Slingbadger in another thread drew attention to this:

www.mysteriousetruscans.com/caerbas.html

An Etruscan tomb with what seems to be slings. I'll post more pictures: there are in fact 4 of these objects represented on two pillars. Having looked at the pics, I'm almost sure SB is right: these are braided, split pouch slings. The main scholarly publication. H. Blanck e Giuseppe Proietti, La tomba dei rilievi di Cerveteri (1986), argues against slings, but because they think stones would fall through such objects. The parallels from the Baleares, in modern pratice, show this is incorrect. The modern photographs not too good; the C19th watercolours much better, and might even show a finger loop.

V. good catch by SB !!

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Ecco

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Ecco

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Watercolour

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Detail

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Hmmm... that would be two slings on each pillar then, right? Hanging with pouches overlapped and one cord (retention?) mainly in the off above the pillar?

yes, 2 slings per pillar, split pouches (with middle strand) overlapping

A  friend of mine argued that they could be primitive bridles. The center cord would act as a bit, ans the upper and lower cord would go on the muzzle. I think the horse could chew through the bit.

I think this is a pretty good picture of the pillars in question. I know this is oversized, but perhaps worth it for the detail.

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Very good picture, wanderer.

The more I look at it, the less I believe the "things" are slings. To me, they  seem like one item on each side (not two) which runs up and down again the pillar and has a "middle part" of cord (?) between the two "split" sections that remind 3-strand-pouches. Bridle or lead-rope sound more plausible to me, but I know almost nothing about horses and equestrian equipment.

Any ideas what the other items on the right pillar might be?
Could  the sphere at the bottom on the bi-or tripod  be a mortar or kettle? A drum?
Is the thing hanging down left of the "bridle" a drumstick or a dipper?
Is the hanging "sphere" some kind of calabash?
Is that a giant quiver on the right, and its two little brothers left of it knife-sheaths?
:-/ :-/ :-/

I find the pattern on the "bridle" interesting. Seems like it imitates some twining or twist of the rope, no braiding.

some  cults from that region were (and still are) known for using carefully applied ligiatures and bindings to achieve trance states thru blood control. turns up in other cultures too and some used a "tourniquet" technique requiring something to insert a twisting device into.

Just a thought. Something maybe to the bridle idea, though rope bits arent very common they're still used out my way for well trained nags who just need a reminder of what's what more than an actual control device.

also looks a fair bit like a goat hobble for  restraint during slaughtering or milking (in recalcitrant cases).

could also show method of retaining a slave or a sacrifice, whereby one looped cord can have another fixed line double back thru its splitloop.

could be slings but given the clarity of the other tools and weapons shown I don't know why they'd vague out on those for.

lovely pics! to slinging what the Voynich Manuscript is to horticulture  ;D

well given that all the other carvings look like representations of goods a person would need in the afterlife. Ie: grave goods - it would hold true that the person would need to be able to hunt in the afterlife as well as cook.

They certainly look like slings hanging up to me. And it fits in with the other representations.

It's also a clever way of supplying the dead with their things while the things themselves are kept in the dead persons living family.
Don't know a lot about etruscans - but slings are commonly included in grave goods in other cultures, so why not etruscans as well.

Plus I see no bow and arrows - so slings would be the obvious hunting weapon.

yeah could be it CA.

"All around the walls runs a frieze of crews: helms, spears, shields, perhaps emphasizing the participation of the deceased in military campaigns. It should be emphasized that the tomb dates to the age of the wars with Rome, a little before end of the 4th Century BCE. "  

sounds more like a life story in relief than an attempt to offer "grave goods" which was more common in cultures fairly far behind the one in question. The Villanovans from which Etruscans were meant to be descended were prone to leaving not much more than rings, knives and whatnot near urns for burial. That tomb doesn't look like the work of a superstitious people who needed to hunt for their lunch, more like the modern day "my daddy made a lot of money, and left me quite a bit of it" style family mausoleums found in western cemetaries.

Of course, doesn't rule anything out, and I am sure some mob of dead Etruscan artisans is looking down on us from on high saying "hahaha...what a pack of numbnuts... it's the string you use to keep your dressing gown shut, duh!"

They do look a lot like slings but I reckon over at "www. some kind of site about donkeys. org" they reckon it's donkey leads. at "www. kinky bondage devices. com/forum " it's ligiature cords and at "www. militaristic tendencies.net" it's a braided belt with a loop to hold the rather large throwing axe pictured elsewhere in the tomb.

I go with the life story version, rather than goods, if you want to bury the dead with goods you use goods not images thereof.. efven in cultures that used a lot of token "icons" like the ancient greeks buying foot shaped offerings for sore feet, they still buried you with the real deal.

Maybe they're slings but more memorials of a campaign against a slinging division or a famously captured sling... who knows.

but "On the two semipillars that frame the loculo objects are carved legacies to the life of the aristocratic family" suggests to me the kind of person that probably did not have to hunt their own lunch and would have lost a lot of face if it was thought they'd have to hunt their own in the afterlife.

Can't see why the emphasis would be on the sling lines and the split but not the loop or release... maybe they used a style of fist wrapping one and just holding the other.

It is great fun to do some guesswork though, the human capacity for possibilities always amazes me!

better than playing Wii, anyway  ;)

The less I know about Etruscan donkey-bondage, the happier I am  :o

David Morningstar wrote on Jan 8^th, 2010 at 4:18pm:

The less I know about Etruscan donkey-bondage, the happier I am  :o

;D

For those of you who do not understand American idioms, "Beating a dead horse" is to continue arguing a point long after the matter has been decided.

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in Australia it's to flog a dead horse... flog having some fairly amusing connotations itself.

language - it's a bewdiful thing.

Good pictures! I´ve not seen it before. Of course they are slings. See Bernard Henry "La fronde en Italie", 1972. In the chapter "SLINGS" recently published by 4accord, the thing is covered:

"Less uncertainty lies with the Etruscan slings, which are sufficiently well-represented in funeral monuments and have been carefully examined by B. Henry. On the one hand, we have the depictions of hunting and fishing from the tomb of Tarquinii [Italy] on which we see figures of slingers. However, the only fact one can take from them is the length of the slings, which he estimated in proportion to the body of the slinger, giving approximate dimensions of the once-folded sling of about 85 cm [33.5 in] for one depiction and about 120 cm [47.2 in] for the other that was shown.

More information is taken from the depictions of the Tomb of the Reliefs in Cerveteri [Italy], where four slings are portrayed. In the necropolis of Cerveteri, there are no frescos as in Tarquinii, but the walls of their mausoleums are nevertheless decorated with magnificent bas-reliefs which portray objects of daily life. On all the slings depicted on the Tomb of the Reliefs, the main braid is divided in the center part into three branches which form the pouch. There is a kind of knot in the vertices [points of intersection] of the pouch as if to secure the braiding. The length of the pouch is twice the width and approximately a ninth of the total length of the sling. The whole sling seems to be braided of rush or string. The average length of the once-folded slings would be about 80 cm [31.5 in].

I have just braided up an Etruscan sling with the dimensions given here. I made it as a normal braided split pouch sling with three extra short lengths laid in at the centre to give 3x3 for the pouch.

I have to say it has not cured me of my aversion to the split pouch! I suspect the the centre braid needs to be slightly longer than the outer braids because with mine, anything I try to put into the pouch teeters on the centre braid and leaves one of the outer braids doing nothing.

I think this is the Tarquinia picture. It is from http://www.moveaboutitaly.com/lazio/tarquinia/foto/Tomba_caccia_pesca_DSC_1452a.jpg

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David Morningstar wrote on Jan 17^th, 2010 at 7:16am:

I suspect the the centre braid needs to be slightly longer than the outer braids...

I´ve not made one but this you say looks reasonable. Pouches of several branches are somewhat common, like the one in the home page here, from Mariana islands, or some others fom Micronesia.

I would rather make a two-braided pouch and use the extra cord to make netting between the braids, this would work far better in my opinion. This would then look like an Aztec sling.