The Reitia-sanctuary from Este (Pd)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Heinz-Werner Dämmer
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 519406878

The votive stili, including their miniature forms, with more than six thousand exemplars, form the largest group in the votive inventory of the Reitia sanctuary of Este. As early as 1888, G. Ghirardini gave an overview of a small selection of large bronze stili; this publication formed the basis for the archaeological expert discussion until today. Not until the "Reitia Project" the stili were completely revised and catalogued. The basic form of a stilus has a palette-shaped head with one to three perforations and rings with ornamental plates suspended in them, and a rectangular shaft with a rounded peak. The four sides of the shafts bear decorations with geometric patterns and rows of letters of the Venetian alphabet, which are mainly ornamental in character. It can be seen that in some cases, for unknown reasons, a certain number of characters were deliberately created, in other cases it was only a matter of ornamentally filling the sides. The existing votive inscriptions are to be regarded as secondary phenomena, which were not in a design context with the votive stili from the outset. Large votive stili made of iron were previously much less represented than bronze examples. This picture has changed fundamentally; today we can assume at least the same number, which correspond to the bronze stili in their forms and ornamentation. The miniature stili have the same flat heads with holes and suspended rings as the large stili and are morphologically comparable to the large stili.Since the large votive stili and their miniature forms are found neither in graves nor in settlements, their dating has so far fluctuated with great uncertainty between the 5th -1st centuries B.C. The only evidence for dating is now, however, the stratigraphy of the Reitia sanctuary, in which both, the large stili and their miniature forms, come exclusively from remains of the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C.The consecration inscriptions found on 24 stili were an important part of the linguistic discussion from the moment they were discovered. All the names in the votive inscriptions mention a woman as the donor. To see these women as members of a social elite of Venetian society is only possible with great reservations, because we do not know how the ritual communities in the Reitia sanctuary were configured.The great variety of uses of writing in the Reitia sanctuary is now further expanded by hundreds of bronze sheet points, which were previously unknown from the votive inventory. Not only could they be used to scratch wax tablets, but they could also be used to write with ink.The votive stili and their miniature forms cannot have been profane writing pens (stili scrittori), and their head shape excludes them from being used as year nails (clavus annalis); the same applies to a possible use as hairpins.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants