Vetulonia

(in Etruscan, Vetluna or Vatluna)

A city in western Etruria. Situated within a bend of the river Bruna and its tributaries, the habitation center stood on a hill 1,130 feet above sea level, protected by steep cliffs on three sides and overlooking a fertile territory. In the ancient epoch Lake Prilius (now drained, but at that time open to the Tyrrhenian Sea through deep, partly man-made entrances), into which the rivers Bruna and Umbro (Ombrone) discharged (unless their link with the lagoon was by means of canals), came very close to the southeastern walls of the settlement. The discovery of two groups of cemeteries indicates that two separate villages had stood on the site in the early first millennium BC, when the area was already densely populated. Another settlement existed on the shores of Lake Accesa (a little to the northwest), which was on the outskirts of the rich copper- and iron-bearing Massetano zone. It was these metals which gave the villages their wealth, and caused them to amalgamate into a city and city-state shortly before 600.

Already by that time Vetulonia possessed a native school of large stone statuary that was rare in Etruria; the sculptors displayed direct or indirect eastern influences. During the century that followed, local craftsmen produced abundant, fine-quality bronze work and magnificent jewelry, made of gold that was mostly imported from Greek Campania in exchange for Etruscan copper. At the same time, too, the city seems to have reached the climax of its political power. To judge from finds, its territory reached, to the southeast, as far as the river Albinia (Albegna)—which was at that time navigable—and included quite important towns on the sites of Marsiliana and Ghiaccio Forte. The river Umbro, together with its tributary the Orcia, opened up contacts not only with Etruscan Clusium (Chiusi) but also with the far north, from which amber of Baltic origin came to Vetulonia while its goods were found from the Baltic to the Danube, and in southeastern France. And the influence of the city spread toward the south as well, for discoveries of its artifacts at Politorium (Castel di Decima) in Latium lend plausibility to Silius Italicus' assertion that the insignia worn by Roman officials had originated from Vetulonia.

Moreover, the objects in its cemeteries showed that its inhabitants possessed not only important land links but a significant overseas maritime commerce as well. In particular, a vital early contact with Sardinia is evident. Vetulonia, on its adjacent hillsides, possessed timber to make ships, and on the sea lagoon Lake Prilius, it had its own harbors at Badiola del Fango and elsewhere. Populonia, too, before becoming a city-state on its own account, seems to have been a dependency of the Vetulonians, providing their links with the mining zone of the Campigliese and the no less metal-rich island of Ilva (Elba).

Vetulonia was also, in all probability, the founder of Rusellae (Roselle), just across the water of Lake Prilius. However, Rusellae also seems to have been the agent of its mother city's eclipse. The first signs of this decline were the destruction of Marsiliana and Ghiaccio Forte, before the middle of the sixth century. Then, between 550 and 500, Vetulonia itself seems to have flagged and succumbed to Rusellae, or at least to have been eliminated from power politics; although its eclipse was not total, as a recently discovered building of third-century date has confirmed. Subsequently the community survived as an insignificant Roman municipium.

Within the urban area of Etruscan Vetulonia, a winding ten-foot-wide main thoroughfare, crossed by smaller crooked streets, has come to light, together with the traces of square dwellings of modest and more ambitious dimensions, and a wall of polygonal stones enclosing a two-mile perimeter; while recent discoveries have included terracottas belonging to a sixth-century frieze or pediment. As elsewhere in Etruria, however, investigation of cemeteries has been far more productive than that of the residential zone. Already in the eighth century there were `interrupted circle’ tombs peculiar to the region, consisting of cylindrical pits (less often trenches) dug into the rock and grouped together within rings of stones. Next came `white stone’ tombs (in which the circle was continuous) containing either a single trench or two, one for the burial of the body and the other serving as a receptacle for the valuable objects interred to keep it company.

From c 700 the Vetulonian graves begin to be covered with great mounds, perhaps earlier than those found farther south, for example at Caere (Cerveteri). The chambers within these tombs possessed `false domes,’ of the type already seen in Populonia (qv), which had apparently borrowed the formula from Sardinia. A Vetulonian gravestone of late seventh- or early sixth-century date bears an incised figure named as Avle Feluske, who strides impressively in his crested helmet, carrying a round shield and brandishing a double axe, the symbol of power in the Mediterranean world since the previous millennium.