THE ETRUSCAN WOMAN

Women played a very important role in Etruscan society.

Both the practice of Matronymic (a social norm according to which children took their mother’s name) and the participation of women in banquets, unlike the Greek symposia, show how important the woman in Etruscan society was. It also appears that simply having an Etruscan mother was sufficient to ensure a child Etruscan citizenship.

Working with wool was the symbol of women just as working with weapons was that of men. Educating was the destiny of the Etruscan woman, spinning  her emblem.

Moreover, from the end of the 9th century BC, some women also presented a pair of equine bits among their funerary objects: in the necropolis of Veio (Tuscany), for example, there was no substantial numerical difference between the tombs of males and females indicated as wagon holders. Probably the bits in the male graves could indicate war or hunting wagons and those in the female graves could allude to a carriage.

Those women were undoubtedly at the top of the various Villanovan social groups, perhaps the companions of the warrior-chiefs: After all, marriage, at least from the end of the 9th century BC, when relations with different communities within and outside the individual cultural areas are more evident, began to be  considered a means of creating bonds of solidarity or of alliance. Women, much the same as raw or processed materials, or like livestock, could be included in the exchange of gifts or repayments. Female attire was also generally richer than that of males and starting from the second half of the 9th century BC, sumptuous parures characterized certain tombs: the woman adorned with precious goods was herself a valuable asset to be exhibited in order to manifest the “status” of the family group.

Excerpt from:   Gilda Bartoloni, “La Cultura Villanoviana. All’inizio della storia etrusca”, Carocci Editore, Roma pag.187
 

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