The Sacred and the Mundane: Divergent Dice from Poggio Civitate

Abstract The most recent studies of Etruscan dice have focused on those recovered from Etruscan settlements of Tarquinia, Volsinii (Orvieto), and Clusium. The studies of these dice make special note of the fact that the corpus of dice under consideration was recovered from funerary contexts. Information regarding each of the dice includes the material (ivory and bone) out of which they were carved, the forms and common configurations of the numerical signs, and the chronology of the evidence. In this article, three dice recovered from the Etruscan settlement of Poggio Civitate are examined. The dice from Poggio Civitate are of particular importance because they were recovered from religious and domestic contexts and not tombs. Important also is the fact that the dice from Poggio Civitate differ from other examples found in Etruria in terms of the material that they were fashioned and the configuration of the numbers on the sides of the dice. Two of the dice, dating to the seventh century BCE, are among the earliest attested in Etruria. The possible functions of the dice are also examined from the perspective of the Poggio Civitate community.