Villanovan Amphora with Stamped Decoration
Unknown · Villanovan period, ninth to early eighth century BC, c. 900-750 BC
A small squat amphora, only fourteen centimetres high, with a rounded body and two handles, made without a wheel from coarse impasto clay and burnished to a lustrous black brown. On the upper part of the body three vertical ribs stand out on each side, and around the base of the neck runs a band of chevrons pressed into the clay with a comb. More chevrons decorate the handles. The vase is intact. Turn your attention to the surface: the shine was produced by rubbing the leather hard clay with a pebble before firing, a technique that made these dark pots look almost like metal.
The amphora belongs to the Villanovan culture, the Iron Age people of central Italy who were the ancestors of the Etruscans, and it dates from the ninth to the first half of the eighth century BC. Vases like this were placed in the cremation graves of Villanovan cemeteries, often holding food or drink for the dead. It was probably made in southern Etruria or Latium. The Louvre bought it in eighteen twenty five with the collection of Edmé Antoine Durand, one of the foundations of the museum's Etruscan holdings.
Did You Know? The zigzag bands on the neck were pressed into the wet clay with a toothed comb, one of the oldest decorative tools in Italian pottery.
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