Creatures of the Sea on Architectural Terracottas of Caere (20 min)

Presenters

Fabio Colivicchi, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Abstract

There is a vast body of scholarship on sea creatures in Etruscan funerary contexts, where they act as liminal entities marking the separation between the world of the living and the afterlife and sometimes serve as vehicles of the journey to the great beyond.

Much less attention has been devoted to the sea creatures that appear on the roofs of the Etruscan monumental buildings. Their presence is less common and their place less prominent than in funerary monuments, but they are nonetheless important as they help reconstruct Etruscan concepts of the water, the sea, the natural world, and the cosmic order in general.

The architectural terracottas from Caere, some of which are of recent discovery and still awaiting full publication, will be examined as case-studies and compared to other monuments of Etruria and other areas of the ancient Mediterranean. The role of the images of sea creatures and the scenes with a marine setting, such as the Nereids carrying the weapons of Achilles, will be investigated in the broader system of the roof decorations and in relation to their functionality as elements of the roof.