64 F. B. Tarbell 



subsequently to 1907. The former is catalogued, with a single small picture, 

 among the recent accessions to the Antiquarium of the Old Museum in 

 Berlin,^ and is there said to have come from Civita Castellana, the site of 

 the ancient Falerii. But Jandolo in the letter already cited testifies that 

 all five pieces were bought in the vicinity of Toscanella, a place nearly 

 thirty miles in a bee line to the northwest of Civita Castellana. Although 

 he does not actually say that the pieces were found in that neighborhood, 

 that is the apparent implication of his words. His testimony receives some 

 confirmation from the character of the material of which the sarcophagi in 

 Chicago are composed. A sample of this has been examined at the Geo- 

 physical Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Dr. H. S. Washington of that 

 laboratory, who kindly undertook the examination, reports that the 

 material, "a volcanic tuff, and apparently a leucite-trachyte .... prob- 

 ably comes from the neighborhood of Toscanella, where leucite-trachytes 

 and their tuffs are abundant, rather than from Civita Castellana." 

 Toscanella, then, the ancient Toscania in southern Etruria, may with 

 much probability be regarded as the place of discovery of the five sar- 

 cophagi in question. 



Undecorated sarcophagi similar in form to those now under discussion 

 are familiar to students of Etruscan antiquities. Specimens found at Narce 

 in the Faliscan territory are figured in the elaborate report on that site in 

 the Monumenti antichi. Vol. IV, Figs. 63, 64, 70, and Plate V, 3, 4, of the 

 accompanying Atlante. But these painted specimens constitute, for the 

 period to which they belong, a new class. Moreover, the designs, when 

 compared with contemporary Etruscan designs hitherto known, present 

 some novelties. Hence the belief has arisen in certain quarters that, while 

 the sarcophagi themselves are ancient, the paintings upon them are modern. 

 This belief receives some encouragement from the appearance of A and B, 

 of which the latter certainly and the former possibly have been retouched, 

 though, as is believed, with scrupulous regard for the original traces. C, on 

 the other hand, is entirely free from suspicious appearances. In fact, the 

 extreme faintness or even total obliteration of parts of the design affords a 

 strong guaranty of genuineness. Moreover, the specimen in Berlin is 

 evidently accepted there as genuine. Under these circumstances I have no 

 hesitation in presenting the sarcophagi of the Field Museum as examples of 

 early Etruscan art, to be added to the paintings on early chamber-tombs, 

 the vases, painted or with designs in relief, of Etruscan fabric, the bronze 

 reliefs, and the other miscellaneous artistic products of Etruria in the period 

 from the late seventh century B.C. to the fifth century B.C. inclusive. 



' Anzeiger of the Jahrbuch des archaologischen Instituts, 1903, pp. 38-39. 



