2025 Theses Doctoral

Look at Me: Faces and Gazes in Etruria in the Sixth Century BCE

Woldman, Joseph Scott

Scholars have examined visuality, or cultural modes of sight, in the ancient Mediterranean, especially in Greece and Rome. Their work has revealed how ancient sight operated differently. However, the Etruscans have been absent from these studies, likely due to the dearth of extant texts describing vision and its mechanics in Etruscan.

This dissertation examines objects that harness an artifactual vision. These include faces of various forms, including face antefixes, bucchero face appliqués, and the surfaces of Etruscan black-figure pottery that integrate the contour eye motif. By considering of their modes of making, their visual impact on their surrounding spaces, and prevailing decorative conventions, this project argues that a fraction of a larger, more complex Archaic Etruscan visuality can be reconstructed.

This approach acknowledges the ability for representations of the visible world to recursively influence it. From this perspective, the collected body of objects that gaze at the human world actively participate in shaping it.