Discovery of bronzes rewrites Italy's Etruscan-Roman history

https://phys.org/news/2022-11-discovery-bronzes-rewrites-italy-etruscan-roman.html

by benbreen • 4 years ago

86 36 4 years ago

tomcam2• 4 years ago

For once, no hype in the title. The find is thrilling. A large number of intact or merely intact statues discovered this late. Etruscan art is way underrated.

Bayart• 4 years ago

I find the implication that a single find can "rewrite history" to be very much hype.

thaumasiotes2• 4 years ago

A single find could easily rewrite history. But this isn't the royal library of Ashurbanipal (wikipedia: "the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal is a collection of more than 30,000 clay tablets and fragments containing texts of all kinds from the 7th century BC"). [And it's not just a fancy name - this was actually a royal library which was the beneficiary of a lot of royal effort to collect all kinds of significant texts.]

This is a bunch of statues and votive offerings of models of body parts. There is apparently no text, and if there were text we probably couldn't read it. This find has no hope of rewriting history.

tomcam2• 4 years ago

I believe it’s literally true in this case. There just isn’t much Etruscan art known compared to Roman art

lm28469• 4 years ago

It happens all the time afaik, for some eras/civilisations artefacts are so rare and far apart that sometimes all it takes is a random skull / art piece / tool to completely break past assumptions. Watching history documentaries make people think we have a pretty good idea of all the events and their respective timelines but for the vast majority of history we have absolutely no fucking idea what was going on

Things like that for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schöningen_spears

The spears and the place of discovery revolutionized the picture of the cultural and social development of early humans. Previously, Middle Pleistocene hominins, whether Homo heidelbergensis or early Neanderthals, were regarded as simple beings without language who acquired meat by scavenging other carnivore kills or natural deaths. The spears and their correlated finds are evidence of complex technological skills and are the first direct evidence that these humans hunted their prey. The large and swift prey that the Schöningen humans butchered suggests that their technologies and hunting strategies were sophisticated, that they had complex social structures, and had developed some form of communication (language ability). The Schöningen humans therefore likely had cognitive skills such as anticipatory planning, thinking, and acting, some of which had only previously been attributed to modern humans.[46][47] In addition, the spears have played a major role in debates about the origins of throwing.

napolux• 4 years ago

This discovery is comparable to the Riace bronzes one according to authorities.

Soon a museum will be open in San Casciano, keep it in your todo list if you’re planning a trip to Italy in the close future

Look for images of these new discoveries, they’re still intact after 2300 years

Some more pics here https://www.ilpost.it/2022/11/08/bronzi-san-casciano/san-cas...

(in Italian, use arrow keys or yellow buttons to navigate the gallery)

silvanocerza• 4 years ago

The place is San Casciano dei Bagni[1], not San Casciano. They're different places, the first is close to Siena, the second is near Pisa.

Don't get confused, there are several different San Casciano. There's also San Casciano in Val di Pesa[2] near Florence.

If you go there I also suggest going to Radicofani[3], it should be around 20 minutes from there by car.

The place is not easy to reach by public transport, I suggest taking a car. It's worth it though. :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Casciano_dei_Bagni

[2] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Casciano_in_Val_di_Pesa

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radicofani

tecleandor• 4 years ago

L'Umbria is one of my (multiple) pending places to visit in Italy, and that's right in the border. I'll write that down just in case :)

boppo1• 4 years ago

I don't have an ad-blocker and the ad keeps popping up, rendering the site unusable. On chrome mobile, I close the ad then pinch zoom for a better look and the ad pops back up.

thom• 4 years ago

Pretty exciting week for archaeology as a whole:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/11/08/cleopatras...

beermonster• 4 years ago

https://archive.ph/FeAOl

Luc• 4 years ago

An amateur archeologist getting permission to dig from Egyptian authorities, that's remarkable isn't it (if true)?

ycombinete• 4 years ago

In Egypt anything is possible if you know the right people, and give them enough money.

prox2• 4 years ago

I like how to art styles seems to be a bit more rough, more provincial. These are not made by the top artists of Greece or Rome. A wonderful find indeed! This also brings to life the stories in Livy’s Book “Ab Urba Condita”

toyg4• 4 years ago

There are, reportedly, over 24 statues. They all need to be cleaned properly before we can really get an idea of their value. Rich people likely went to get healed too, and "the gods" liked art quality as much as anyone else, so there is a pretty decent chance at least a few of these will be of excellent quality.

prox2• 4 years ago

Yeah exciting time! Can’t wait to see them clean!

darkwater• 4 years ago

I imagine being an archaeologist and spend months/years digging and digging and digging and not finding anything relevant and then you find something like this. The emotions, the feeling of achievement, the joy, must be something not easy to find in any other profession.

bluepizza• 4 years ago

And imagine the next day, when you are back to square zero.

toyg4• 4 years ago

A find like this will not leave you back to zero - you'll run conferences on the find alone for decades, and then there is all the work to examine and exhibit the findings.

These events can be life-changing.

toyg4• 4 years ago

This is "winning the World Cup" / "getting the Nobel/Oscar" tier of happiness - something that the 0.0001% of the profession will ever experience, but that powers the dreams (and hence, the actions) of everyone in the field.

MichaelCollins3• 4 years ago

Are anatomically accurate sculptures of human organs evidence for human sacrifice?

Apparently there are some ancient documents which attest to Etruscan human sacrifice (writings of Callimachus particularly), but modern scholars debate it. If the bronze organs they found here really are anatomically accurate, that seems likely evidence of human sacrifice to me. Or at least, the artists were witness to some cadaver dissections.

toyg4• 4 years ago

This site started under Etruscans but went on to be used all the way to Roman adoption of Christianity. It's much, much more likely that these organs were used for anatomical/medicine studies by resident healers.

MichaelCollins3• 4 years ago

I have read that Greek physicians practiced human dissection, but that this practice was banned by Rome. Perhaps the Etruscans practiced it, or Roman physicians did despite the bans, or during periods when it wasn't banned.

FWIW, the article claims the bronze organs were used as votive offerings. This seems like the sort of practice that may have evolved as a replacement to earlier human sacrifice, with real organs being removed and used as offerings, which would give those people the experience needed to create anatomically accurate sculptures of human organs.

carapace2• 4 years ago

Not to be gruesome but these folks were constantly chopping each other up with sharp bits of metal. It was the major hobby and profession of much of the adult male population, eh?

MichaelCollins3• 4 years ago

I don't think many soldiers are anatomy experts. Chopping somebody up in combat is different than taking a body apart piece by piece and studying the way the organs are.

Accurate knowledge of human anatomy in the modern era can be credited to the sometimes clandestine dissection of cadavers by doctors and other medical researchers, not the armies who merely chopped people up.

Ancapistani• 4 years ago

Oddly, I first learned of this on TikTok, a full day before it was featured here.

csdvrx• 4 years ago

That may not fly on HN.

You didn't get the memo that TikTok is evil and everything made in China is bad? (with the possible exception of RISC CPUs, because reasons?)

gumby• 4 years ago

I love discoveries that shed light on the mysterious Etruscans. One of my favourite latin words, "uxor", is an Etruscan fossil.

Discovery of bronzes rewrites Italy's Etruscan-Roman history

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