Hellenistic Etruscan Cremation Urns from Chiusi

Abstract

The city of Chiusi, ancient Clusium in Latin, or Clevsin in Etruscan, lies about 105 miles north of Rome along major trade routes through inland Etruria. Once one of the twelve cities of Etruria and seat of the famous Etruscan king Lars Porsenna,1 Chiusi and its environs have been occupied continuously from the Bronze Age to the present day. Antiquarian interest and fortuitous discoveries by local farmers in the nineteenth century uncovered hundreds of burials — simple pit tombs to multigenerational chamber tombs — in the area. Excavation practices of the day led to the quick excavation and dispersal of archaeological materials to museums and private collections across Europe and the United States, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Objects from a single tomb were usually sold separately, and even if the original context was documented, the information often did not accompany artifacts, especially objects coming to the United States. In some cases, however, inscriptions in Etruscan or other distinguishing features on objects make it possible to determine their archaeological provenance and gain further insight into Etruscan funerary and artistic practices. An analysis of the forms and name inscriptions of a group of six cremation urns from Chiusi at the Metropolitan, never before the subject of a focused study, offers a new understanding of the urns’ manufacture and archaeological contexts as well as Etruscan family relationships and the role of burial containers in the Etruscan funerary environment. The Etruscans of Chiusi preferred to cremate their dead and deposited the ashes in a range of containers. Chiusi is most noted for its production of so-called terracotta “canopic” cremation urns with simple, ovoid bodies containing the cremated remains and with lids in the shape of human heads (Figure 1).2 This urn form “stood in” for the deceased in tombs of the Orientalizing period (seventh to sixth century B.C.) and was often placed on a high-backed chair or throne and arranged before an assemblage of grave goods related to banqueting. Over the course of the Archaic and Classical periods (sixth to fifth century B.C.), the canopic urn gave way to stone cinerary statues or relief-decorated, square cippi (boxes), but these monuments were generally very large, difficult to produce, and available to only a small, affluent portion of the population.3 Hellenistic Etruscan Cremation Urns from Chiusi