THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SANCTUARY OF TARQUINIA PIAN DI CIVITA
A rare discovery may illustrate the formation of certain cults at Iron Age Tarquinia, at the site of Plan di Civita (Leighton 2004: 40, 70-74, 121-7; Tarquinia: Ricerche 81-202; Tarquinia: Testimonianze.) On the plateau of the future city, remnants of burnt sacrifices and votive offerings near a natural cavity mark a cult place where, in the ninth century BCE, a boy who died of a brain aneurism was accorded an unusual ritual burial.
In his short life he had been able to see and hear things that others could not. Thereafter (eighth-seventh c.BCE) offerings were placed near his grave, and the shrine saw occasional burials of infants with cranial deformities, interpreted by some scholars as the ritual disposal/expiation of prodigia. Other unexpected burials here include a grievously wounded warrior sacrificed with an axe in the mid-eighth century, and a woman (seventh c. BCE).2 The animal bones (sheep, goat, pig, cattle) represent traditional sacrifices; early deposits include slices of deer antler, vases and small metal objects.Around 680 BCE, a masonry cult building was erected on the site, with a stone libation channel linking a cult room to the burial. Two pits beneath the doorway held banquet vessels with bronze ceremonial symbols, all ritually destroyed: a sacrificial axe, parade shield and lituus-trumpet (a long tube with curved lower end; the lituus as a staff was adopted as a symbol of Roman cult authority). The masonry resembles Phoenician/Punic constructions, and early monumental cult structures may have been inspired by Levantine contacts. The excavators interpret this offering as affirmation of the newly founded city of Tarquinia, and it is tempting to identify the prophetic boy with the Tages story, but many details do not agree. Later offerings at the site include one vase inscribed to Uni. By the fifth century, this monument no longer existed, and Tarquinia’s city cult grew at the Ara della Regina further along the plateau. If Pian di Civita had been the acknowledged site of the Tages myth, how could it have been so quickly forgotten? (Tarquinia Etrusca 11-51).