LUNISTICES AT SESTO FIORENTINO: AN INVESTIGATION ON GEOMETRY AND ALIGNMENTS OF THE THOLOS TOMBS OF THE ETRUSCAN PRINCES

Abstract

Among the Sesto Fiorentino (Florence) Etruscan tombs, the most renowned and best preserved are the two architectonically impressive seventh century BC tholos tombs of La Montagnola and La Mula. Another tholos (Tumulo Montefortini) is placed in the near city of Artimino, circa ten km away from Sesto. The tombs belonged to powerful Etruscan princes and greatly differ for magnificence from other tombs in the surroundings. Several Etruscan tholos tombs were found spread in northern Etruria. We have studied the geometry of La Montagnola and La Mula conducting the analyses in CAD working on the best available plans using qualified best-fit methods (Kasa, 1976). The scheme that resulted for La Montagnola (the only one complete and with its original dromos) send back to the classification by Ranieri (2008) of the geometries of the Mycenean tholos tombs. we have been searching for the employed length units and found to conform to greek-roman cubits and palms. Simulations of the ancient sky with Stellarium have shown that the alignements of all the three tholos tombs can be associated to the minor lunar standstill, in a region of the sky that the Etruscans denoted as pertaining to the death. In turn, the toponymy “Artimino” can be reasonably interpreted as deriving from the name of the Etruscan goddess Aritimi, associated with the Moon, the death, the night, the nature and the woods.