The Stele of Vicchio

The video of the May 15  study meeting is now available, in connection with the first public exhibition of the Stele of Vicchio at the Fondazione Luigi Rovati Art Museum: an epigraphic document unique for the extent of its inscriptions, one of the three longest texts in the Etruscan language so far found.

Introduction, greetings, and conclusions

Giovanna Forlanelli - President Fondazione Luigi Rovati

Giulio Paolucci - Curator Fondazione Luigi Rovati

Antonella Ranaldi - Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the metropolitan city of Florence and the provinces of Pistoia and Prato

The Stele of Vicchio

Gregory Warden - Southern Methodist University

The Etruscan sanctuary at Poggio Colla and the stele of Vicchio

Phil Perkins - The Open University

The early settlement of Poggio Colla and the stele of Vicchio

Maurizio Forte, Nevio Danelon, Alex Pieroni, Anna Port, Augustus Wendell - Duke University

The Stele of Vicchio between simulation, virtual reality and digital ontologies

Adriano Maggiani - Ca' Foscari University

The inscriptions of the stele. Almost a palimpsest

Enrico Benelli - Roma Tre University

Reflections on the stele of Vicchio. New elements for archaic Etruscan lapidary epigraphy.

The Stele of Vicchio is named after the place where it was found in 2015: the sanctuary of Poggio Colla in Vicchio (FI). Made of local sandstone, the stele is 126 centimeters high, with a nicely finished top bearing several inscriptions. The stele appears to have been inscribed four times, two on the edges and two on one face, and the longest text, perhaps the oldest, covers the beveled edges in alternating lines. The engraving constitutes one of the three largest Etruscan religious texts found so far, along with the Liber linteus of the Zagreb mummy and the Capua tile. Of the three works, it is the stele of Vicchio that is the oldest evidence and the only one from a certain archaeological context.

Because of the importance of the find and the complexity of its inscriptions, a new international research project, The Virtual Stele, has been initiated through a collaboration between Duke University-Dig@Lab, INKAY Technology, SMU and the Fondazione Luigi Rovati. The project involves the three-dimensional digitization of the stele with two purposes: to return to the public a thematic and contextualized reading of the model and to offer, through high-definition three-dimensional data, an advanced simulation.

The exhibition, curated by Gregory Warden and Giulio Paolucci, has the collaboration of the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the metropolitan area of Florence and the provinces of Pistoia and Prato and the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project, a consortium of American universities.