For anyone interested in ancient wheeled vehicles, pre-Roman Italy is far from a new subject. In the preface to his well-documented volume, C. provides a comprehensive list of what has been written before on this topic. Several books and studies approached chariots from various aspects, including the continental Iron Age (works of M. Egg, C. Pare) and other foreign influences (L. Nebelsick); many detailed studies were listed in the catalogue of the exhibition at Viterbo, Ancona and Rome in 1997–2000, Carri della guerra e principi etruschi. Despite all this previous research, from the first pages, the position of C. as a good connoisseur of Greek and Eastern vehicles demonstrates the originality of the book. Having previously written on chariots from Greece and Cyprus, C. was best placed to analyse the Italian data and see, among other things, what differs in comparison with earlier Greek and Eastern Mediterranean types.
The 108 pages of text, preceded by an illustrated glossary of technical terms, are followed by an extensive bibliography, mostly in Italian and English, but also in German and French (there are a few typing mistakes), also including some works on Roman vehicles and harnesses. Plates 1–171 (which are actually figures arranged on 82 plates) include several documents which are discussed in detail: for the reader's comfort they could have been inserted in the text, and some of them slightly reduced. But we should thank C. for reproducing them, because many passages, especially when it comes to the vehicles' construction, do need the enlightenment of a drawing or a photograph. A useful index (a single list of all names including ancient authors, place names and various specific terms) ends the volume.
The book discusses vehicles arranged in three categories: the war-chariot, a fast two-wheeled vehicle for usually one, sometimes two, standing persons; the cart, also two-wheeled but designed to transport stable loads, goods or seated passengers; and the wagon, four-wheeled, which is a more complex construction and designed for various purposes. This typology is based mostly on images, sculpted or painted, and C. is aware that at times it may be difficult to assign the archaeological remains to one type or the other. Hence particular attention is given to iconography, where the general aspects of the vehicles, but not always their construction, are usually clear enough.
A first chapter gives a summary of what is known about draught animals and roads in pre-Roman Italy. Domesticated horses, which appeared in South Russia in the fourth millennium, are known in Italy from the Eneolithic, but skeletons associated with horse-bits are not available before the eighth or seventh century b.c., when horses are occasionally buried in rich graves with the owner's chariot. Bronze Age evidence, including antler cheek-pieces as well as rare bronze nave fragments, but also incomplete wheels (briefly mentioned, p. 101) could have been gathered here to fill the gap of c. fifteen centuries between the earliest vehicles and the rich Iron Age records. Did the Neolithic wheeled vehicles, known in South Germany and the Swiss Plateau, ever exist in Italy? And, above all, when and how did the fixed axle arrive there? The question may remain open, as long as fixed axles, requiring a round (no longer square) central wheel opening, as well as lynch pins to attach the wheels to the axle, continue to be found on all the chariots in Italian Iron Age graves.
With the emergence of chariot depositions in graves, at the beginning of the early Iron Age, C. walks on more stable ground. Significantly, chariots form the largest amount of finds, and therefore benefit from the longest study (pp. 8–69). Finds are arranged according to five types, identified by their general shape and construction. C. obviously worked with a catalogue, of which many details (cf. bibliography) appear in the footnotes; but the complete finds inventory, which could have been placed at the end of the book, is missing here, so that it is extremely difficult to get a general idea of how many pieces appear in each type or, for example, of where they are located. One has to follow the text, where details are given as soon as a find is mentioned, but this does not allow for any critical approach and, of course, no other reading than the one which is proposed here.
On a general level, the appearance of fixed axles, just as spoked wheels, indicates a need for more solid and lighter vehicles, i.e. for combative use. In southern Russia, where they emerge in the second millennium b.c., such chariots - certainly horse-drawn - mark a clear shift away from the earlier four-wheeled, heavy (solid-wheeled) wagons which were certainly drawn by bovids, and even the old cart types (see S. Piggott, The Earliest Wheeled Transport [1983], pp. 64–104). This implies that Italy received most vehicles as foreign imports; and also that war chariots were unknown before the eighth century b.c. Things changed with the early Iron Age, a period which is clearly a time of great social and technological evolution in Italy. The distribution map of vehicle burials (p. xxii), which points to central Italy, and especially Latium, Southern Toscana, Umbria and Marche, confirms that the phenomenon is closely related to the emergence of highly hierarchised societies (Etruscans and neighbouring peoples).
Apart from the variety of chariot types, which reveals a dynamic adoption of such vehicles from the earliest local Iron Age, C. notes that both images and associated grave-goods show some differences from Greece, such as the use of vehicles with sword and axes, unlike the hoplites (p. 99). The period therefore succeeded in adapting foreign vehicle types to local usages, which is the mark of an original, reactive society rather than a passive ‘market’. In comparison, carts (pp. 70–88) and wagons (pp. 89–96) already existed in Italy in the second millennium and therefore follow a tradition more closely related to earlier continental models.
The book does not attempt to reconstruct many vehicles as was the case, for example, within the large project of the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz, Vierrädrige Wagen, published in 1987. The only available reconstructions were prepared by a few museums, some of them quite a long time ago, and in such cases a recent reappraisal of the evidence often brings important changes. Experience has taught that many aspects, especially technical ones, become clearer when we build a life-size reconstruction, because any fitting or device has its intrinsic logic which becomes evident through physical realisation much better than in a drawing. Considering the abundant and well-preserved vehicle remains in Italy, this step would no doubt update our knowledge of chariot technology (see, e.g., the splendid work on the Spoleto chariot by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2007: A. Emiliozzi, Metropolitan Museum Journal 46 [2011]).
In this volume, C. not only gathers a rich dataset, which previously was not so easy to handle in its entirety due to the spread of finds and publications; he also points to interesting links between the Italian vehicles and Hallstatt finds on the one hand, and Greek and more Eastern examples on the other. After discussing other forms of transport, including horse-back riding, his ‘concluding remarks’ emphasise the originality of the Italian vehicle group, which appears to be largely dependent on foreign imports, as in the case of chariots, but with a few specific features. As in other parts of the Mediterranean world, the use of chariots and their deposition in rich graves was a prestige manifestation, just as the size and the decoration of the grave. Depositions stopped in the early Republic, when displaying one's rank and richness ceased to be fashionable in death just as in daily life. From this time onwards, archaeologists lose an important source of knowledge on wheeled vehicles of all types.
