Per una analisi dell'iconografia dell'infanzia in Etruria. La documentazione funeraria di Felsina di Fase Certosa

Iconography has always been an outstanding tool for analysing the preception of childhood and children in the past. This paper aims to interpret several images of children by integrating them into their original archaeological context. This means that all the figurines of babies, toddlers and children, which have been found in the Etruscan tombs of Bologna during the 5th century BCE, mostly depicted on Athenian vases, have been studied as a significant part of the funerary set of the grave as a whole. The results seem to be impressive. Images of children are rare in the funerary setting of the Etruscan Bologna, ‘Felsina’. Moreover, they enrich the most ambitious graves of the city, as they intended to celebrate the most eminent citizens of the community. On the contrary, a review of the infant burials in the city does not show images of children figured in the grave objects and, furthermore, any other images. One could thus infer that the status of children did not allow them to have the right to use images in their tombs. Lastly, analysing the figurative scene in which depicted children appear, it might be assumed that they are present in scenes of divination, or in other scenes where they are perceived as a kind of medium element between different realms of the universe: human and divine world, life and death. This research seems to open a new perspective of investigation in the ancient perception of childhood.