Women and Their Social Network (ARACHNE IX Conference)

ARACHNE IX Conference of 8-10 November 2023
Nordic Network for Women’s History and Gender Studies in Antiquity Gender, Identities, and Social Structures in Greco-Roman Antiquity.

The Institutum Romanum Finlandiae & The Swedish Institute of Classical Studies in Rome

ETRUSCAN WOMAN AND THEIR SOCIAL NETWORK
Key-note speaker: Marjatta Nielsen, Etruscologist and Classical archaeologist

Instead of giving an overall presentation of the state of studies on Etruscan women, the
contribution will present some alternative approaches to aspects, which are totally absent in
written sources. Abundant archaeological and epigraphical evidence from the last four centuries
BC invite to a large-scale statistical approach to late Etruscan burials, revealing local and
chronological differences. Furthermore, an examination of hundreds of chamber-tomb contexts
gives insight into the question, who was buried with whom. The prevailing pattern of burying
family members together follows male lineages, but there are several exceptions, which shed
light on women’s alternative social networks, also beyond their family relations.