Human Sacrifice and Ritual Killing in the Etruscan Culture

The element of human sacrifice in Etruria has been a hotly debated subject in Academia. There are many images and some texts available that allude to the idea, but is there enough to draw any definitive conclusions? The aim here is to look at the evidence available in the archaeological record as well as texts to find an answer.

History of Religions, 2014

. Ekroth and M. Carbon (eds.) From Snout to Tail: Exploring the Greek Sacrificial Animal from the Literary, Epigraphical, Iconographical, and Zooarchaeological Evidence, 233-254 , 2024

Evidence from Etruria and Greece suggests that sacrificial practices involved a rich, flexible collection of activities. Most forms of animal sacrifice hinged on the manipulation of the animal body in some way, frequently with division or disarticulation. This article addresses the theoretical background to bodily division in studies of Greek sacrifice, before exploring Etruscan practices with a similar focus on partition and processing. From animal skins worn by haruspices to blood used in funer- ary rituals, the various animal parts had religious potency, symbolism, and social significance. Zooarchaeological material is crucial for recon- structing how the animal body was divided and employed, but the reli- gious use of organic portions, otherwise prone to decomposition, can be studied using other archaeological sciences such as lipid analysis. The sur- viving data suggests that Etruscans found religious value in skins, skulls, meat, bones, organs, and blood. This article utilizes, but also modifies, insights from David Frankfurter and Kathryn McClymond in order to theorize the efficacious aspects of sacrificial bodies, as well as procedural flexibility within sacrificial processes.

2009

Etruscans were deemed “the most religious of men” by their Roman successors and it is hardly surprising that the topic of Etruscan religion has been explored for some time now. This volume offers a contribution to the continued study of Etruscan religion and daily life, by focusing on the less explored issue of ritual. Ritual is approached through fourteen case studies, considering mortuary customs, votive rituals and other religious and daily life practices. The book gathers new material, interpretations and approaches to the less emphasized areas of Etruscan religion, especially its votive aspects, based on archaeological and epigraphic sources.

Graeco-Latina Brunensia, 2020

Etruscan control in Italy was not constrained distinctly by the well-known region of Etruscan culture (Tuscany and northern Lazio). The Etruscan power also extended toward the southwestern areas (Campania) as well as to the northern parts of Italy (Po valley). The impact of Etruscan culture spread over the entire land. The essential wellsprings of the paper are represented by the ancient sources in Latin and Greek from different periods treating Etruscan culture and society. The ancient authors portrayed the high class of society intentionally. They planned to define Etruscans as pleasure-seekers that participated in the spectacular banquets. The truth of the matter, from an archaeological perspective, is that it was not completely real. Archaeobotanical and anthropological investigation demonstrates that the way of life of the vast majority of the Etruscan population was standardly modest. Comparison of ancient written sources with archaeological data proves that the ancient writers were one-sided, sometimes without a critical approach to the sources, which could cause the misconception of certain components of Etruscan culture. There could be several reasons why it was so. The main focus of this paper is the examination of these reasons.

As pointed out by V. Bellelli (2013), the ‘definitive’ solution proposed by Pallottino (1947) for the formation of the Etruscan ethnos inhibited the undertaking of new research on the relationship between the Etruscans and the Near East, especially in the context of the sacred. However, recent studies have suggested that elements like lituus, the curved stick used by the augur, and the practice of the haruspicy derived from Mesopotamia or from the Anatolian area. It has been suggested that this can be explained by the immigration of people who moved from Anatolia to Italy at the end of the Bronze Age (Bachvarova 2012). An oriental influence can possibly be recognised in the foundation rituals of the Etruscan cities, where the archeological evidence suggests the involvement of Vei, a female chthonic divinity, and Aplu-Rath-Śuri-Manth, an oracular and infernal god. Vei and Aplu-Rath-Śuri-Manth evoke the two Greek gods, Demeter and Apollo, who in turn have elements in common with the Hittite founder and agrarian god Telepinu. In this paper I shall discuss the oriental influence on Etruscan religion by critically reviewing the hypotheses that suggest that some of its elements originated in the Near East. By considering the Etruscans’ religious behavior I will argue that religious data can help us to investigate the process of ethnic formation in the past and to reconstruct the external stimuli, events and movements of people that may have contributed to it.

In: T. Insoll (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion (OUP 2011): 710-721, 2011

Annual Review of Anthropology, 2017

Sacrifice is one of the most common manifestations of human religious thought and behavior, yet archaeology has only recently begun to devote significant attention to the practice. This paper reviews the diverse ways archaeologists have studied sacrifice and how work might proceed in the future. Both animal and human sacrifice are considered, along with the question of whether these two manifestations of ritual killing are significantly distinct. After examining how sacrifice can be identified in the archaeological record, the paper outlines important new developments in bioarchaeology and zooarchaeology that facilitate study of the geographical origin of victims, lifestyle and health prior to sacrifice, preparations for sacrifice, methods of ritual killing, and post-mortem treatment. Proceeding beyond the mechanics of the practice, the paper discusses how archaeology can study sacrifice in its social context as well as its spatial and temporal dimensions.

This article consists of a detailed examination of one of four Late Archaic-era funerary monuments that were excavated in the mid-1950s in the Northern Necropolis of the Pontic Greek settlement of Istros. The exploration of this monument, Tumulus XVII (circa 550-525 BC), revealed several features that were immediately compared to the heroic cremation burials, as described in epic poetry (particularly the funeral of Patroklos in Homer's Iliad). What most attracted attention were the drawn with Homeric epic, for the next three decades Tumulus XVII was regarded as primitive and thus foreign to the more 'advanced' Greek culture. For this reason, the evidence from Istros did not have a the growing body of research on Greek and indigenous settlements and cemeteries on the western coast of the Black Sea, along with the more recent discovery of the remains of a bound and decapitated man next to * I wish to thank Erica Angliker and Lorena Lopes for their invitation to contribute to this volume, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their critical comments. This article expands upon a section of my Ph.D. 2019); accordingly, I would also like to thank the members of my doctoral committee, especially Ioannis Mylonopoulos, for their guidance and feedback on my overall project. The initial stages of research and writing on the Late Archaic tumuli at Istros were completed in summer 2014 at the Institute for Classical Archaeology, University of Tübingen, where I held a Teach@Tübingen Fellowship. I am grateful to my colleagues and seminar students at the Institute for their hospitality, support, and interest in my research. Additional critical support of this research came in 2015-2016 in the form of an Alexander S. Onassis Foreigners' Fellowship and a C.V. Starr Dissertation Finishing Grant (Columbia). Any errors or shortcomings that remain are, of course, my own.