The Fantastic and the Real Deer of Etruria (20 min)

Presenters

Lora Holland Goldthwaite, University of North Carolina at Asheville

Abstract

The centrality of deer in Etruria has long been understood primarily through elite hunting scenes in art, with recent attention being paid to deer bone and antler in faunal assemblages pertaining to artisanal, culinary, and ritual practices. But the iconography of deer is rarely considered as a separate study. My approach targets representations of Etruscan deer in light of the observable characteristics and behaviors of real deer. It draws from pioneering methodologies grounded in modern science in concluding that the Etruscan understanding of these cervids coincides in quasi-scientific ways with findings from modern cervidology.

Evidence is gathered primarily from relief sculpture, jewelry, painting, mirrors, and ceramics. Representations of deer from Greek myth are also considered, including Heracles and the Keryneian hind, the deer substitution for Iphigenia, and a unique representation of Medusa with the head of a roe deer. The specifics of depiction, including age, physical characteristics, behavior, and even habitat, reflect Etruscan knowledge of the natural world although there are examples of the fantastic, such as deer-hybrid creatures.

Preliminary results include how red deer, being the largest and strongest, are represented in hunting scenes of all types. The smaller fallow deer are frequently harnessed to chariots, especially chariots of Artumes (Artemis/Diana in Greco-Roman art); in real life, accordingly, fallow deer are the easiest type to tame and handle. The smallest deer, the roe, often appears in scenes with Artumes and in feasting scenarios, for instance, in the Golini tomb. Roe deer are even depicted as male-female twins, mirroring real-life reproductive reality. Mythological Greek deer are portrayed via an interpretatio Etrusca that is sometimes surprising. In sum, the study of deer adds to our understanding of Etruscan culture and enhances Etruscan animal studies as a whole.

  AIA-4J