Etruscan Beer

Apropos, given the recently-mentioned 3 AM plans for Marzabotto, comes the news that Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head, Leonardo Di Vincenzo  of Birra del Borgo, and Dr. Pat McGovern of the Penn Museum are collaborating on a new project to make an Etruscan beer. The beer is being fermented in pithoi, while the recipe is based in part on the finds from the Casa Nocera necropolis of biconical urns containing the remains of hazelnuts, pomegranates, apples and grapes.

There is a nine-minute video explaining the project, which is well underway.

[Via MyBeerBuzz.com (x2); Birra del Borgo]

Workshop: Whither Colonization? Rome, 25 June 2012

The workshop aims to trace the discussion on ancient colonization(s), with a comparative perspective, by presenting different situations currently defined as "colonial" ones, from the Uruk expansion of the 4th millennium BCE to Roman colonialism in the late 1st millennium BCE.

10.30 - Introduction - Alessandro Vanzetti
11.00 - Marcella Frangipane (Sapienza): The Uruk "expansion" to North Mesopotamia: some reflections upon its nature, reasons and forms
11.30 - Mario Liverani (emeritus Sapienza): The Old Assyrian Colonies in Anatolia (19th–18th centuries BC)
12.00–13.00 Discussion
13.00 - Lunch
14.30 - Terence d'Altroy (Columbia): Civilizing chaos: Imperial Inka resettlement
15.00 - Discussion
15.30 - Alessandro Guidi (Roma Tre): Etruscan colonies?
16.00 - Nicola Terrenato (Michigan): Redefining Roman Republican colonialism and imperialism in the post-colonial era
16.30 - Coffee Break
16.45 - Discussion
17.45 - Forum (After CeC): Mediterranean Colonization, I millennium BC
18.45–19.00 Concluding Remarks

Monday, June 25th, 2012 10:30–19:00
Sapienza Università di Roma
Piazzale A. Moro, 5
Museo dell’Arte Classica
Palazzo di Lettere - Città Universitaria - piano interrato

For further information, contact Alessandro Vanzetti (alessandro.vanzetti@uniroma1.it).

The Return of Dionysus

The Etruscan Black Figure kalpis/hydria by the Micali Painter in Toledo will be returned to Italy—the latest in a long line of returns to have come through the Medici warehouse. Reports differ as to the cooperation between US federal officials, the Toledo Museum of Art, and Italy.

[Looting Matters; Sandusky Register; Adnkronos]

Etruscan all-nighter at Marzabotto

 Notte magica nella città di Kainua. Aspettando il solstizio in compagnia degli Etruschi
A bit more than midnight at the museum...a guided tour of the site at 6 PM, then dinner with dishes "taken from the Etruscan tradition" (no word on whether couches are involved, but presumably this event will be co-ed), the museum at midnight, a lecture on beer at 3 AM followed by tasting of a chestnut brew... and don't forget the bagpipe procession to the necropolis at dawn!
(Night of June 23rd to the morning of the 24th.) [MiBAC]

Lupa Capitolina: Novità?

The results of the latest study on the Capitoline She-Wolf are in: a Medieval (12th-13th c. CE) copy of an Etruscan original. Edilberto Formigli and others will present their research in a conference on the Capitoline tomorrow, 22 June 2012.
[Officina Archeologica (with program); Adnkronos]

Etruscan 4 and 6

The authors of a forthcoming article in Archaeometry use a new approach to assign values to the ambiguous Etruscan words sa and huth (4 and 6, respectively). The abstract follows:

The graphical and linguistic interpretation of the first six Etruscan numerals has long been confronted with the ambiguous assignment of the words huth and sa to either 4 or 6. Here, we show how the systematic combinatorial analysis of the numerals appearing on ancient southern Etrurian dice dated from the eighth to the third centuries bc, together with the careful comparison of the results with the only two existing dice carrying the alphabetical translations of the numerals conserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, finally allows unambiguous mathematical resolution of the linguistic riddle, allowing the firm attribution of the numeral 6 to the graphical value huth and 4 to sa. Combinatorial analysis of the numerals distribution on the six faces of the die shows that only two of the 15 possible numerical combinations were actually in use in southern Etruria, and that during the fifth century bc there was a marked shift from the typical (1–2, 3–4, 5–6) combination used in the early seventh- to fifth-century bc dice to the (1–6, 2–5, 3–4) combination used at later times and still largely adopted today. The largest body of archaeometric data on dice specimens from Etruria is presented, based on macroscopic examination, X-ray diffraction, DRIFT spectroscopy and density measurements.

Artioli, G., Nociti, V. and Angelini, I. (2011), Gambling with Etruscan Dice: A Tale of Numbers and Letters. Archaeometry. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-4754.2011.00596.x

A bit of this and that

Here's a hodgepodge of things that happened during the long summer months or a bit more recently, with no claim to completeness....

The conference "Etruscan Literacy in its Social Context" is going on currently, September 22-23, in London; follow link for program and abstracts.

Tudisca et al. 2010, "Firing technique characterization of black-slipped pottery in Praeneste by low field 2D NMR relaxometry" is available as an Article-in-Press from the Journal of Archaeological Science (subscription required).

Via Mark Pearce on the Italian-archaeology list comes the news that Vol. XX of Padusa, a must for the site of Frattesina, is freely available as a series of pdfs. A well-illustrated 80-page pdf that accompanies the exhibit in Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Fratta Polesine, "Il villaggio di Frattesina e le sue necropoli XII - XI secolo a.C.", is also available.

July 1 saw the reopening of the galleries of frescoes from the Villa della Farnesina, at the Palazzo Massimo.

A series of talks entitled "Storie interno a Monte Pallano" took place at Tornareccio in Abruzzo on July 31. The event kicked off an exhibit of the same name at the Centro Museale of Tornareccio, which will run until January 20, 2011. The highlight of the exhibit is the 7th c. BCE "Torso di Pallano." More information freely available in a pdf.

There was a month long exhibit entitled "Sulle tracce di Annibale. Gli scavi di Gereonium a Casacalenda" at the Museo Sannitico in Campobasso; of interest is a fragment of a limestone stele with a so-called symbol of Tanit on it, dating to the 3rd-2nd cs. BCE (see image above).

Brief mention of an Etruscan house discovered during construction in Arezzo.

An exhibit of Middle Bronze Age artifacts from the site of Faraglioni is going on display at the Museo Comunale in Ustica, while the first "Museo del Paesaggio" (Landscape Museum) in Italy has opened at Salemi in SW Sicily. Also near Sicily, some underwater finds off Gela, ranging from fragments of Attic pottery to a WWII American helmet. On the other side of the island, three Greco-Roman shipwrecks in the Aeolians.

And a letter from Sandro Bondi to Jovanotti....

Exhibits ending and beginning

If you were in Rome on November 20 you might have seen the Ara Pacis brilliantly lit up in its original colors by a fancy projection system. [ANSA]

If you're in Rome between now and December 13, you still have time to catch the exhibit Etruschi e Fenici sul mare: da Pyrgi a Cartagine ("Etruscans and Phoenicians at sea: from Pyrgi to Carthage") at the Vittoriano. [via Archaeogate; Provincia di Roma]

If you time it right, you can then head up to Bologna for the opening on December 12 of the exhibit Cavalieri etruschi dalle Valli al Po: Tra Reno e Panaro, la valle del Samoggia nell’VIII e VII sec.a.C. ("Etruscan horsemen from the Vales to the Po: Between Reno and Panaro, the Valle del Samoggia in the 8th and 7th c. BCE"), which runs until April 5, 2010. [photo above; via Archaeogate; press release; exhibit page]

And another if: the Museo delle navi antiche di Pisa might partially open to the public in April 2010. [via Storia Romana].