Fragmented Images: The Last Tomb Paintings of Tarquinia

Abstract

SummaryCultural decline as a result of the Roman conquest is usually invoked to explain the gradual disappearance of Tarquinian tomb paintings during the third century BC. By contrast, this paper argues that, first, the late tomb paintings of Tarquinia markedly differed from their predecessors by decorating individual burials (fragmentation), as opposed to entire chamber tombs, which should be seen as a culturally meaningful development in the iconographic approach towards representing the deceased; and that, second, the disappearance of this time‐honoured type of monument be seen as part of wider changes in the ways in which Tarquinian and other Etruscan elites chose to materialize their ideologies during the cultural and political realignments of the period of the Roman conquest.