Archaic Period (Oxford, 1993), numerous articles, and the creator of the database of Etruscan architectural terracottas hosted online by the Classical Art Research Centre and the Beazley Archive at the University of Oxford.

Acknowledgements

The chapters in this book were originally presented as papers in a workshop on 20 March 2018 at Somerville College in Oxford, organised by the editor. The initial idea for a project examining connectivity came from Claire Lyons at the J. Paul Getty Museum and was brought to fruition thanks to funding from the John Fell Fund, the Classics Faculty, and the Craven Committee – all at the University of Oxford – as well as Somerville College and the British School at Rome. It is a pleasure to be able to show that their support brought together people and ideas, in person and on paper, in a way that will hopefully stimulate further research in due course by others too. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Janet DeLaine for serving as an insightful discussant at the workshop, and Mark Wilson Jones for his paper and contributions to thinking about possible continuities with Greek architectural practice. It was a pleasure to have Sybille Haynes in the audience and to be able to continue to support scholarship on the Etruscans and early Italy at Oxford that she has done so much to facilitate. Amanda Sharp and Konogan Beaufay also provided valuable aid and assurance that interest in the topic extends well into the Roman world. I am particularly grateful to the contributors for their participation and for their patience and good humour as the volume took shape. Miranda Williams ably assisted with referencing and bibliographies, while Alistair Potts and Tyler Franconi provided much-appreciated advice and help in the production of the maps. Finally, I would like to thank Christopher Smith, Elsbeth van der Wilt, and the late Judith McKenzie for their support and encouragement.

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Map 1 Sites mentioned in the text: overview.

Map 2 Sites mentioned in the text: Italy.

Map 3 Sites mentioned in the text: western central Italy.

Map 4 Sites mentioned in the text: Greece and Asia Minor.

Fig. 0.1 Generic roof with elements labelled. (Drawing by R. Sponer Za for Winter, Symbols of Wealth and Power, 2009, frontispiece)

1

Introduction Building Connections charlotte r. potts Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 19241

Exploring central Italic architecture as part of a connected world brings together one of the most prominent themes in the study of the ancient Mediterranean in recent decades, namely connectivity, and a body of evidence that has often been overlooked in many studies of ancient construction, technology, society, economy, and even the archaeology of early Italy, to wit architecture in Etruria and Latium. Such a partnership is an invitation to move beyond the study of individual elements of structures or sites, for example mouldings or terracottas, and instead use such studies to reconstruct a larger picture of architecture in this region as a discipline and to position it more broadly in space and time. The chapters in this volume respond to this challenge by considering connectivity in more than a geographical sense, showing how architecture in western central Italy between approximately 800 and 400 bc has close connections with Bronze Age and Roman building, with practices locally and across the Mediterranean, with the natural world and the cosmos. Architecture emerges as a window into the lives, knowledge, and values of its makers and users, in short into the world in which it stood, and in doing so raises important questions about the ways in which we study the first millennium bc. This chapter serves as an introduction for what follows by placing this volume’s approach into the context of the past and current study of central Italic architecture. It will point out some of the issues that underlie and join the analyses in the subsequent chapters, including why so many major building projects were undertaken in Etruria and Latium in this period, who and what was moving to create them, and how the results blur the boundaries of what has traditionally been considered ‘Roman’. Fundamentally, it will argue not only for the value of central Italic architecture as a source for regional social and economic histories, but also for its potential contribution to the study of ancient architecture as a whole. 1

Translated from van der Rohe 1924, 31: ‘Baukunst ist immer raumgefaßter Zeitwille’.

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charlotte r. potts

Past and Present It is worth acknowledging right from the start that the architecture of early central Italy has long had a far lower profile in the study of ancient architecture than the built environments of Greece and later Rome. Its relative neglect is at least partly due to the available evidence. Central Italic architecture – for the purposes of this volume, defined as the buildings of Etruria and Latium, including Rome, that emerge from the Iron Age and predate the Roman conquest of Veii in 396 bc 2 – made extensive use of perishable materials. The mud bricks, rammed earth, and timber used in central Italic buildings were all highly subject to disintegration, while the soft tufo stones and calcareous bedrock of southern Etruria and the harder sandstones and limestones of northern Etruria have suffered the effects of prolonged demolition and reuse. The remains of early architecture in this region accordingly often comprise little more than partial foundations, roofs of more durable terracotta tiles, and buried engineering works, although each of these can be substantial. Secondary evidence such as votive models and decorated tomb interiors provide more information about details of roofs, columns, doors, windows, and woodwork.3 Viewed as a whole, and in spite of its limitations, this range of material establishes that the people of ‘pre-Roman’ central Italy had substantial houses, elaborate tombs, imposing temples, and were accomplished civil engineers. But the interpretation of much of this evidence – its reconstruction, its relationship to other cultural traditions, its historical significance, and the terminology to describe them all – is a matter of ongoing debate. This is somewhat a natural consequence of its fragmentary nature. The recent discovery of many remains is another factor, as much only came to light in excavations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and more is appearing every year, prompting constant revision. Finally, the variation in materials, styles, and building techniques between individual sites is as marked in the architecture of early Italy as other forms of art. Thus, while there is now a substantial body of evidence for central Italic construction, to date there is no extensive, unified account of it.4 2

3 4

On Rome’s conquest of Veii as a ‘climactic war’, see Harris 1990, 507; on its influence on Rome’s society, economy, urban form, and self-image, see Cornell 2000, 44–6 and Bernard 2012, 38–9. Best surveyed by Damgaard Andersen 1998, i: 25–70. A short overview, now in need of updating, is provided by Colonna 1986, while the longer treatment by Boëthius 1978 is also out of date. A valuable but unpublished treatment is offered by Damgaard Andersen 1998. See also the works in n. 5 below.

Introduction: Building Connections

Yet the last 30 years have seen a notable expansion in the number of publications that address different aspects of this material. Modern excavations have allowed developments to be reassessed and changing interpretive frameworks have asked new questions of old evidence. There are now books on the architecture of archaic Rome, on religious architecture in Etruria and Latium, on monumentality in central Italy, on Etruscan and Roman mouldings, on building techniques, on architectural terracottas, and a host of chapters in edited volumes.5 These analyses have indicated that architecture has the capacity to refine long-standing accounts of certain aspects of central Italic culture. The relationship between Rome and its neighbours, the economy of Tyrrhenian Italy, and networks of specialist craftsmen around the Mediterranean are all coming into sharper relief through the study of buildings created before the middle of the Roman Republic. Recent studies have also produced more nuanced accounts of changes in building over the time frame considered in this volume. In general terms, between the eighth and fourth centuries bc, thatched huts were supplemented and replaced by monumental temples, rock-cut tombs, and houses with stone foundations and tiled roofs. Plans and building materials diversified, either in response to trends elsewhere or to internal political and socio-economic developments, or more likely a combination of both, while some traditional building techniques were maintained.6 Building functions appear to have become more differentiated and the use of space in settlements and within buildings seems to have altered.7 Landscapes acquired cities, sanctuaries, estates, villages, and farms. Over the same period, central Italic society is thought to have become more complex, with hierarchies becoming more visible in the archaeological record and populations increasing and centralizing. Scholars offer different interpretations of the precise relationship between these architectural and social developments but agree that this is a period of marked change in both respects. What drove these changes, and in particular, the role of external influences, is not a new subject. Relationships between Etruria, Latium, Rome, and their Mediterranean neighbours have been studied both in terms of 5

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Books: Rystedt, Wikander, and Wikander 1993; Lulof and Moormann 1997; Edlund-Berry 2000; Edlund-Berry, Greco, and Kenfield 2006; Cifani 2008; Winter 2009; Lulof and Rescigno 2010; Thomas and Meyers 2012; Potts 2015; Hopkins 2016; Miller 2017. Chapters: Colonna 1986; Izzet 2000; Edlund-Berry 2008; Warden 2012, among others. On building techniques, see Miller 2017. On the difference between ‘technology’ (the application of calculated ideas) and ‘technique’ (an operational sequence associated with a specific technology), see Miller 2017, 2 n. 1. Van’t Lindenhout 1997; Steingräber 2001; Izzet 2007, 143–64.

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architecture and material culture more generally, and have tended to follow recognizable patterns in classical archaeology and archaeology as a whole, which, in turn, have been affected by prevailing paradigms in intellectual history.8 Albeit to a lesser extent than other parts of Etruscan archaeology – which traditionally subsumed the study of early Rome and Latium – architecture was long interpreted through a Hellenocentric lens through which Greece emerged as the inspiration for central Italic practice. Through the 1970s and 1980s, at the time when the modern discipline of Etruscology was emerging, plans, ornaments, building functions, and town planning were often seen as pale imitations of Greek systems. Changes were presented as unthinking copies or the conscious choice of aristocrats seeking to enhance their power by drawing on practices elsewhere. The introduction of buildings with stone foundations and tiled roofs during the seventh and sixth centuries bc, and the subsequent concentration of these buildings in cities, was attributed to the arrival of new materials and concepts from Greece and especially from Corinth or Euboea via Campania.9 Orthogonal town plans were attributed to exposure to Greek norms that came via colonies in Campania, southern Italy, and Sicily; it was thought that Etruscan houses had rooms resembling the Greek andron and dedicated feminine spaces; and the building beneath the later Regia in Rome was once presented as a deliberate formal and functional replica of the prytaneion in the Athenian agora.10 Central Italic architecture has also been seen as a follower of Near Eastern models, particularly in the so-called ‘Orientalizing period’ of Etruscan history spanning approximately 720–580 bc. While some forms of architecture at this time do indicate strong Near Eastern connections, such as the construction of funerary tumuli across central Italy and the use of the murs à piliers technique to build walls at Tarquinia, some scholars have drawn less direct connections, for example, seeing the lavish houses built in Latium during the seventh and sixth centuries bc as derivations of bit hilāni palaces in Syria.11 Roman influence has also been posited although more obliquely. Descriptions by Vitruvius have been used as a framework for interpreting buildings that stood half 8 9 10

11

Trigger 2006, with special reference to pp. 61–6 on the development of classical archaeology. Pallottino 1975, 174; Drews 1981, 154–7; Ridgway 1988, 666–7. On town planning: Colonna 1986, 464; Owens 1991, 96, 104–5. On possible Etruscan versions of a gynaeceum and andron, see Torelli 1983, 56 (discussing Poggio Civitate); Small 1994, 90 n. 4. On female spaces in Etruscan and Roman houses: Jolivet 2011a, 254–62; Jolivet 2011b. On the regia and Athens: Ampolo 1971; cf. Scheffer 1990. More generally: Ward-Perkins 1977, 11; Musgrove 1987, 210, 16–17; cf. Torelli 2000a, 196–7; Donati 2000, 321–3. Torelli 1985, 27–32; Cifani 2008, 269–72; Torelli 2000b, 72–3, 77. Walling techniques at Tarquinia: Bonghi Jovino 1991; Ciafaloni 2006.

Introduction: Building Connections

a millennium before his time,12 and terms from Roman culture have been retrojected onto Etruscan buildings, for example, in the category of buildings in central Italy labelled regiae.13 Many of these interpretations stemmed from approaches in which texts were given primacy or were outgrowths of historical traditions that viewed the peoples of pre-Roman Italy as culturally overshadowed by those with whom they had contact, as passive recipients of goods, technology, and concepts. More recently, just as postcolonial perspectives have been applied in classical archaeology, the peoples of central Italy have been repositioned as active and independent proponents of cultural change. Their autonomy in areas such as myth, religion, art, and social customs has been stressed.14 Ethnography and anthropology have been used to describe changes and account for them without recourse to anachronistic texts, and the selective adoption and adaptation of ideas and practices has been highlighted. Population growth and concomitant economic specialization in cities have been posited as local catalysts for architectural changes, as have related ideologies whereby elites sought to renew and differentiate themselves through exclusive lifestyles in which architecture played an important role.15 There are now accounts of the indigenous origins of certain forms of domestic architecture and urban planning,16 and studies that show strong connections between buildings and the landscapes in which they appeared.17 At the same time that local developments have been stressed, the connected world in which they occurred is also featuring more prominently in scholarship. Just as modern society has become more marked by networks, connectivity, migrations, and global phenomena, scholars are re-examining connections between people and cultures in ancient settings including early central Italy.18 The mobility of traders and elite groups within Italy and around the Mediterranean from the Iron Age 12 13 14

15

16 17

18

Discussed and critiqued by Edlund-Berry 2013, 695–9; Potts 2014–15, among others. Following Aeneid 7.170–91: Torelli 2000b. Autonomy has been stressed by Hampe and Simon 1964; Small 1994; de Grummond 2006; de Grummond and Simon 2006; and Small 2008, for example. Nijboer 1998, 339–45; Riva 2010, 23–9, 41–4; Bartoloni 2012, 258–66, 71–8; Leighton 2013, 138–9. For example, Colantoni 2012; Govi 2014. Edlund 1987; MacIntosh Turfa and Steinmayer 2002; and for this aspect of tumuli, see Zifferero 1991 and Mandolesi 2008. For example, Horden and Purcell 2000; Riva 2005; Riva 2006; Van Dommelen 2006; Malkin, Constantakopoulou, and Panagopoulou 2009; Malkin 2011; Demetriou 2012; Kistler et al. 2015; Isayev 2015; Isayev 2017. For an important critique of earlier concepts of ‘Orientalization’, see Purcell 2006. On the rise of interest amongst archaeologists in such subjects: Trigger 2006, 484–5.

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onwards is becoming ever clearer, while stories of migrant nobles such as Demaratus of Corinth and wandering heroes like Odysseus, Aeneas, and Hercules are assuming greater significance in cultural histories.19 Ongoing studies of places where cultural boundaries may have been crossed or broken down, such as cosmopolitan sanctuaries, emporia, and highly connected settlements like Pithecusae, are suggesting that control of such contacts could be used to maintain power. Globalization, network theory, hybridity, and peer-polity interaction have all been used to analyse these developments.20 As a consequence, more interpretations of archaeological remains are now balancing the local and the international, and are being informed by theoretical models from the social sciences in which both elements are viewed positively. In this volume, scholars of central Italic architecture engage with these discussions with results that are beneficial for both local and broader histories. The evidence that architecture was an international industry for much of the first millennium bc means that it can provide new examples of Mediterranean connectivity and the transmission of technical knowledge in antiquity. Cross-fertilization between architectural elements in Asia Minor, the Near East, Greece, and Italy prompts questions about the limitations of traditional typologies, long based upon linguistic divisions, which seldom make allowances for mobile craftsmen and materials, let alone shared concepts and meanings. The migration of architectural concepts and practices in this period moreover puts the mobility that is such a feature of Roman architecture under closer scrutiny, suggesting that the Roman period may have seen a change in the scale of connectivity rather than the fundamental nature of design. The next sections explore some of these ideas in more detail.

Building in a Connected World Starting in c. 800 bc, at approximately the time when the Phoenicians established a permanent base at Carthage, the Mediterranean world considered in this volume is one in which Phoenician and Greek merchants, traders, craftsmen, agents, and colonists had long been interacting with one another and, by the eighth century, often in ways that resembled commercial trade more than the elite gift-giving and exchange of earlier 19 20

For example, Malkin 1998; Bonnet 2005; Della Fina 2013; Della Fina 2014. For example, Hodos 2009; Malkin 2011; van Dommelen 2017. Cf. Sherratt and Sherratt 1993 and Morris’ ‘Mediterraneanization’ (Morris 2003).

Introduction: Building Connections

periods.21 As a peninsula in the centre of the Mediterranean Sea with natural harbours, Italy’s geography had long made it a natural participant in these ancient networks of trade and cross-cultural contact. Rivers and volcanic activity gave Etruria in particular famous agricultural fertility and mineral resources that drew traders from as early as the Bronze Age. Finds of Mycenaean pottery, elephant ivory, and ostrich eggs in Italian sites such as Frattesina – itself exhibiting strong Etruscan connections – show contact between Italy and the eastern Aegean and Africa, while Baltic amber is testament to trade routes to the north.22 Italian helmets, swords, belts, and razors found in modern Ukraine, Austria, France, and Dalmatia show links with central Europe had existed since at least the eighth century bc.23 Etruscan trade reached new heights in the seventh and sixth centuries bc with exports of wine and oil to southern France and Spain; at Marseille, for example, amphorae from Etruria appear to have outnumbered those from Greece in the second quarter of the sixth century bc.24 Caere had a treasury at Delphi (Strabo, Geography 5.2.3) while tablets inscribed in Phoenician/Punic and Etruscan at Pyrgi show other connections echoed by finds such as an Etruscan tessera hospitalis in Carthage.25 Ceramic technology, metalworking techniques, and painting styles also reveal extensive interaction with other cultures, while epigraphy and linguistics further indicate the movement of people of different ethnicities between regions and countries by the Archaic period.26 In the first half of the first millennium bc, people in central Italy were clearly in contact with goods, merchants, and migrants from other societies ranging from Carthage to southern France, and often appear to have been the dominant power in interactions.27 As the ultimate physical expression of a culture, architecture could be expected to reflect these conditions. The chapters in this volume support that theory and argue that such reflection should be sought in more than formal analyses. Architectural design is an organic process, an undertaking in which practical and symbolic elements, people, materials, decoration, and engineering interact to produce a structure that functions in a number 21 22 23 24 25 26

27

Hodos 2009, 232. Bietti Sestieri 1997, 390–6; Pearce 2000, 110; Vianello 2005; Blake 2014, 41, 130–2. Camporeale 2004, 104–9. Gantès 1992; Gras 2000; Sourisseau 2002; Gori and Bettini 2006. Benveniste 1933; Rix 2014, ii. Af. 3.1; recently discussed by Prag 2006, 8–10. For example, Ampolo 1976–7; Moretti 1984; Lejeune, Pouilloux, and Solier 1988; Cristofani 1996; Steingräber 2006, 281–301; Gran-Aymerich 2009; Della Fina 2014. For overviews, see Cristofani 1996; Naso 2000; Camporeale 2001; Naso 2006; Della Fina 2013; Della Fina 2014; Isayev 2017.

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of different ways.28 Architecture is moreover social: in general, substantial buildings represent aggregated resources, make statements about communities, and have a public dimension.29 By considering the social ideas and conditions that these buildings represent, facilitate, and draw meaning from alongside their visible elements – that is, by taking what the philosopher Karsten Harries has called an ethical approach to architecture30 – these buildings can be read as useful sources of information about the architects, craftsmen, patrons, and communities involved in their life cycles. If we can recognize these people in the physical evidence, then these buildings may have as much to tell us about culture as architecture in Etruria and Latium prior to the fourth century bc. Architecture has been an overlooked resource for the study of central Italic life despite its necessary and transformative properties. Buildings are utilitarian but their ubiquity shapes space, creates place, and thereby provides a framework for all activity. Monumental examples are realized through sustained action and consensus that some theorists believe express cross-generational or intrinsic cultural values, even if they are only those of an elite group, in ways more revealing than any text.31 As the most plastic of the arts, architecture also has abundant meanings that are conferred and altered over time and contribute to the expansion of world views, implicating it in the formulation of religious, cultural, and historical identities.32 Appreciating the potential of this body of evidence for the study of early Italy requires recognition that it has documentary potential irrespective of the controversial literary record, which it nonetheless contextualizes, and as such is far from mute; multiple readings of the evidence are possible even if some interpretations are more speculative than others.

Art and Agency in Architecture The question of who and what was travelling to produce all or part of significant buildings in early central Italy is open to different reconstructions. Studies of human mobility and technological transfer in the ancient Mediterranean have suggested four types of craftspeople that can form a useful basis for such discussions: itinerant entrepreneurs, immigrant 28 30 31

32

Revell 2014, 391; Wilson Jones 2014. 29 Goldberger 2009, x, 15, 43, 174, 182. Harries 1998. Jones 2000, i: 137–8, and in the context of Indian architecture: Fergusson 1867, 11; Ghosh 1982, 1. Jones 2000, i: 110.

Introduction: Building Connections

artisans, overseas apprentices, and forced labourers or slaves.33 The movement of all four groups is subject to socio-historical circumstances and power relationships, both of which would also have affected the contexts in which these people interacted with local populations and one another.34 To date, such groups have been considered more in relation to the production of art other than architecture in central Italy. Scholars have argued that artistic production in central Italy during the first millennium bc included migrants from Sardinia, Syria, Persia, Greece, and central Europe.35 Some of these migrants have been regarded as master craftsmen responsible for the introduction of particular styles and techniques in ceramics, metalwork, jewellery, and painting, and as founders of schools and workshops. Whether a similar model of travelling experts can also be applied to architecture is less clear, however. Although architectural design is informed by aesthetics and crafts, there is a fundamental difference between small portable works and building projects that span multiple lifetimes, require vast manpower, and provide infrastructure for the conduct and rituals of civic life. There is moreover a different level of risk: given that a building must remain standing, experience and knowledge are just as important as creativity in architectural design, if not more so.36 The sought-after nature of such expertise in antiquity is hinted at in later literary sources in ways that support a model of itinerant architects or experts for hire, or at least a belief that this had been the case in earlier centuries. For instance, the Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes are described as the architects of the archaic Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (Vitruvius, On Architecture 7. preface 16; Pliny, Natural History 7.125, 36.95), and it has been proposed that Rhoikos, one of the architects of the monumental Temple of Hera at Samos (Herodotus, Histories 3.60.4), may be the same individual who inscribed his name on an eye cup dedicated to Aphrodite at Naukratis in Egypt, another site of significant cultural exchange that happened to have a strong Samian presence and Samian architectural features.37 For central Italy, Pliny follows 33

34 35

36 37

For recent application of these categories to Mediterranean history, see Blake 2016, 189–92; Gosselain 2016, 195–7. Blake 2016; Gosselain 2016. Recently summarized by Camporeale 2013. On the role of artisans and master craftsmen in pre-Roman central Italy, see Colonna 1988; Bonghi Jovino 1990; Nijboer 1997; Smith 1998; Camporeale 2011; Della Fina 2014. But cf. the reminder that nationality may be less important for art history than skill and style: Pallottino 1952, 15 (discussing Etruscan painting). Cf. Mertens 1994, 196–7; Hopkins 2016, 112–16; cf. the chapter by Turfa in this volume. Boardman 1999, 132. A large quantity of mugs and cups found in the sanctuary of Hera also have exact parallels in the Samian Heraion and were produced from the same clay: Villing and Schlotzhauer 2006, 6, citing analysis by Hans Mommsen.

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Varro in writing that the sculptor Vulca was summoned to Rome from Veii to work on art for the archaic Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus (Natural History 35.157; cf. Plutarch, Poplicola 13), and that the Greek artists Damophilus and Gorgasus worked on the Temple of Ceres on the Aventine in Rome in the following century (Pliny, Natural History 35.154), again in accounts that should also be understood as part of a tradition of discussions about the influence of Greece on other cultures, often with moralizing overtones, and as partial reflections of practices in the period in which they were written.38 The material remains, however, suggest a comparable scenario of travelling expertise: an unnamed Ionian architect has been proposed for the archaic Capitoline Temple in Rome, for example, and technical connections have been drawn between this temple and the Heraion on Samos, the Artemision at Ephesus, and the Olympieion in Athens.39 Both regional and Mediterranean-wide mobility may thus have been a factor in central Italic construction. Ancient authors also describe the permanent migration of artisans to central Italy. In this context, the immigrant par excellence was Demaratus, a seventh-century exile from Corinth who settled in Tarquinia with an entourage of knowledgeable Greeks, fathered a future king of Rome, and subsequently assumed the role of cultural hero (Livy, Books from the Foundation of the City 1.34; Tacitus, Annals 11.14; Pliny, Natural History 35.152; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 3.46–9; Strabo, Geography 5.2.2). The ‘professional’ or ‘speaking’ names of two of his companions, Eugrammus (‘good designer’) and Diopus (‘keen-eyed’), suggest they may have been architects, and members of the same retinue were also credited with introducing the art of modelling figures in clay (Pliny, Natural History 35.152), again in a narrative that may recall changes even if not fully record them.40 There is physical evidence of migrant ceramicists working in central Italy in the seventh century bc, such as the Greek potter Aristonothos who signed a krater at Caere made of local clay, while in the sixth century bc the Campana Group, the Northampton Group, and those responsible for Pontic Vases are thought to have been Greek or Greek-trained artists working in Italy.41 Ceramicists were also involved in architecture through the manufacture of architectural 38 39 40

41

See, for example, Zevi 1995; Ridgway 2012. Cifani 2008, 331; Cifani 2012, 132–3; Hopkins 2016, 114. Camporeale 2013, 890. Bibliography on Demaratus and his entourage is extensive and marked by contradictory views of historical veracity: see, for example, Cornell 1995, 122–30; Zevi 1995; Poucet 2000, 164–5 n. 12; Ridgway 2006; Rieger 2007, 240–56; Camporeale 2011, 20–1; MacMullen 2011, 22–4; Ridgway 2012; Colonna 2013, 14; Isayev 2017, 98–100. Discussed recently by Warden 2008. On the Aristonothos krater (c. 650 bc, Musei Capitolini, Rome: Castellani 172), see Ducati 1911; Schweitzer 1955; Dougherty 2003, 50–2; Izzet 2004.

Introduction: Building Connections

terracottas and roof tiles. In many ways, these products bridge the differences between buildings and other forms of art, as multiple copies could be made with moulds, iconography could be used to convey or enhance meaning, and the design of columen plaques, revetments, and rooftop statuary required close working relationships with those responsible for the woodwork and engineering of the buildings they decorated. As discussed by Winter in this volume, strong arguments have been advanced about the spread of terracotta technology from Greece to Etruria, initially in connection with Corinth and nearby areas, on stylistic and technical grounds,42 although some scholars have also proposed a migration of some aspects of tile technology from west to east.43 Once established in Italy, some terracotta workshops undertook commissions in regions outside their own, as happened when the roof of the new temple at Satricum was most likely imported from a workshop in Caere in c. 535 bc, and when the same moulds were used for decorations on the roofs of buildings at Veii, Rome, and Velletri in c. 530 bc.44 It is thus possible to discern the ongoing circulation of experts and products to and within central Italy, and to allow for both itinerant and immigrant players alongside local experts. Contrary to the elision between art and architecture opened by the discussion of terracotta roof elements, it is useful to return to differences with the point that monumental structures were a complex set of artefacts that were usually only generated once rather than in a series. More often than not they were unique: for all that the sixth century bc saw a boom in temple building across central Italy, for example, no two were identical. Rather than being speculative or spontaneous works, they needed to be commissioned and organized in ways that took account of the necessary resources including land, labour, and materials. This combination of singularity and scale allows for the possibility that construction may have been an event with substantial cultural and/or ceremonial significance. New discoveries relating to the construction of Stonehenge in Neolithic Britain, for instance, have spurred the theory that people may have come to the building site in a ‘pilgrimage’ of a type paralleled in other prehistoric and pre-industrial contexts. Such gatherings became a celebration of the strength of a community and its ability to command such construction.45 The range of people drawn to building sites in this model is far wider than a master architect. In the following chapters, the 42 43 44

45

For a recent example, see Winter 2017; cf. Mertens-Horn 1995. Wikander 1990, 283; Damgaard Andersen and Toms 2001; Stissi 2017, 80, 82. Satricum: Lulof 2000, 211 with n. 13; Lulof 2006, 239–41; Winter 2009, 537. The Veii-RomeVelletri roofing system: Winter 2009, 311–93. www.english-heritage.org.uk/about-us/search-news/Building-Stonehenge-Was-One-LongCelebration [accessed 6 July 2018].

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vision of ‘the architect’ as an authoritative designer and overseer – or, as some Greek sources suggest, a pair of designers46 – gives way to the idea of a diverse range of technicians who are likely to have had specialized knowledge of building and go by different names in written sources, including architekton, tekton, mechanopoios, oikodomos, and technites in Greek, and architectus, structor, faber, and aedificator in Latin.47 By introducing the concept of a workforce of diverse levels of expertise that came together more organically, the idea of travelling master architects gives way to the concept of multigenerational projects open to a range of different influences over the entire period of construction. It is significant that against this backdrop of mobile elements many of the following analyses foreground local needs and knowledge. Familiarity with natural materials other than stone underpinned expertise in wooden and earth construction, with products shaped to meet the demands imposed by local climate, cult, and social priorities. The picture that emerges is one of an industry shaped by custom but simultaneously able to borrow from external practices in order to produce something deeply rooted in a specific community. Indeed, this accords with theoretical work on globalization, where one of the corollaries of cultural convergence is a resurgence of local differences and identities.48 It is possible that even within central Italy, architects and builders from Etruria and Latium may have perceived one another as far from ‘local’; mobility did not necessarily override identities based on connections to a smaller geographical area. Divergent spellings of names – such as Hercle, Hercules, and Herakles – between chapters represent an intentional attempt to acknowledge this potential range of perceptions and a reminder of the cosmopolitan context in which work occurred. All of these people, be they working on sites near or far from home, were involved in works that had public, and thereby political, significance. In this sense, builders again resemble artists, possessing skills that could be commissioned to bolster the prestige of clients and communities, albeit on a monumental scale. But was the promotion of status, the only rationale for building?

Why Build? For all that many buildings were unique, the act of building was not. The regularity with which some structures in central Italy were rebuilt, 46

47

Holst (2017, 7) points out the frequent pairing of architects named in connection with ancient Greek projects, such as Rhoikos and Theodoros, and Eurykles and Kharmophilus. Cuomo 2007, 134. 48 Hodos 2017, 4–5.

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redesigned, and refurbished between approximately 800 and 400 bc hints that some projects were less the product of an experienced, creative force than the result of more experimental, and ultimately less successful, techniques. The rapidity with which some temples were refashioned during the sixth and fifth centuries bc, for example, may reflect the testing of new designs, technologies, or materials. Indeed, temples have been the focus of many recent studies due to the excellent preservation of many of their foundations and roofs, and the significant role that these buildings played in cityscapes and landscapes, making them ideal for studies of architectural connectivity.49 In the few decades after c. 530 bc, up to fifteen temples appear to have been built in Rome and its environs in rapid succession, with roofs that were produced or influenced by one Roman workshop.50 At least 25 podium temples were erected in central Italy between c. 580 and 475 bc, and in the city of Rome alone 23 substantial buildings were constructed between 550 and 460 bc.51 This burst of construction has been variously connected with an aggrandizing programme of the Roman king Tarquinius Priscus and comparable authorities elsewhere, with a network of elite patrons who had competing or complementary agendas, and in some cases with the commercial success of one or more fashionable ateliers.52 Less glamorously, it may be that the instability or unsuitability of certain products required remedial work after one or two generations. Truss design, whole or partial stone columns,53 closed pediments, wooden joinery, and foundations that withstood extra loads and precarious geology and topography may all have taken time to resolve. In some instances, construction may have been a necessity rather than a symbol. The context of experimentation suggested here raises the question of whether architecture was driving change rather than responding to it. Regardless of whether buildings were being commissioned to replace existing ones that were no longer fit for purpose or to make statements about wealth and power, the search for solutions to problems of new scale or materials may have fostered greater connectivity. Once the decision to build a temple of unprecedented size or materials was taken, external expertise may have been required to realize it or to solve problems that arose during construction. Such situations may have created communities 49 51 52

53

For example, Lulof 2000; Lulof 2014; Potts 2015. 50 Lulof and Smith 2017, 7–9. Potts 2015, 46–9; Hopkins 2017, 141 n. 14; cf. the chapter by Hopkins in this volume. Summarized by Lulof 2000; Lulof and Smith 2017, 9, with important challenges to the idea of regnal patronage offered by Terrenato 2011; and Hopkins 2017. On the evidence for the use of stone in columns, see Potts 2014–15, 92.

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of practice that were ultimately self-reinforcing. The model of competition between centres is so familiar in accounts of early Italy that it can be forgotten that competition requires knowledge of, and comparison with, others and thus presupposes a level of connection. Connectivity may thus have a greater force in building than competition in certain circumstances.

Cultural Constructs One result of the growing number of studies of ‘pre-Roman’ and early Roman practices, including those by Turfa and Hopkins in this volume, is a prompt to reconceptualize Italian architecture in the first millennium bc as a continuum that encompasses many local traditions. Rather than viewing Etrusco-Italic and Roman architecture as separate though related disciplines, largely as a consequence of how they have been studied, it is also possible to see both as branches of a more broadly conceived type of central Italic architecture, an idea reflected in the title of this volume. Over time, the role of precedent in Roman architecture has been increasingly acknowledged. When Roman bricks were developed as a large-scale replacement for trimmed roof tiles in wall facings during the first century ad, they represented a development in a tradition of fired terracotta building materials in Italy that goes back to the seventh century bc (cf. Vitruvius, On Architecture 2.8.18–20). The arch, an engineering solution that was translated into concrete and then used to cover large spaces in entirely new ways during the Roman period, was already in use at Rome in the sixth century bc.54 It has been argued that domestic buildings centred on courtyards and atria are direct descendants of spatial patterns in housing that can be traced back as far as protohistoric Latium and Etruria,55 and Roman expertise in hydraulic engineering was arguably anticipated by extensive Etruscan systems of water management that allowed intensive cultivation of land.56 Basic materials also remained the same. Local tuffs, limestones, clay, and timber all shaped Republican buildings just as they had their predecessors, until the gradual introduction of pozzolana sand and thereby hydraulic mortar and concrete fundamentally altered 54 55

56

Cifani 2008, 322–3. Colantoni 2012; cf. Maiuri 2000, 89 (= Maiuri 1946, 127, reprinted); Jolivet 2011a; Meyers 2013; cf. Rohner 1996, 119–33. Ward-Perkins 1961, 47–50; Judson and Kahane 1963; Ortalli 1990; Bergamini 1991; Ortalli 1994; Ortalli 1995; Izzet 2007, 177. On early hydraulic architecture in Rome: Cifani 2008, 307–18.

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construction. It is consequently becoming more difficult to draw the boundaries of Roman architecture as a field of study chronologically and geographically. As a result, the very word ‘Roman’ is no longer straightforward in architectural histories. The traditional view that Roman architecture grew out of a mixture of Etrusco-Italic and Greek influences can now be challenged on a number of fronts. As some studies have suggested that Rome was developing an independent architectural style as early as the sixth century bc, it could be argued that ‘Roman’ architecture actually began in the Archaic period.57 At that time Rome was already in close contact with other communities in Italy, Greece, and other parts of the Mediterranean and there is evidence that patrons, architects, and craftsmen in the city adapted practices from elsewhere to meet their own needs. Other accounts suggest that architectural differences can be recognized between Etruria and Latium by the sixth century bc, further complicating the position of Rome in relation to both.58 Moreover, if buildings in Rome already show familiarity with and use of Greek architectural elements by the sixth century bc, then the nature of Hellenization in the late Republic needs careful formulation.59 Comparable studies of Greek architecture are furthermore repositioning Hellenic architecture in relation to other media and cultural practices.60 The parameters of national classifications, of Etrusco-Italic, Roman, and Greek architecture and their interrelationships are thus becoming more complicated and may be ready for reconsideration. Finally, narrowing discussion back down to one aspect of architectural culture rather than its whole expression, the chapters in this volume suggest that although the mobility and interconnectedness that is often viewed as a feature of Roman architecture may seem a logical outcome of extensive territorial control, a comparable situation can be recognized in Italy and parts of the Mediterranean prior to the fourth century bc. The case studies of tie-beam trusses, sanctuary design, tomb styles, and architectural terracottas presented here show unique combinations of local and foreign details in ways that are reminiscent of analyses of Roman imperial and provincial architecture. The flow of labour and materials across vast distances is integral to understanding many of the principles of Roman architecture ranging from modular systems to the sequence of work.61 If 57 59

60 61

Cifani 2008; Hopkins 2016. 58 For example, Potts 2015. Hopkins 2016, 172–80. The concept of ‘Hellenization’ in relation to Rome has been increasingly criticized, for example, by Flaig 1999; Hall 2002; Wallace-Hadrill 2008. Wilson Jones 2014. Such as modular design and columnar proportions: Wilson Jones 2000, 143–55.

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architecture was a mobile business prior to the Roman Republic, however, then in this regard, the difference with the Roman period becomes one of scale rather than nature, and mobility becomes another factor supporting the concept that architecture in central Italy can be seen as a continuum.

Contributions The themes outlined above weave through the following chapters, which can be read individually (with bibliographies placed immediately after each chapter for ease of further dissemination) or together, where collectively they provide a snapshot of scholarship on central Italic architecture that goes beyond typological studies. Jean MacIntosh Turfa begins with a re-examination of tie-beam trusses and argues that their invention arose from the woodworking techniques and tools honed in the construction of Bronze and Iron Age palafitte (pile dwellings). Showing that the earlier type of architecture developed in response to particular environmental conditions, she establishes that early builders had extensive knowledge of the potential of their raw materials and how they could be engineered. Out of this came the truss as a refinement in wooden roof structures that was able to counter the side loads of heavy terracotta roofs when the latter came into use during the seventh century bc. Through its eventual use in the sizeable roofs of basilicas in the fourth century ad, the truss represents a form of woodworking expertise that connects architecture in Italy from the Bronze Age through to Late Antiquity. The subject of architectural terracottas touched on in Turfa’s chapter has been one of the most productive areas of ancient architectural history in recent decades. Analyses of styles, techniques, and materials have enabled the reconstruction of entire roofs, the networks of workshops that produced them, and the distribution of decorations across settlements and regions. Regular international conferences have promoted the publication of findings and there is now a wealth of information available about particular buildings, sites, iconography, and workshops that is regularly being supplemented by excavations and studies of museum collections.62 In light of the expansion of the field and the diversity of its contents, Nancy Winter has taken this opportunity to provide a much-needed reassessment 62

For example, see the collected papers in Rystedt, Wikander, and Wikander 1993; Lulof and Moormann 1997; Edlund-Berry, Greco, and Kenfield 2006; and Lulof and Rescigno 2010.

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of the place of Etruscan architectural terracottas in their Mediterranean context. As one of the scholars who initiated the study of this material, her synthesis of its interconnections provides an expert overview of the subject that will be valuable for both specialists and new students. Winter’s up-todate model of the diffusion of terracotta roofing technology shows what artisans in Etruria borrowed from and contributed to wider practices, demonstrating that the spread of knowledge and decoration was not a oneway process. John Hopkins also analyses architectural terracottas in the following chapter, this time as proxies for buildings and thus as valuable signs of construction in the city of Rome during the fifth and fourth centuries bc. In doing so, he challenges the neglect of these centuries in many histories of Roman architecture and argues that this was far from a period of architectural stagnation. Here terracottas function as temporal connectors, linking buildings across centuries in the eyes of their builders and users, and as evidence that Rome remained in touch with wider trends in building and decoration in a time that has too often been read as a rupture between a highly networked archaic world and one increasingly in thrall to Greece. Promoting the study of this era supports the view of Etrusco-Italic and Roman architecture as closely related fields of study and encourages broader recognition of terracottas as evidence not just for roofs but for buildings now lost from the archaeological record. Patricia Lulof builds on this point by reconnecting the architectural terracottas from different roofs of the cult building on the acropolis at Satricum with related foundations and in the process discovering a hitherto-unknown temple. While it was known that the cult building at the site went through multiple phases of extension, refurbishment, and reconstruction, the application of 3D modelling techniques in which all elements of the buildings are connected has succeeded in reconciling problematic data by identifying a new structure named ‘Sacellum II’. When the results are compared to contemporary temples in Rome, the relative precociousness of different cities’ architecture can be re-evaluated, leading to the suggestion that Caere, along with the eastern part of the Greek world and Sicily, may have been influential in the development of religious architecture in central Italy. The findings show the value of studying terracottas and foundations together, something not yet done as a matter of course. Moving further north, previous studies have examined manifold connections between the city of Tarquinia and other parts of Italy and the

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Mediterranean.63 Giovanna Bagnasco Gianni adds to these with a holistic analysis of the monumental complex and the Ara della Regina sanctuaries, drawing out the cultural and religious attitudes of the community at Tarquinia that may have shaped their adoption and adaptation of external stimuli. Connections between the buildings on the plateau, the city they served, and the natural world around them are explored in ways that yield potential new insights into Etruscan rituals and the buildings that supported them. In arguing for the embeddedness of architecture in its local and religious contexts, the chapter emphasizes the importance of returning to the lived experience of buildings, and in so doing raises important issues about the interplay between the local and the international in architectural design. Lastly, Stephan Steingräber adds funerary architecture to the body of evidence that can profitably be analysed through the lens of connectivity. As material that connected the living and the dead, both at the level of the individual and the community, funerary architecture exhibits the values held important in both realms and, like religious architecture, is a vehicle for connecting the tangible and intangible. A case study of rock tombs shows the problems that arise in trying to identify certain forms as either predominantly local or international, and thus effectively signals the limits of analyses of geographical connectivity and the need to go beyond typology in some cases.

Conclusion This volume attempts to do more than present current thinking on the relative importance of external and internal stimuli for architectural change in early Italy. It promotes recognition of architectural design as a multifaceted process in which interactions between patrons, architects, and workers took place in a highly connected world, but above all in communities with specific, local skills and concerns. It argues that the biographies of buildings, from commission and construction to refurbishment and replacement, are sources for social as much as architectural history. A further hope is that exploring the selected material in a new way, through the deliberately loose lens of connectivity, will prompt additional study by others – on topics such as domestic architecture, possible civic structures, and vernacular buildings, to select only a few 63

The list is extensive, with examples including Bonghi Jovino 1999; Bonghi Jovino 2006; Bagnasco Gianni 2010.

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rich areas of potential study – that similarly endeavour to position central Italic practices in relation to others before, after, and elsewhere, to raise the profile of this material in regional histories and this region in studies of antiquity. As such, it is one step in an ongoing process of rebuilding and revalorization.

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charlotte r. potts Musgrove, J. (ed.), 1987. Sir Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture. London: Butterworths. Naso, A., 2000. ‘Etruscan and Italic Artefacts from the Aegean’. In Ancient Italy in Its Mediterranean Setting (Accordia Specialist Studies on the Mediterranean 4), edited by D. Ridgeway, F. R. Serra Ridgway, M. Pearce, and J. Wilkins, pp. 193–207. London: Accordia Research Institute. Naso, A., 2006. ‘Anathemata Etruschi nel Mediterraneo Orientale’. In Gli Etruschi e il Mediterraneo. Commerci e politica. Atti del XIII covegno internazionale di studi sulla storia e l’archeologia dell’Etruria, edited by G. M. Della Fina, pp. 351–416. Orvieto: Fondazione per il Museo Claudio Faina. Nijboer, A. J., 1997. ‘The Role of Craftsmen in the Urbanization Process of Central Italy (8th to 6th Centuries b.c.)’. In Urbanization in the Mediterranean in the 9th to 6th Centuries b.c. (Acta Hyperborea 7), edited by H. Damgaard Andersen, H. W. Horsnæs, S. Houby-Nielsen, and A. Rathje, pp. 383–406. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Nijboer, A. J., 1998. From Household Production to Workshops: Archaeological Evidence for Economic Transformation, Pre-Monetary Exchange and Urbanisation in Central Italy from 800 to 400 bc. Groningen: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Ortalli, J., 1990. ‘Nuovi dati sul popolamento di età celtica nel territorio bolognese’. Études Celtiques 27: 7–41. Ortalli, J., 1994. ‘Bolognia, Via della Dozza – Svincolo arcoveggio: resti di insediamento rurale’. In La pianura bolognese nel villanoviano: Insediamenti della prima età del Ferro, edited by M. Forte, M. P. von Eles, pp. 291–6. Florence: All’Insegna del Giglio. Ortalli, J., 1995. ‘Bonifiche e regolamentazioni idriche nella pianura emiliana tra l’età del ferro e la tarda antichità’. In Interventi di bonifica agraria nell’Italia romana, edited by L. Quilici and S. Quilici Gigli, pp. 59–86. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider. Owens, E. J., 1991. The City in the Greek and Roman World. London: Routledge. Pallottino, M., 1952. Etruscan Painting. Geneva: Skira. Pallottino, M., 1975. The Etruscans. Trans. J. Cremona. Edited by D. Ridgway. London: Allen Lane. Pearce, M., 2000. ‘Metals Make the World Go Round: The Copper Supply for Frattesina’. In Metals Make the World Go Round: The Supply and Circulation of Metals in Bronze Age Europe, edited by C. F. E. Pare, pp. 108–15. Oxford: Oxbow. Potts, C. R., 2014–15. ‘Vitruvius and Etruscan Design’. Accordia Research Papers 14: 87–99. Potts, C. R., 2015. Religious Architecture in Latium and Etruria, c. 900–500 bc. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Poucet, J., 2000. Les rois de Rome: Tradition et histoire. Brussels: Académie royale de Belgique.

Introduction: Building Connections Prag, J. R. W., 2006. ‘Poenus plane est– but who were the “Punickes”?’ Papers of the British School at Rome 74: 1–37. Purcell, N., 2006. ‘Orientalizing: Five Historical Questions’. In Debating Orientalization (Monographs in Mediterranean Archaeology 10), edited by C. Riva and N. C. Vella, pp. 21–30. London: Equinox. Revell, L., 2014. ‘Romanization’. In A Companion to Roman Architecture, edited by R. B. Ulrich and C. K. Quenemoen, pp. 381–98. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. Ridgway, D., 1988. ‘The Etruscans’. In The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. 4: Persia, Greece and the Western Mediterranean c. 525 to 429 bc, edited by J. Boardman, pp. 634–75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ridgway, D., 2006. ‘Riflessioni su Tarquinia. Demarato e l’“ellenizzazione” dei barbari’. In Tarquinia e le civiltà del Mediterraneo. Convegno internazionale, Milano, 22–24 giugno 2004, edited by M. Bonghi Jovino, pp. 27–47. Milan: Cisalpino. Ridgway, D., 2012. ‘Demaratus of Corinth and the Hellenisation of Etruria’. In From the Pillars of Hercules to the Footsteps of the Argonauts (Colloquia Antiqua 4), edited by A. Hermary and G. R. Tsetskhladze, pp. 207–22. Leuven: Peeters. Rieger, M., 2007. Tribus und Stadt. Die Entstehung der römischen Wahlbezirke im urbanen und mediterranen Kontext (ca. 750–450 v. Chr.). Göttingen: Edition Ruprecht. Riva, C., 2005. ‘The Culture of Urbanization in the Mediterranean c. 800–600 bc’. In Mediterranean Urbanization 800–600 bc, edited by R. Osborne and B. W. Cunliffe, pp. 203–32. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Riva, C., 2006. ‘The Orientalizing Period in Etruria: Sophisticated Communities’. In Debating Orientalization (Monographs in Mediterranean Archaeology 10), edited by C. Riva and N. C. Vella, pp. 110–34. London: Equinox. Riva, C., 2010. The Urbanisation of Etruria: Funerary Practices and Social Change 700–600 b.c. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rix, H., 2014. Etruskische Texte: Editio minor, 2 vols, 2nd ed. Tübingen: G. Narr. Rohner, D. D., 1996. ‘Etruscan Domestic Architecture: An Ethnoarchaeological Model’. In Etruscan Italy: Etruscan Influences on the Civilizations of Italy from Antiquity to the Modern Era, edited by J. F. Hall, pp. 115–45. Provo, UT: Museum of Art, Brigham Young University. Rystedt, E., C. Wikander, and Ö. Wikander (eds.), 1993. Deliciae Fictiles. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Central Italic Architectural Terracottas at the Swedish Institute in Rome, 10– 12 December 1990. Stockholm: Svenska Institutet. Scheffer, C., 1990. ‘Domus Regiae – A Greek Tradition?’. Opuscula Atheniensia 18: 185–91. Schweitzer, B., 1955. ‘Zum Krater des Aristonothos’. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts. Römische Abteilung 62: 78–106.

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charlotte r. potts Sherratt, A., and S. Sherratt, 1993. ‘The Growth of the Mediterranean Economy in the Early First Millennium bc’. World Archaeology 24.3: 361–78. Small, J. P., 1994. ‘Eat, Drink and be Merry: Etruscan Banquets’. In Murlo and the Etruscans: Art and Society in Ancient Etruria, edited by R. D. De Puma and J. P. Small, pp. 85–94. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Small, J. P., 2008. ‘Looking at Etruscan Art in the Meadows Museum’. In From the Temple and the Tomb: Etruscan Treasures from Tuscany, edited by P. G. Warden, pp. 40–65. Dallas: Meadows Museum, SMU. Smith, C. J., 1998. ‘Traders and Artisans in Archaic Central Italy’. In Trade, Traders and the Ancient City, edited by H. Parkins and C. J. Smith, pp. 31–51. London: Routledge. Sourisseau, J. C., 2002. ‘Les importations étrusques à Marseille: De Gaston Vasseur aux grandes interventions d’archéologie préventive: Une découverte progressive, des problématiques renouvelées’. In Les Étrusques en mer. Épaves d’Antibes à Marseille, edited by L. Long, P. Pomey, and J.-C. Sourisseau, pp. 88–95. Aix-en-Provence: Edisud. Steingräber, S., 2001. ‘Etruscan Urban Planning’. In The Etruscans, edited by M. Torelli, pp. 291–311. London: Thames and Hudson. Steingräber, S., 2006. Abundance of Life: Etruscan Wall Painting. Trans. R. Stockman. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum. Stissi, V. V., 2017. ‘Believing the Unbelievable? A Greek Perspective on the Tarquinian World’. In The Age of Tarquinius Superbus: Central Italy in the Late 6th Century. Proceedings of the Conference ‘The Age of Tarquinius Superbus, A Paradigm Shift?’ Rome, 7–9 November 2013, edited by P. S. Lulof and C. J. Smith, pp. 79–84. Leuven.: Peeters. Terrenato, N., 2011. ‘The Versatile Clans: Archaic Rome and the Nature of Early City-States in Central Italy’. In State Formation in Italy and Greece: Questioning the Neoevolutionist Paradigm, edited by N. Terrenato and D. C. Haggis, pp. 231–44. Oxford: Oxbow. Thomas, M. L., and G. E. Meyers (eds.), 2012. Monumentality in Etruscan and Early Roman Architecture: Ideology and Innovation. Austin: University of Texas Press. Torelli, M., 1983. ‘Gli spettacoli conviviali di età classica. Documenti archeologici su possibili fatti genetici e sviluppi’. In Spettacoli conviviali dall’antichità classica alle corti italiane del ’400. Atti del VII convegno di studio, Viterbo, 27–30 maggio 1982, pp. 51–64.Viterbo: Amministrazione provinciale di Viterbo. Torelli, M., 1985. ‘Introduzione’. In Case e palazzi d’Etruria, edited by S. Stopponi, pp. 21–32. Florence: Regione Toscana. Torelli, M., 2000a. ‘The Etruscan City-State’. In A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures: An Investigation Conducted by the Copenhagen Polis Centre, edited by M. Hansen, pp. 189–208. Copenhagen: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab.

Introduction: Building Connections Torelli, M., 2000b. ‘Le regiae etrusche e laziali tra orientalizzante e arcaismo’. In Principi etruschi: tra Mediterraneo ed Europa, edited by A. Dore, M. Marchesi, and L. Minarini, pp. 67–78. Venice: Marsilio. Trigger, B., 2006. A History of Archaeological Thought, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van’t Lindenhout, E., 1997. ‘Architectural and Spatial Organization of the First Towns in the Coastal Plain of Latium (6th century bc): Towards a General Scheme’. In Urbanization in the Mediterranean in the 9th to 6th centuries b.c. (Acta Hyperborea 7), edited by H. Damgaard Andersen, H. W. Horsnæs, S. Houby-Nielsen, and A. Rathje, pp. 297–315. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Van der Rohe, M., 1924. ‘Baukunst und Zeitwille’. Der Querschnitt 4.1: 31–2. Van Dommelen, P., 2006. ‘The Orientalizing Phenomenon: Hybridity and Material Culture in the Western Mediterranean’. In Debating Orientalization (Monographs in Mediterranean Archaeology 10), edited by C. Riva and N. C. Vella, pp. 135–52. London: Equinox. Van Dommelen, P., 2017. ‘Classical Connections and Mediterranean Practices: Exploring Connectivity and Local Interactions’. In The Routledge Handbook of Archaeology and Globalization, edited by T. Hodos, pp. 618–33. London: Routledge. Vianello, A., 2005. Late Bronze Age Mycenaean and Italic Products in the West Mediterranean: A Social and Economic Analysis. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. Villing, A., and U. Schlotzhauer, 2006. ‘Naukratis and the Eastern Mediterranean: Past, Present and Future’. In Naukratis: Greek Diversity in Egypt. Studies on East Greek Pottery and Exchange in the Eastern Mediterranean, edited by A. Villing and U. Schlotzhauer, pp. 1–10. London: British Museum. Wallace-Hadrill, A., 2008. Rome’s Cultural Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Warden, P. G., 2008. ‘Ritual and Representation on a Campana Dinos in Boston’. Etruscan Studies 11: 121–33. Warden, P. G., 2012. ‘Monumental Embodiment: Somatic Symbolism and the Tuscan Temple’. In Monumentality in Etruscan and Early Roman Architecture: Ideology and Innovation, edited by M. Thomas and G. E. Meyers, pp. 82–110. Austin: University of Texas Press. Ward-Perkins, J. B., 1961. ‘Veii: The Historical Topography of the Ancient City’. Papers of the British School at Rome 29: 1–119. Ward-Perkins, J. B., 1977. Roman Architecture. New York: H. N. Abrams. Wikander, C., 1990. ‘The Artemision Sima and Its Possible Antecedents’. Hesperia 59: 275–83. Wilson Jones, M., 2000. Principles of Roman Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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charlotte r. potts Wilson Jones, M., 2014. Origins of Classical Architecture: Temples, Orders and Gifts to the Gods in Ancient Greece. New Haven/London: Yale University Press. Winter, N. A., 2009. Symbols of Wealth and Power: Architectural Terracotta Decoration in Etruria and Central Italy, 640–510 b.c. (Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome Supplement 9). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Winter, N. A., 2017. ‘Traders and Refugees: Contributions to Etruscan Architecture’. Etruscan Studies 20.2: 123–51. Zevi, F. 1995. ‘Demarato e i re “corinzi” di Roma’. In L’incidenza dell’antico: Studi in memoria di Ettore Lepore. Atti del convegno internazionale, Anacapri, 24– 28 marzo 1991, edited by A. Storchi Marino, pp. 291–314. Naples: Luciano. Zifferero, A., 1991. ‘Forme di possesso della terra e tumuli orientalizzanti nell’Italia centrale tirrenica’. In Papers of the Fourth Conference of Italian Archaeology 1: The Archaeology of Power, edited by E. Herring, R. Whitehouse, and J. Wilkins, pp. 107–34. London: Accordia Research Institute.

2

The Silent Roofing Revolution The Etruscan Tie-beam Truss jean macintosh turfa Fir and larch are strong weight-carriers, even when placed horizontally . . . and they fail owing to rot before they fail in strength . . . Walnut bends easily – for this wood also is used for making beams; when it breaks it gives a warning in advance by a creaking noise, as happened for instance at Antandros, when people in the public baths took alarm at the sound and made their escape. Pliny, Natural History 16.222–31

Pliny, following Theophrastus, tells this anecdote of a timber species that warns of its impending failure (those horizontal beams were by his day crucial to the safety of large buildings). Silent buildings could be treacherous, but the most important architectural revolution in early Italy has been relatively silent in scholarship2 because of the fragile nature of the archaeological evidence: Italic construction utilized wood and mud brick, and the structural members have rotted and disappeared with only a few recent finds excepted. The tie-beam roof truss was an Etruscan (or Italic) invention, although it is so basic that it has appeared in other cultures and at other times. It developed from techniques of carpentry that had already been applied in prehistoric and proto-historic wooden structures common to the Italian peninsula and also to the transalpine region of Europe.3 The new technical phenomenon was inspired by one of the early foreign influences in Italian technology: the advent, in the seventh century bc, of the notion of roofing with terracotta tiles, a felicitous stimulus from 1

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Pondus sustinere validae abies, larix, etiam in traversam positae; . . . priusque carie quam viribus deficiunt . . . Facile pandatur iuglans, fiunt enim et ex ea trabes; frangi se praenuntiat crepitu, quod et in Antandro accidit, cum e balineis territi sono profugerunt. English translation from Loeb edition: Rackham 1945, 532–3. Cf. Theophrastus’ identification of the wood as sweet chestnut in Enquiry into Plants 5.6.1. See Ulrich 2007, 126–36, 138–43, at 140–3. This work deals with Roman craft and essentially dates the beginning of tie beam use to the late Republican civic basilica (p. 143), overlooking the architecture of Poggio Civitate. The beginnings of this line of enquiry were presented in December 1999 in an invited paper for the Annual Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America: ‘The Technology of Wooden Structures: Etruscan Temples and Shipbuilding’ for the colloquium ‘Etruscan Technologies’ (30 December 1999). They have developed variously since then. Also, see an alternative argument by Lulof and Opgenhaffen in this volume.

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Corinth.4 In the Villanovan hut village or the classic Greek sanctuary, tiebeam truss systems were never needed. Small huts or houses have narrow interior spans and thus small and light roofs, easily supported on thin walls and narrow beams, and Greek temples used stone for stability. The social atmosphere in seventh-century Italy which received the Corinthian exile Demaratus and his entourage (and which benefitted from Levantine emissaries as well: see the eye-opening architectural finds at Tarquinia)5 fostered new expressions in architecture, such as buildings with large, open interiors and Tuscan temples with deep porches that called forth new engineering tactics. It is only large, monumental buildings such as temples, palaces, and public buildings which have such large spans that they need to guard against the shear forces of sloping roofs of heavy tiles. Etruscan Italy was ready for innovation though. The techniques and tools of carpentry that had created the pile dwellings, decks, and flood caissons of the Bronze and Iron Age palafitte (pile dwellings) would quite simply produce the tie-beam truss to support the gabled roofs and wide spans of deep porches and broad interiors that characterize the distinctive Tuscan temple design and its offshoots. And with tie-beam trusses, one day Rome would invent the basilica form that remains today. The evidence for the earliest tie-beam trusses is based on the engineering calculations of the size and stresses of early Etruscan monumental buildings. Support for the feasibility of such construction comes from dwellings and specialized structures utilizing wood that have been found in central and northern Italy and beyond. While the evidence for joinery has been detected in disparate sites and cultures of the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, this is due to the constraints of preservation of their perishable, organic building materials. The response of these groups to environment and to available construction materials was similar, but it seems that the implementation of tie-beam trusses and the monumental plans they made possible first occurred among the Etruscans and their close associates.

Climate and Wooden Architecture The architecture of the second and early first millennia bc was inextricably linked to the terrain and climate of Italy, both in the Tyrrhenian region (as 4 5

Cf. the chapter by Winter in this volume. On the pier and panel Levantine/Punic masonry at Tarquinia, see Ciafaloni 2006; cf. Stopponi 2006 for similarities at Orvieto (Cannicella), and also the chapter by Bagnasco Gianni in this volume.

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at Campanian Nola-Croce del Papa and Poggiomarino or the crater lakes of southern Etruria and Latium) and in the interior and north (as at Fiavé or Ledro). At that time, a relatively mild, wet climate, punctuated in the north (in the Po Valley region) by tidal events and irregular and massive floods, supported lakes (some much older) and swamps in the south.6 This led many communities to locate their palafitte buildings on platforms beside swamps or lakeshores. Other settlements sheltered behind caissons or ramparts that could break and divert floodwaters from villages. Huts – and the houses that followed them – relied on fairly steep sloping roofs to hasten the run-off from the wet weather and deep eave overhangs to protect walls and foundations. The same climate furnished ample timber reserves for massive building projects in the mid-seventh century, which is fortunate, because the native stone resources were not always appropriate to some forms of masonry. (As a general rule, the volcanic tufo and nenfro, as Pliny was well aware, were suitable only for in-ground foundations where they would not dry and crumble.) Woodworking traditions of the famous palafitte of the Po Valley and Alpine foothills continued in Adriatic cities like Spina, where fifth-century canals and wooden structures have been preserved in the waterlogged subsoil.7 The techniques of making timber into sturdy homes, platforms, and flood barriers gave the ancestral Etruscan and Italic communities special insights to apply when terracotta roof tiles appeared. The need for rapid runoff and for the enduring protection given by tiles (including fire prevention) imposed two new problems of loading on their builders, namely, how to handle vertical loads and side loads.

Meeting the Challenge of a Heavy Tiled Roof The revolution of tiled roofs begun in the mid-seventh century spread very rapidly and immediately crossed social barriers: as Nancy Winter, Charlotte and Örjan Wikander, and others have shown, the earliest examples include simple, private houses, such as those at Acquarossa and San Giovenale, and, slightly later, the miners’ village at Lago dell’Accesa.8 6

7 8

For references on climate, including the Hallstatt Minimum, in proto-historic Italy, see Turfa 2012, ch. 3. Govi in Sassatelli and Govi 2013, 295, fig. 15.20; see also references (p. 300). For background on these sites, see Winter 2009, 8, 539–43, 549, 558.

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I suggest that, as so well illustrated in the urban development of Acquarossa, the original rapid spread and ready reception of the tiled roofing system by private families shows that the Etruscans were already at ease with the concept of a wooden roof structure,9 and, in fact, that they had already seen the simple woodworking engineering in use in other wooden constructions such as huts, platforms, and fortifications, using mortise and tenon joinery. As indicated by Nancy Winter and Örjan Wikander and others, the subsequent switch early in the sixth century to relief-moulded revetment plaques to protect beams did implement a change: relief plaques appear only on public or monumental buildings (as at Poggio Civitate and on Tuscan temples), not private homes (which of course still used the basic terracotta tiles).10 The transfer from simple white-on-red painted revetment plaques to relief-moulded plaques and greater standardization may be linked to the rise of a terracotta roofing industry in place of the pithos factories responsible for the first tiles (as suggested for Acquarossa).11 The same industry would later (in the fifth and fourth centuries) be responsible for one more change, in the switch to a much deeper, heavier wooden beam for architraves and ridges, which stimulated the design of floral revetments such as on Pyrgi Temple A (see below).12 To achieve the safety of a massively heavy roof on a large building constructed with shear-prone materials (for instance, mud bricks that are liable to shift or cascade), early Etruscan builders used a tie-beam truss. One rare piece of evidence is the impression of a decayed or burnt roof truss at Poggio Civitate (see below). Other means of recognizing these innovations depend upon structural analysis, mathematical modelling, and recognition of details such as drip lines and proxy measurements of terracotta revetments in the absence of wooden members. It is often possible to apply a few basic principles of physics to the excavated data, and calculate the sizes and weights of roofs from what measurements remain, and then to calculate the loads and safety factors. Scholars who emphasize the primacy of Greek architecture sometimes take umbrage at the thought that Etruscan or Italic invention preceded Greek implementation of this engineering stratagem, but this is really a non-issue. The monumental temples of old Greece, constructed in 9 10

11 12

On the impetus to construct tiled roofs, see Ö. Wikander 1988, 1990, 1992. Wikander (2017, 188) refers to this as ‘Della Seta’s first phase’. See for background Winter 2013, also Winter 2009, 47, 542–3 and 578–82. C. Wikander 1988, 131–2; Wikander 1993, 101. For illustrations, see Carlucci 2013; for definition of the phase, see Wikander 2017, 189.

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stone and stable simply because of their massive material, were not prone to problems of side loading. Also, the late Charlotte Wikander suggested that the long habitation history of Greek cities explains their relative slowness in adopting tiled roofs for private houses and shops.13 Cities already large, dense, and busy could not in one concerted effort relocate neighbourhoods (as happened at Acquarossa) or demolish and rebuild dwellings with stronger walls and different floor plans just to accommodate the heavier tiled roofs, and, apart from the fire hazard, they were quite comfortable with thatch.14 The cities being freshly organized in eighth- and seventhcentury Etruria (and also new foundations like Marzabotto) could be (re) configured more efficiently; citizens probably received inducements to move into the new housing. (The colonies of Magna Graecia began with the Greek paradigm already in place, and so their monumental construction proceeded on a different design.)

The Principle of a Tie-beam Truss Engineer Alwin G. Steinmayer alerted me to the Etruscan implementation of tie-beam roof trusses when he generated the first equations demonstrating side loading in timber and mud-brick buildings.15 To consider the load flow of the side loads through the structure of an ancient building, the total roof load is calculated by using the building’s width/span, which in Etruscan structures includes the dimensions of substantial eave overhangs. This width is multiplied by the length of the building, and divided by the cosine of the roof-pitch angle (we can call it, arbitrarily, Θ), to obtain the roof area. Roof angles of thatched roofs must be quite steep, but for gabled, tiled roofs they fall within a fairly narrow range. In order to drain rapidly but also maintain a reasonable tile overlap,16 the roof angle had to be 12° or greater; on large buildings, considerations of size and weight mean the angle must be under 20°.17 The weight of the roof is estimated from the 13 15 16

17

C. Wikander 1988, 73, 126–8. 14 Wikander 1990, 280; see also Ö. Wikander 1988; 1992. Turfa and Steinmayer 1996. It is not desirable to nail each tile in place – any extra hole forms a conduit for rainwater to seep into the woodwork beneath. Even in Etruria, where metal was relatively plentiful, each nail had to be made by hand, and would have added costs and time to the construction of tiled buildings. On roof angles/slopes, see Wikander 1993, 121–3. Dr Wikander kindly discussed this with me at the time of the original article. Nielsen (1991, 252) suggested that the roof of the Upper Building at Poggio Civitate exceeded an angle of 20°, based on a 35° angle on a plaster fragment interpreted as filling for the corner of a gable. No contemporary buildings have yet been found with such angles, though; if the Poggio Civitate gable did exceed 20°, the only way it could have been feasible was with extensive reliance on wooden trusses. Damgaard Andersen (2001) compares the roof angles of thatched and tiled structures, noting that thatch must be roofed at

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specific gravity of terracotta clay times the dimensions of the tiles, per unit area; multiplied by the total roof area, this gives us the roof load. The side load is this total load times the sine of Θ. This is the side load that must be constrained, or else the walls of the building will topple outward. The solution is the tie-beam roof truss.

Approximate Mass and Stress Calculations • One square metre of terracotta roof tiling 50 mm thick weighs about 60 kg. Ornaments, ridges, flanges, mouldings, even statues, add to the weight, but not by significant amounts: the requirements of weatherproofing and the safe firing and installation of such tiles impose limits on the extravagance of their size and form. • Örjan Wikander estimated for Acquarossa that the weight of tiles on a house averaged between 50 and 70 kg per square metre of roof, increasing by perhaps 10 kg per square metre when wet.18 • All our measurements for the height of the frontal entablature of Etruscan temples have been taken from the terracotta revetments of the long-disintegrated wooden beams.19 • We must add 40 per cent for the weight of the wooden beams and supports. The total weight for a hypothetical section of tiled roof would then be approximately 85 kg/m2. (Modern building estimates would only assume 20 per cent additional weight for the wooden underpinnings,

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45° to 60° to promote rapid run-off of precipitation. She has identified the roofs of various models and urns as thatch or tile by their angles, and by comparison with modern huts and Etruscan tombs. The sixth-century Satricum roof preserves an apex fragment identified as a 26.5° slope for the gable: Winter 2009, 398, 530–1. The pan tiles for the little Acquarossa houses averaged 10 to 15 kg each, while the matching cover tiles weighed 2 to 3 kg each, according to Wikander 1993, 128–30. Giuntoli (1997) discusses clay, mud brick, and terracotta as building materials. One of the few complete tiles excavated at the Lago dell’Accesa mining village measured 46.5 x 24 cm, fairly close to the Vitruvian ‘Lydian’ (Etruscan) standard of 1.5 x 1 ‘foot’ or 44 x 29 cm. See Wikander 2017, 163 for update and discussion of Poggio Civitate and related roofs. It appears that the slanting cornices of some large temples were covered in modular fashion by superimposed rows of the same terracotta frieze plaques. Once the plaques have fallen from the building, it is practically impossible to determine this. Here, the single-plaque height measurements are given as a conservative means of estimating sizes to avoid overestimating the size of a roof beam. For evidence of the correlation between terracottas and beams, see Strandberg Olofsson 1984, 31–80 (Acquarossa, Zone F); also Strandberg Olofsson 1986; and Andrén 1940, cxxxiv–v. Critique of our calculations: Damgaard Andersen 1998, 122, cited by Winter 2009, 527, n. 111.

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but they rely on more slender, mechanically sawn beams and abundant metal fasteners.) Beams in ancient buildings were fastened with wooden dowels and tenons set into mortise holes cut with hand tools – nails and bolts were expensive and time-consuming to manufacture. Also, in structures exposed to wind and rain, metal pins can lead to problems as they make holes through which moisture will travel, and may corrode, leading to structural damage.20 Undoubtedly the earliest structures with tie beams would have been monumental buildings for use by large groups, or perhaps palaces at the great cities like Caere, Tarquinia, Vulci, or Veii, erected soon after the midseventh-century arrival of Demaratus, but these do not survive. The earliest available examples are the Southeast or Workshop Building and the Upper or Courtyard Building on the hilltop site of Poggio Civitate, constructed c. 630 and 575 bc, respectively. They were capped with massively heavy tiles and simas, and their measurements can only be explained by reference to thick tie beams in the wooden roof system.21 The Southeast Building’s elaborate roof was evidently supported on mere posts, yet it already had a sophisticated roof system developed some time before its fatal fire in the late seventh century. Likewise, the broad halls in the later Upper Building’s northern wing, whatever their purpose, can only have been spanned safely by tie beams. The following examples illustrate the calculations.22 20

21

22

Approximating the weight of the wooden members so roughly is acceptable here because even a major error in the estimate, say by a factor of two or even three, would not affect the results, due to the overwhelming mass of terracotta employed along with the wood. These joints must have been fashioned of wood. Metal nails are rare in early structures, and were usually reserved for applications in which they were indispensable, such as affixing plaques to vertical surfaces or the ends of rows of tiles. Metal was of course not an option in the prehistoric traditions of domestic carpentry of Italy: see Turfa and Steinmayer 1996, 19 nn. 28– 9. Note that the eventual technique of manufacture (and maintenance) of the Sublician Bridge in Rome eschewed metal fasteners: Pliny, Natural History 36.100. At Acquarossa, only the end tile in each vertical row was nailed down: Wikander and Wikander 1986, 71. At Corinth, many tiles were bedded with unfired clay mixed with straw (Robinson 1984, 62 n. 20; Hemans 1989, 253), and at Isthmia, only certain pan tiles were nailed. Rook (1979) notes that today much vernacular Mediterranean architecture still carries loose tiles. While it may be desirable for excavators of ancient structures to record their measurements in the greatest possible detail, for most purposes, such precise figures would imply a kind of spurious scientific accuracy that is not really truthful. Most ancient buildings have either weathered, lost their original surfacing, or their precise contours have otherwise been changed by remodelling, erosion, etc. Thus, the current state that is measured inadvertently represents something different from the original. Furthermore, ancient architects tended to lay out large buildings with simple equipment, like chalk lines. Hand-hewn stone blocks and mud bricks would have varied slightly, and there is also ample evidence that builders would trim the joints and corners of blocks or tiles as part of the construction process.

37

Table 2.1 Dimensions of monumental buildings in Etruria and Latium, seventh to second century bc. All are temples except Poggio Civitate, Southeast Building (dimensions in meters) Thickne- Estim- O=overhang Ridge ss of top ated D=dripline beam size span of wall

Width x Length

Height of Number entabla- Roof of colAxial angle umns spacing ture

Poggio Civitate, Southeast Building 630–580 bc

6 x 48 +

41+

2.75

?

—

—

6

—

0.35

Veii, oikos, Piazza d’Armi 600/575 bc

8 x 15

—

—

0.23

15°

—

7?

—

Rome, Capitoline Temple of Jupiter 582–509 bc Rome, Temple at Sant’Omobono, Phase 2 c. 540 bc Veii, Portonaccio temple c. 500 bc

53 x 62

24

9.5 (12) 0.98

19°?

0.59

50

11 x 19

—

—

0.27

18°

0.65

11

O>0.23 (eaves tile) O>0.37 (eaves tile) —

18 x 18

4?

3.5

0.65

17° or 19° 1.0

Building, date

16 x 27 (cella 4 x 8 Satricum, Mater 8 x 18) Matuta temple 1, second half of 6th century bc

4 and 3 0.4

17°

17.5

0.6 to 0.9 15

—

—

O>0.30 D=0.3

—

O=2.3

—

Remarks mutulus and antefixes 0.18 x 0.16 or 0.11 x 0.12 pantiles 0.532 x 0.747 interior probably had a central post to support the columen 15 beams of 7.85 10 architraves of 10.46 (Meiggs 1982, 221) column heights estimated 4.0 mutulus plaques greater than 0.78 x 0.54 “Greek” plan sine postico roof height estimated 3.0

Satricum, Mater Matuta temple 2 early 5th c. bc

21 x 33 (cella 4 x 8 8 x 21)

3.9 to 5.4

0.59

12°

0.5 to 0.9 20

Pyrgi, Temple B (“Greek” plan) c. 510 bc Pyrgi, Temple A (Tuscan type) c. 460 bc

19 x 29 (cella 4 x 6 7 x 8) (18)

4.7

0.51

15° 30”

1.3 to 0.5 18.5

23 x 34 (cellae 6, 8, 6)

8

9.6

0.65

18°

0.57 23 to 0.66

O=3.88

Cosa Capitolium c. 150 bc

20 x 27

6

6.5

0.6

18 or 19°

0.777

O=2.05 D=2.30

20

O=2.6

—

—

1.4 x 1.3 (revetment plaque) over 1.0 m2

“Greek” peripteral plan with insert roof (height estimated 1.6) mutuli greater than 1.55 mutuli=1.83 Nails of columen plaque 0.278 long beams estimated: purlins 0.296 rafters 0.148

All entablature dimensions are estimated from terracotta revetment plaques. Sources of measurements: for full information and bibliography, see Winter 2009, Wikander 2017, Turfa and Steinmayer 1996, 10–11. Poggio Civitate, Southeast Building: Nielsen 1987; Phillips 1993. Veii, Piazza d’Armi oikos: Stefani 1944; Colonna 1984; Melis 1985. Rome, Capitolium: Lake 1935; Gjerstad 1960 and 1966; Colonna 1981, 1984, and 1987; Di Mino 1981, Martinez-Pinna 1981; Colonna 1985; Richardson 1992, 221–24. Rome, Sant’Omobono Temple (Fortuna Virilis, Mater Matuta?): Sommella Mura 1977 and 1981; Colonna 1985; Colonna 1987. Veii, Portonaccio temple: Stefani 1953; De Vita de Angelis 1968; Colonna 1985. Satricum, Mater Matuta temple(s): de Waele 1981, Colonna 1984, Knoop 1985, Stibbe and Heldring 1985; Maaskaant-Kleibrink 1987. Pyrgi, Temples A and B: Colonna et al. 1970; Colonna, Melis, and Baglione 1985. Cosa, Capitolium: Brown, Richardson, and Richardson, Jr. 1960.

40

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Poggio Civitate (Murlo), Southeast Building The Poggio Civitate Southeast Building, destroyed in a fire that swept the site, had a roof of tiles with sculpturally ornamented simas (heads, rosettes, and feline spouts). It could not have stood without tie-beam trusses, especially as it was in use as a workshop with large items like actual tiles being moved about beneath its roof.23 What remains of this structure measures 6 m by more than 48 m overall; the span is estimated as 6 m; the ridge beam is estimated as 0.35 m (with more than 41 columns/ posts with axial spacing of 2.75 m.). Nancy Winter has pointed to the ghost of a collapsed and decomposed roof truss in the discoloured impressions of wooden beams that were uncovered amidst the flagstones that mark the posts of the Southeast Building.24 Beams of uniform crosssection seem to have fallen, preserving their joints, which once formed gabled segments rising at intervals above the ridge beam.

Poggio Civitate (Murlo), Courtyard Building Exterior dimensions are 60 x 61 m; the structure is nearly square overall. Beam size as estimated from revetments: architrave 0.24 x 0.55 m; ridgepole (greater than) 0.24 x 0.39 m; mutuli (purlins) 0.16 x 0.18 m.25 The northern flank has only two rooms, longer and broader than any on the other sides (Fig. 2.1). In the western room there are traces of a few stone bases for posts down its centre – again, as in the Southeast Building, these posts were not anchored in the ground and would not have been sturdy enough to obviate the need for tension beams in the roof. The inner faces of the walls had large postholes set at intervals of 3.0 to 3.5 m, and dug 30 to 50 cm into the foundations; the holes are 60 cm in diameter and must have held wooden posts (round in section) just slightly smaller than 60 cm, packed in with small stones and dirt.26 While this is sturdy construction, it is not massive enough to withstand the side loading of 23

24

25

26

Concise description of structure and roof: Winter 2009, 52–4. Turfa and Steinmayer 1996, 21–4; Nielsen 1999, 97–8, figs 2, 3. Tentative reconstructions and critique: Wikander 2017, 155–8, figs 50–2; 168–70, fig. 56. ‘Traces of fallen beams on the floor demonstrate that a truss was used at intervals to carry the roof’: Winter 2009, 505, see also 528–9 (‘beams’ may be the ridge, purlins, and/or rafters). Photo of some beam scars on excavation: Nielsen 1987, 92, fig. 3; state plan with impressions of beams indicated: Nielsen 1991, 256–9 and fig. 4. For a basic description of the Poggio Civitate Courtyard Building including the roof, see Winter 2009, 152–9; on tie-beam truss and measurements, see Turfa and Steinmayer 1996, 22–4. See Phillips 1967, 135, pl. 40.

The Silent Roofing Revolution

Fig. 2.1 Poggio Civitate (Murlo). Plan of upper or courtyard building, c. 580–575 bc, showing the north flank at top, with rooms with widest span. Conjectured remaining posts marked with X, and conjectured lines of eroded mud-brick walls marked with broken lines. (Redrawn after Turfa and Steinmayer 2002, 2, fig. 1)

41

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the roof; the inner posts may only have served to anchor wooden panelling, a small gallery, or storage shelving like an armoury instead.

Rome, the Capitolium The Capitoline Temple of Rome, planned at the end of the seventh century and completed in 510/9 bc, had a colossal porch and had to have tie beams, as did other temples of that plan. The well-defined design lends itself to computational study:27 the plan is 53 x 62 m; the estimated span is 50 m; and the architrave (going by revetments) is calculated as 0.98 x 0.54 m.

Veii, Portonaccio Temple Here the calculations can be completed based on extant measurements. The Portonaccio Temple of Veii, from the late sixth century, also had a deep porch and deep eave overhangs. The placement of tension members is assumed to be equivalent to the column spacing, with five tension trusses spaced 3.5 m on centres. The weight of the tiled roof is estimated as 85 kg per square metre. The roof span with a generous overhang is estimated as 19.0 m. This gives a roof load per truss of approximately 6,000 kg. The half-span load is thus 3,000 kg. With a roof pitch of 17°, the tension load is approximately 850 kg. Estimating the depth of the tension members as the measurable height of the terracotta revetments gives a figure of 0.66 m. The thickness of tension members would be equivalent to the width of the column capitals, approximately 0.85 m (restored). The tension member then must have been a massive, roughly squared (with an axe) beam measuring 0.66 x 0.85 x 19.0 m. The cross-sectional area would be approximately 0.56 m2 and would be loaded at about 0.15 kg/cm2. Allowable stress for tension in wood varies by species (as Pliny knew), from, say, 21 kg/cm2 for bald cypress to 57.4 kg/cm2 for oak – quite far from the actual loading. This means that there must have been some reason other than loading for the size of beams, and I suggest that it lies in the joinery, in the method of fastening beams.

Pyrgi, Temple A This is another example of the well-defined plan with deep porch span and wide overhang. At Pyrgi, charred fragments of a large, weight-bearing beam (trave portante), probably from the fifth-century Temple A, were 27

For discussion and details, see Turfa and Steinmayer 1996.

The Silent Roofing Revolution

found preserved in the southern well.28 Curiously, the wood has been identified as cypress, a species favored by Theophrastus (Enquiry into Plants 5.7.4) and Pliny for weight-bearing beams. The hierarchy of timber species and the large size of the beams may be associated with the method of fastening the trusses with joints of wood.

Evidence from Funerary Art I have suggested29 that the wooden tie-beam system, representing complete structures that expressed social power, affluence, and city leadership, was so important in its early days – that is, in the late seventh and sixth centuries bc – that it was a kind of status symbol and was even reflected in the design of relief-carved, simplified versions, in the tombs of Caere and Tarquinia.30 Early versions in the Banditaccia necropolis at Caere in the Tomba degli Animali Dipinti are carved above each interior doorway appearing as an additional cross-beam placed above each architrave.31 The Tomba dei Leoni Dipinti also has the double slope of a gabled roof overhead, and where it is stopped by a wall and doorway to the next room, there is an additional horizontal ‘beam’ running above the architrave and tied into the gables by a heavy central strut (roof-tree) and smaller struts on each end.32 In Caeretan Monte Abetone, the Tomba Campana I also features a stylized version of the extra, horizontal beam on one side of its carved gables.33 At Banditaccia again, Tomb 1 beneath Tumulus III shows two extra horizontal beams above its interior architrave, set off with five vertical struts and crowned with a disc that might represent the cut end of a round ridge beam.34 Since such reliefs are non-structural, there is an element of abstraction in them; the only explanation for the extra horizontal beam, though, is as the replica of some real element in architecture, however schematically rendered. Coded references to tie beams, carefully (if symbolically) depicted in the tombs of ruling families, imply that, like public buildings and temples, their 28

29 31

32 34

Colonna 1988–9, 111 nn. 150–1, 113, fig. 88; also Coccolini and Follieri 1980, 283, 288. The wells at Pyrgi held smaller beams/branches of native conifer, oak, and olive-wood which may have been part of the roofing under the tiles; fragments of mortise-and-tenon joined furniture were also identified. For a plan of Pyrgi A, see Turfa and Steinmayer 1996: 17, fig. 2. Turfa and Steinmayer 1996, 27–8. 30 See Naso 1996: 306–8. Prayon 1975, pls 26.1, 31, and 33.1. On roof supports etc., imitated in chamber tombs, see Prayon 1975, 166–72; he confirms that the changeover to tiled roofs for houses is indeed mirrored in the interiors of the early tombs. Cf. also the chapter by Steingräber in this volume. Prayon 1975, Taf. 35–6. 33 Prayon 1975, pl. 30.1, Taf. 38 and 40. Prayon 1975, 45–6 Abb. 7.

43

44

jean macintosh turfa

town houses could have relied on tie-beam trusses to span large halls. They were probably opulently panelled, like Renaissance palazzi: another reason to retain the skilled woodworkers who could build roofs. For a few generations, such engineering and technological innovations were highly valued as indications of the status and far-reaching connections of those aristocrats able to patronize early architects and engineers.35 Funerary stone slabs found at Tarquinia, whether depicting doors or some other aspect of wooden ornamentation such as panelling or ceilings,36 may further attest to the presence of skilled carpenters in the archaic cities, occupied with fine woodwork for the interiors of great buildings roofed with tie-beam trusses.

Bronze and Iron Age Sites with Complex Wooden Structures The stresses imposed on a wooden tie-beam truss make heavy-duty joinery necessary, and this is indeed evident in iron age settlements, at least in sites where wooden elements happen to be preserved, for instance, by waterlogging. While a simple hut may be fashioned by lashing poles together, this is not as sturdy as when the wooden elements are attached more firmly by joints of wood. Poles and fasteners will then react evenly to climate. The best type of joint is the one still used today for fine furniture, the mortise and tenon (Fig. 2.2). Such joinery was implemented in Protovillanovan and Villanovan structures, such as large-scale ‘huts’ and other structures. The fine furnishings of the Orientalizing period offer additional evidence of these techniques. Actual or ceremonial wooden furniture buried in the rich tombs of the ruling class at Verucchio (c. 680 bc) included a round table with openwork-decorated legs joined by mortise and tenon carpentry.37 35

36 37

This had been the case for centuries in the Near East, where correspondence and other evidence shows that kings exchanged and shared the products of new technology across wide areas, along with the men and women who knew how to produce it. In Italy, the Adriatic Etruscan necropolis of Verucchio has yielded precious evidence of society’s esteem for quality craftsmanship in elaborate carved furniture and the attention to detail seen in 6-foot-long woven cloaks and other garments of the ruler buried in Lippi necropolis tomb 89/1972. See von Eles 2002. For the corpus, see Bruni 1986, 7–8, and also for discussion of theories of interpretation. From Tomb 85 of the necropolis Sotto la Roccia at Verucchio: Malnati and Manfredi 1991, pl. 20.1. A familiar aspect of Villanovan Italy, the flanged axe, as found intact at Verucchio (Sotto La Roccia Tomb 89), illustrates more specialised woodworking. Like certain ship’s timbers, the bent wooden handles were trained during growth to create the ‘elbows’ which strengthen these tools/weapons: von Eles 2002, 151, 155–6 nos 160–2. Malnati and Manfredi (1991, 64, pl. 21.3) note that the eighth century saw the emergence of woodworkers and other craft specialists. Ulrich (2007, 138–41) discusses Roman types of fastening for the tie beam, including mortise and tenon.

The Silent Roofing Revolution

Fig. 2.2 Theoretical sketch of structural wooden beams of a roof truss fastened with mortise and tenon joint to form a tension beam. Notch A is the mortise cavity for the crucial joint, formed with drills and chisels. (Redrawn after Turfa and Steinmayer 1996, 21, fig. 4)

The presence of very large huts in the Protovillanovan settlement at Sorgenti della Nova is just one example of the early Etruscans’ facility in building large structures of wood.38 The variety of plans of these huts is evidence of the activity of skilled specialists well before the time of widespread urbanisation with which we usually associate specialized industries.39 The excavators of Sorgenti della Nova have commented on the apparent hierarchy of construction materials (and techniques) as paralleling social status differences of the Final Bronze Age. These varied at Sorgenti della Nova from walls of concotto (burnt wattle and daub) to massive dry-stone masonry for roads and buildings, as at the large settlement of Crostoletto di Lamone.40 I suggest that the Etruscans’ expertise at engineering and maintaining large structures of wood resulted from their ancestral experience in northern Italy and the caldera lake shores of southern Etruria. Aerial platforms for villages, and caissons constructed to withstand occasional flood surges, have been found at bronze and iron age sites such as Fiavé (Trente), Ledro, 38 39

40

Negroni Catacchio 1982; 1995. More evidence for the planning of early Etruscan settlements comes from a small village (c. 700 bc) at Monteriggioni-Campassini where the huts are centred on a communal cistern, similar to sites at Sorgenti della Nova, San Giovenale, and Satricum: see Bartoloni 2001. See Negroni Catacchio and Domanico 2001, with previous references.

45

46

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and Barche di Solferino.41 The earliest such settlements appeared in the Neolithic period, and another node of intensive platform or pile dwelling was known in the Terramare culture of the Middle and Late Bronze Age in northern Italy. Similar settlements have been discovered in central Etruria and on the Bay of Naples. Lake villages, aerial platforms, and palisades of well-constructed wooden poles and beams were established early at the site of La Marmotta, a large village of the Neolithic period, now submerged in Lake Bracciano.42 In the vicinity of Nola, one large Bronze Age village, Croce del Papa, was destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius in c. 1800 bc (still under study).43 The nearby site of Poggiomarino, a long-lived town of canals, stilt-houses, and artificial islands joined by wooden bridges, sheltered a population of perhaps 2,000 souls from the second millennium through the seventh century bc. Mudslides and flooding in the sixth century caused its abandonment, preserving the solid constructions of wooden pilings, and canals reinforced with wooden beams attached with mortise-and-tenon joints.44 Gambogi and colleagues exposed a similar village of the Final Bronze and Early Iron Ages at Livorno, set on rectangular wooden platforms in a lagoon swamp.45 The sturdy construction with beams/uprights 1.20 m long, anchored with cross-pieces affixed through rectangular holes, is compared by the excavators to Middle and Recent Bronze Age structures found at Fiavé-Carera di Trento. At Fiavé, aerial platforms stood on posts driven 4 to 5 m deep into the bed of a peat bog. Because of waterlogged conditions, the pine pilings, some retaining neatly cut mortises, were preserved to 10 m in height.46 Aerial platforms of palafitte had to withstand great stresses from the weight and live loads of entire villages. Other settlements relied on coffers of wooden beams to brace their living areas against the massive force of the sudden flood waters that only occasionally, but then catastrophically, surged round them. In some parts of the Po region, these floods occurred perhaps once in ten years but the only protection from them when they came was to maintain permanent bulwarks. The caissons used as flood bulwarks (as at Castione, Fig. 2.3) show fairly sophisticated joinery, as do the various types of palisades and platform supports. Some of the 41 42

43

44 45

Balista and Leonardi 1996. La Marmotta in Lake Bracciano: see Kunzig and Tzar 2002. There is also a well-illustrated website: www.bernardinifranco.it/storia/history [visited 5 January 2004]. Nola Croce del Papa: the residents may have moved to the future site of Pompeii. Lobell 2002a; Albore Livadie 2002; Mastrolorenzo et al. 2006; Albore Livadie and Vecchio 2005. Poggiomarino: Lobell 2002b; Albore Livadie and Cicirelli 2003. Gambogi et al. 1995, particularly 94. 46 Marzatico 1992.

The Silent Roofing Revolution

Fig. 2.3 Castione, Bronze Age palafitte settlement. Caissons (gabbioni) constructed of wood, serving as flood bulwarks. (Pigorini 1883, pl. IV)

Terramare settlements of northern Italy, like Castione, utilized posts as pilings to protect against periodic floods; when excavated, they were preserved up to 6 m in length.47 Such huge, deeply set posts have been a feature of many sites. The cold, wet period of the Hallstatt Minimum (c. 850–500 bc) also prompted another flourishing of this art of construction, occurring just as the Villanovan culture reached its height. Iron Age piling structures and similarly worked wooden posts with rectangular or triangular holes bored to hold horizontal timbers have been recognized at the Etruscan site of Gran Carro, now beneath Lake Bolsena.48 Other expert joinery appears in Europe, at the site of Les Grandes Corvées (near Metz). Two enclosures measuring 8 x 6 m were made of oak planks set vertically in the soil to contain the water supply for a nearby village at Vandieres. The planks are dated by dendrochronology to the early eleventh century bc, and some also preserve mortise cuttings.49 An apparently monumental, perhaps civic, construction has been identified at Villanovan Felsina/Bologna, where a long structure of pilings has been excavated in Piazza VIII Agosto, and likened to the Roman Diribitorium as a setting for large numbers of the populace to gather for civic purposes.50 Built in the mid-eighth century atop a monumental terraced area outside the pomerium and amidst large-scale public works projects (including drainage works and a defensive wall with wooden roof and moats), it was dismantled in the mid-seventh century. It may constitute an early example of wooden construction designed for monumental purposes. 47

48 49

Säflund 1939, 219–24, 222, and 238–9, tables. Much recent scholarship has appeared on the Terramare culture, but this older work has data relevant to woodworking. See Tamburini 1995, 39–40, 217–21, 308, figs 21–6 and pl. XI. Boura et al. 1992, 75, fig. 6. 50 Ortali 2013, 19, fig. 7.

47

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This formalization of designs and construction elements implies the wide dissemination of a knowledge of materials and engineering, no doubt through traditions of long apprenticeship and of travelling artisan-experts. Prehistorians like Balista and Leonardi have demonstrated that by the Early Bronze Age there was even a hierarchy of types and styles for making posts and joints (Fig. 2.4).51 These are a mark of the presence, by the second millennium, if not of professional builders, then of regional groups of specialists in woodcraft. In siege or flood, people do not entrust their lives to neophytes.

Identification of Tools to Identify Techniques More evidence of the skill of Etruscan/Italic carpenters is found in the bronze tools used to build the palafitte and in use in later centuries. In numerous craftsmen’s hoards of the Final Bronze and Iron Ages (twelfth through eighth centuries), especially in Etruria, the presence of chisels and gouges demonstrates that many carpenters employed the sophisticated techniques of joinery using channels and mortises later seen in tie-beam trusses. Fine chisels have been identified in hoards found at Pariana (tenth century bc) and Bologna (eighth century bc). Rod chisels (Fig. 2.5a) may be used to cut mortise joints, and leaf-bladed chisels (Fig. 2.5b) are designed for cutting grooves such as water channels or mouldings. The simpler rod chisels all fit into a narrow size range; their blades are about 1 cm wide.52 This is appropriate for cutting mortises of a standard size in planks or beams for domestic or larger structures; again, common units of measurement across wide territories indicate consensus among craftsmen and their patrons. Francesco Buranelli pointed out that certain men’s burials of the eighth and seventh centuries bc in Tyrrhenian Italy contained hoards of tools, especially tools for woodworking, and indicated parallels with Homeric society, such as Odysseus building his own bed and later a raft.53 The 51 52

53

Balista and Leonardi 1996. Many hoards contain chisels, for instance, Surbo (early twelfth century), Poggio Berni (eleventh-century founder’s hoard), Gualdo Tadino and Pariana (tenth century), Crostoletto di Lamone and Mottola (Protovillanovan), Isola del Giglio (850–700 bc), and San Francesco (Bologna, Villanovan). See Bietti Sestieri 1973, 387–8, figs 1/6 and 2/13; and 1986, 6 no. 18. Special studies include: Macnamara 1970, 243–4 no. 5 (rod chisel); Malnati and Manfredi 1991, pl. 3 (Poggio Berni); Annibaldi 1953, 178–80, fig. 2; Cateni 1984, 25–6, figs 9–10 (leaf-blade), 27, fig. 11 (rod chisel); Bizzarri 1965, 516, no. 8, pl. 119, no. 7 (rod chisel); Peroni 1963, pl. I.6/5-(4), nos 29–30; Tovoli 1988 for San Francesco. Earlier evidence is in Säflund 1939, 169, pl. 56 nos 7– 9. Early discussion in Bellucci 1923; colour photos: Pallottino 1986, 85 pl. II (Pariana), and fig. 26 opposite p. 90 (Bologna San Francesco). Buranelli 1979.

The Silent Roofing Revolution

Fig. 2.4 Variety of wooden posts, fastening and anchoring techniques found in palafitte and similar pre- and proto-historic sites in Italy and southern Europe, based on the typology of Balista and Leonardi 1996. (Redrawn after Balista and Leonardi 1996, 209, fig. 8)

display of tools in the elite funeral may have announced that the deceased controlled the supply or working of timber, as a landowner or as a proprietor of a craft. Cristiano Iaia analysed tool types and sizes and found that chisels (scalpelli, mainly in bronze but large versions usually in iron) form the largest category in iron age burials with tools.54 They were often associated with other tools for woodworking such as axes, gouges, 54

Iaia 2006.

49

50

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Fig. 2.5 Pariana, Protovillanovan metal hoard from the tenth century bc. Assorted types of woodworking chisels: (a) rod chisel; (b) leaf-bladed chisel (not to scale). Viareggio, Museo Civico inv. 88155 and 88156. (Redrawn after Cateni 1984, 25–7, figs 9 and 11)

files, and rasps. Types of handle and blade can indicate the tasks for which they were designed. The chisel type a cannone, with a hollow shaft that enabled it to be fitted with a wooden handle for better control, may have been reserved for precision woodwork, like examples known at Vetulonia and elsewhere in Etruria and Campania.55 Many Roman hand tools were so efficient that we find their forms continued through the medieval period and into the eighteenth century ad: they are quite familiar in colonial America. We could well extrapolate that back to Iron Age (and Bronze Age) Etruscan-Italic tool types. Henry Mercer, a Doylestown, Pennsylvania architect and collector of the late 55

See Iaia 2006, references at 192 n. 4, 193, fig. 3, nos 9–15.

The Silent Roofing Revolution

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, illustrated eighteenth-century tools that remained very similar to those of antiquity. He noted that the forming chisel or firmer, socketed for carpenters and tanged for lighter use by joiners, was used ‘also for one of the most important purposes known to the carpenter’s craft, namely the excavating of the mortise or orifice by which one piece of wood is fitted into another’.56 These are the chisels ‘used in excavating the large mortises for house and barn framework’.57

Lumber To judge from their revetments, the beams of monumental buildings were much thicker than we would find today (see Table 2.2). Yet huge beams of dense, high-quality timber, even in archaic Italy, were not easy to come by (the Acquarossans had to salvage theirs, as indicated by voids left in the ruins of abandoned buildings there) and there must have been a pressing reason to use so much wood. In fact, over the centuries of Etruscan building, when we might have expected the increased skill of builders to lead to more sparing use of expensive materials, beams actually got thicker. The ridge beam in the modest second-century Capitolium of Republican Cosa was not smaller but slightly larger than the ridge beam of the large Poggio Civitate Upper Building, one of the earliest known structures with tie-beam construction. Beams such as purlins and architraves seem to have increased slightly with time (see Table 2.2): the mutuli of the Poggio Civitate Upper Building, at 0.18 m wide, are much lighter than those of temples built later at Velletri and Cosa, where the purlins were just under 0.37 m wide. And the horizontal members, presumably architraves, also gained in size over time: the temple found under the church of Sant’Omobono on the Roman Forum Boarium (c. 540 bc) had revetments 0.27 m high, while those of Pyrgi Temple A (midfifth century bc) were 0.63 m in height; later still, the Cosan temple had revetments 0.74 m high, probably reflecting a wooden beam of approximately 0.61 m after subtracting the decorative overhang on these plaques. The large cross-section of the beams in early Etruscan monumental buildings probably reflects their builders’ concerns for the functional life (the safety) of the mortise and tenon joints that anchored the roofs. As seen in the epigraph of this chapter, Theophrastus and Pliny the Elder recorded 56

57

Mercer 2016, 163, 164, fig. 148, the caption of which includes this quote. Compare tools from Roman London and Silchester, including mortising chisels and gouges, illustrated by Ulrich 2007, 21, fig. 3.10 and 30, fig. 3.18. Mercer (2016, 163–70) describes the tasks to which different blade and socket types correspond.

51

Table 2.2 Sizes of terracotta revetments indicating beam sizes in Etruscan and Italic buildings (dimensions in metres) Building/site

Building size

Architrave/frieze plaques

Ridge-pole plaque

Mutuli (purlins)

Sixth century bc Forum Romanum, unidentified building Poggio Civitate, upper building Acquarossa, Building A Acquarossa, Zone G, House A Veii, oikos in Piazza d’Armi Rome, Sant’Omobono II Velletri, temple under Stimmate church Pyrgi, Temple B Veii, Portonaccio temple Rome, Capitolium Satricum, Temple of Mater Matuta I Satricum, Temple of Mater Matuta II

? 61 x 60 10 x