Etruscan by definition

Project leader: Judith Swaddling

Department: Greece and Rome

Project start: 2006
End date: 2007

Project funded by:

The British Museum Research Board

The British Museum Friends

Description:

In December 2006 the British Museum staged a one-day international conference entitled ‘Etruscan by Definition’ consisting of papers on the theme of the cultural, regional and personal identity of the Etruscans. The conference was held in honour of one of the world’s leading Etruscologists, Dr. Sybille Haynes, MBE, as a tribute in her 80^th year.

The contributions to the conference, covering an interesting variety of aspects of Etruscan civilization, will be published as a British Museum Research Paper at the end of 2007. They will also include a paper by Dr. Phil Perkins of the Open University which was given as the Annual Eva Lorant Memorial on the evening of the conference.

Objectives:

The conference aimed to define how the Etruscans saw themselves, to look at characteristically Etruscan artefacts and compare the products of different Etruscan centres. It considered the influence of the Etruscans on other cultures and vice versa , while examining Etruscan social and religious concepts and practices.

Publications:

The papers will be edited by the conference organiser, Judith Swaddling, and Francesca R. Serra Ridgway (Institute of Classical Studies), and will comprise:

Judith Toms, 'Regional identities within the Villanovan culture'

Phil Perkins, 'Etruscan Bucchero in the British Museum and the origins of mass production'

Friedhelm Prayon, 'The atrium house and life-style: an Italo-Etruscan concept'

Stefano Bruni, 'Rituals and ideology among the aristocracy of the orientalising period'

Stephan Steingräber, 'Etruscan Rock tombs - Origins, characteristics, local and foreign Elements'

Jean-René Jannot, 'To sleep, perchance to dream: Etruscan funerary perfumes'

John Penney, 'Personal details in Etruscan inscriptions'

Giovanna Bagnasco Gianni, 'The importance of being Umaele' 

Judith Swaddling, with scientific contribution by Janet Ambers, Caroline Cartwright and Clare Ward, 'Shake, rattle - and role?  Sistra in Etruria'

Nancy Winter, 'Solving the riddle of the sphinx on the roof' 

David Ridgway, 'James Byres and the definition of the Etruscans' 

Image

• Etruscan ivory sistrum or ceremonial rattle, decorated with lions’ heads, masks and gold inlay. The discs, seen in profile, would have made a soft shuffling noise. In Egypt sistra were associated with the goddess Isis. Only two of this type of sistra are known, both in the British Museum. This one was acquired in 2005 with the support of the British Museum Friends and the Caryatid Fund. The conference paper concerning it looks at its manufacture, purpose and influences.