Il cane in Etruria Padana: usi domestici e valenze rituali

The aim of this paper is to examine the various uses and the different meanings of the dog in the Etruscan civilization between the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. Special attention is given to some contexts of Etruria Padana. In the Etruscan world, dogs are mainly bred for utilitarian purposes: for company, for the protection of house or livestock, for hunting; rather rare are the proofs of feeding. Closely related to the underworld, the dog is connected to the passages and gates, to the movement, to the growth and procreation; it is also strongly connected with the death, and indeed the dog was considered the guardian of afterlife and protector of the deceased. For these valences the dog could be used for various types of sacrifices and other ritual practices (protective, purifying, sin offerings, honorary and divinatory) dedicated to chthonian deities and linked to the sphere of fertility or to the idea of passage. Recent discoveries in the Etruscan town of Marzabotto (Kainua), from the town and from the sanctuary related to the waters, have allowed a coherent analysis of the domestic and sacred uses of dogs, while the funerary use is attested in Spina and Adria.