94

Title

94

Description

General Structure: This tomb is not exactly like any other type but may be best described as a Chamber House Tomb Type with a Dromos (which may have had descending stairs that are now covered by soil). The front of the tomb is defined by areas of cut bedrock to the left and right of the main entranceway and dromos. There is one side chamber on the left side when facing the façade, but it is mostly filled with soil. The main central chamber is also partially filled with soil and rocks, which hide the interior features, such as sepulchral beds. Front Side Chamber: The doorway seems to be a rectangular shape (around 0.69 m in width) and is 0.5 m from the façade of the central chamber door. It is mostly filled with soil, so there is only an open space with a height of around 0.60 m. As stated, the chamber is also mostly filled with soil and rocks and there is a void of only around 0.50 m in height. There is a hole in the wall of the side chamber (allowing you to see in the chamber when standing in front of the tomb façade) and probably was a later occurrence due to quarrying, which may be the reason for the pickaxe marks on the rock above the hold. This can be understood from the continuation of the inner, right chamber wall that proceeds outward even though the ceiling is no longer there. Thus, the original structure would have been complete and formed an enclosed side chamber (around 2.28 × 1.80 m). There is also a hole on the wall of the side chamber that connects to the central chamber, but it is unclear if this was intentional, due to later disturbance, or solely from erosion. A carved beam runs across the center of the flat ceiling from the door of the side chamber to the back wall. Central Chamber: There is a recessed, incised rectangular doorway from the dromos into the chamber (the lining of the doorway formed by the recession is around 0.30 m wide on the sides and around 0.45 m wide on the lintel). The doorway is around 0.79 m in width, with some damage on the left side, and over 1 m in height. The central chamber is around 3.9 m in length and a width around 4 m. Although the debris inside the chamber obscures most interior features, the cutting of a rectangular door in the back wall of the chamber is slightly visible. The way that the soil is laying in a very flat manner on the right side of the central chamber suggests the presence of a sepulchral bed below. Soil fill is visible inside the door continuing into the back central chamber. To the right of the door at the back of the chamber there is a small window also opening to the back chamber. It is probable there is another one of these windows on the left side of the door to the back chamber, but it is obscured by the rubble. Both the door and window are framed by the common decoration of a lintel with a curving, slightly hooked overhang that is hard to see on either side in the Type 2 or Type 3 style and the frame is painted red. There is a lunate niche cut into the left and right walls near the entrance door of the chamber and there is a carved central beam in the flat ceiling that goes from side to side of the chamber rather than from front to back. The right-side wall that connects to the façade of the tomb has a shallow, long hole in it which may have been created by looters searching for a connection to another front chamber (that does not exist) or may have been a false-start by the original tomb creators. Back Central Chamber: From the little of the chamber that can be seen through the door above the debris, it looks as though there is a carved central beam going in the direction from the doorway to the back of the chamber (so this is perpendicular to the direction of the beam in the central chamber). Façade: Quarrying or reworking of the rock along the façade is evident. As stated, there are pickaxe marks on the front wall above the opening of the side chamber, probably alluding to the quarrying that caused the hole in the front of the side chamber. Above the left side chamber and along the dromos wall, there look to be steps ascending toward the top of the tomb. It is possible that these were from quarrying of the area, however, and they are shallow cuts (0.48 m in width) that do not run the length of the left side of the tomb. One step has dimensions of around 0.24 m in height and around 0.45 m in depth. There are also the remains of a possible step lower down at the front of the entranceway that now looks to be a square cutting into the rock. There is no frontal side chamber on the right, but instead there are two layers of stepped cuttings of the bedrock. Pickaxe marks are visible on the uppermost part of the façade wall above both stepped cuttings and also on part of the vertical side of the upper cutting. There seem to be trenching marks in this area, further suggesting that this part of the façade was also used for quarrying. From the current ground surface in the dromos to the top of the lower cutting, it is around 0.48 and the surface is around 0.55 m. The vertical side of the upper cutting is around 0.35 m, its surface is around 1.3 m, and the length is around 2.24 m. The bottom layer of rock that was quarried on the right side of the tomb façade is around 2.7 m long from the area of the central chamber entrance to its end, meaning this may have been the original dromos length. If the possible stairs on the left side of the dromos originally continued downward (before the quarrying activity) with a general height and length of 0.36 m, they could have touched the current ground level at the end of a dromos that was around 2.5 m in length. Interpretation: The length of the dromos was probably comparable to the lengths of dromoi of other D-type tombs. For example, D1 has a total dromos length of around 5.42 m, with 2.45 m from the central chamber door to the beginning of the stairs and around 1.6 m from the central chamber entrance to the entrances of the front side chambers. D2 also has a dromos length of around 5 m with the stairs beginning around 1.95 m from the central chamber entrance (1.21 m for the front, side niches). Thus, it is possible that the original length of the dromos of this tomb (D10, A94) was similar in length and that the current 2.7 m is shorter due to the quarrying activity and soil cover. The soil that fills most of the door of the front side chamber also supports the idea that there are probably descending stairs at the beginning of the dromos that are covered by soil. Therefore, this tomb has been classified as a D-type tomb. Using similar tombs (such as A8) as comparanda, it is probable that there were two sepulchral beds in the central chamber, two in the front side chamber, and probably two more in the back central chamber, meaning at least 6 people were likely buried in this tomb. The niches on the side walls of the central chamber may have been used to hold offerings. The flat roof suggests a date of the end of the fifth century BCE to the fourth century BCE. The styles of the frames around the door and windows look to be Type 2 or Type 3 Doric Door in Prayon’s classification of door frames, similar to the Type 3 False Doors discussed by Tobin at San Giovenale, which further supports this date since this door type dates to around 400 BCE (Prayon 1975, 39; Tobin 2015, 23–24). The area on top of the tomb above the door lintel looks to be flat and could have been a platform space, which may have been reached by the possible stairs on the left side of the dromos. References: Prayon, F. 1975. Frühetruskische Grab- und Hausarchitektur. Heidelberg: F. H. Kerle. Tobin, F. 2015. The Chamber Tombs of San Giovenale and the Funerary Landscapes of South Etruria. Uppsala University.

Alternative Title

n/a

Creator

Christina Monroe

Type

HOUSE TOMB; DROMOS

Date

End of fifth century BCE to fourth century BCE

Extent

6+

Spatial Coverage

north=42.004531; east=12.096614; elevation=90.365448

Coverage

Southeast

References

SETS #D94. The Cerveteri Tombs Database, accessed April 30, 2026, link.