Seianti Hanunia Tlesnasa

Reviewed by: Seianti Hanunia Tlesnasa: The Story of anEtruscan Noblewoman P. Gregory Warden Judith Swaddling and John Prag, eds. Seianti Hanunia Tlesnasa: The Story of an Etruscan Noblewoman. British Museum Occasional Paper, no. 100. London: British Museum Press, 2002. vi + 69 pp. Ill. £20.00 (paperbound, 0-86159-100-3). The brightly painted sarcophagus of the Etruscan noblewoman Seianti was found in 1886 near Chiusi (Tuscany) and was subsequently sold, along with its contents (a skeleton and some grave goods), to the British Museum. This impressive work of art has finally received its due in an interdisciplinary study that will serve as a model for future research. The Etruscans are known primarily through funerary remains, even though ironically those remains have not been well studied. It is only in the past half-century, for instance, that skeletal remains have been saved, and only very recently that they have undergone proper study and publication. The Seianti sarcophagus, with its identifying inscription, high-quality effigy of the deceased, and well-preserved skeleton is thus a singular opportunity for research on a culture whose history was almost entirely obliterated in late antiquity. The first two of the twelve papers in this volume, by Judith Swaddling, provide an excellent introduction to the project and the Etruscan background. Subsequent papers discuss the sarcophagus and tomb in their archaeological context and the technical aspects of the sarcophagus itself (structure and decoration), but what makes the publication (and the project) so unusual is the inclusion of five papers on anatomy and pathology and two papers on the creation of Seianti's portrait through the modern techniques of facial reconstruction. Two studies of the skeleton by Marshall Becker and R. W. Stottart, and two studies of dental evidence by D. K. Whittaker and John D. Lilley, provide surprising new information. In late adolescence Seianti "sustained extensive injury to the soft tissues around her lumbar spine and the right side of her pelvis" (p. 37), which may have rendered her disabled later in life. She was middle-aged and obese when she died, perhaps due to enforced inactivity. This information has a bearing on the facial reconstruction, presented by Prag and Neave, where a visage of Seianti emerges that bears a goodly resemblance to the image (dare we now call this a portrait?) on the sarcophagus. It is this kind of connection between traditional archaeology and scientific analysis that makes this book important. Especially interesting for archaeologists [End Page 698] is the suggestion that the body was excarnated before being placed in the sarcophagus. Demineralization and discoloration of parts of the skeleton suggest that this might have been done by "dripping" (productive putrefaction) the cadaver while it was in a sitting position, a procedure reminiscent of the mortuary practices of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Italy. This is the first evidence from ancient Etruria, other than an occasional scene of the dressing and anointing of the body, for postmortem rituals and the processing of the body. The evidence has some bearing on art-historical issues as well, for it is sometimes argued that Etruscan effigy sarcophagi were not portraits because there was not enough time to produce a proper image after death. Obviously, with prolonged excarnation (and display?) an artist would have had time to study the visage of the deceased, as is suggested by the resemblance of Seianti's sarcophagus image and her facial reconstruction. This is a fascinating and important study. While some of the conclusions will clearly have to be tested by more research, and while this is not the first time that archaeological and scientific methods have been brought to bear on a single problem, this work is a model for a kind of interdisciplinary research that combines careful scientific analysis with a broader historical and artistic exegesis. P. Gregory Warden Southern Methodist University Copyright © 2004 The Johns Hopkins University Press

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