Etruscan Women and Social Polarity: Two Case Studies For Approaching Inequality

This contribution discusses the possibility that gender polarity does not represent opposition in the Etruscan culture, against the current belief that the biological and physical aspects of gender are always a core theme, being innate and implying hierarchy. Two case studies belonging to the Orientalizing and Late Archaic–Classical periods are considered. The first study includes a group of inscribed weaving and spinning instruments, consisting of some female funerary equipment of the Orientalizing period, and in female goddesses’ sanctuaries of the seventh century BC (Tarquinia, Veio, Satricum). They seem to support the idea that the activity of weaving was not “a women’s job” but a skill that could go beyond the production of textiles, making it possible to connect things that were originally separated. This might be the reason why women had such a prominent position in the dissemination of the alphabetical knowledge in Etruscan society, since they were aware of the need of conceptual tools to bring together what was separated in origin. In other words, the pragmatic content of letters and threads challenges the ability to bring them to the condition of being a text(ile). The second case study belongs to the Late Archaic–Classical periods and approaches material evidence in Etruscan mirrors by means of iconography. It focuses on the recurrence of sets of objects that have to do with catoptromancy and the concept expressed by the feminine entity Munθuχ. We touch upon women’s skill in bringing order in the semantic sphere of the contact with the gods. If we accept this argument, the novel effect would be to contextualize the Etruscan woman in the semantic sphere of order, in areas that might have been complementary to men’s. Complementarity is more likely than hierarchy, due to the allinclusive sphere in which women acted. In addition to this, it seems relevant to the idea of “equality,” with which we have been long acquainted in literary reviews about the Etruscans.