Alexis Q. Castor Etruscan Horseshoe Earrings: a native jewelry type Abstract: This study is concerned with the so-called horseshoe, or a grappolo, earring type that circulated in Etruria during the Late Classical and Early Hellenistic period. Presented here is the most extensive catalog of the type – a total of 53 earrings – published to date. In addition to the real examples of horseshoe earrings, we also consider the numerous images of women wearing the horseshoe earring type in the Etruscan art. Both the primary and the secondary evidence for the horseshoe earring demonstrate that it was a popular form and one that allows us to explore aspects of native costume in Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Etruria. Keywords: Etruria, earring, jewelry, women, costume Introduction Etruscan fondness for lavish gold jewelry is well documented both by the artifacts themselves and by the images that show elite men and women arrayed in necklaces, earrings, rings and bracelets. Two extravagantly dressed females are shown here in roles warranting such luxurious accoutrements. First, a familiar fourth-century B.C.E. painting from the Tomb of the Shields shows Velia Seithiti, the wife of Arnth Velcha (fg. 1)1. She accompanies her husband and wears a full set of gold ornaments – a diadem, the globular a grappolo, or “horseshoe” earrings, a bead choker, a pair of bracelets and a fnger ring – that illustrates a typical Etruscan expression of elite wealth in a feasting setting. She and her husband are depicted at a banquet, an occa- sion that seems to have been a defning context for Tarquinian aristocratic families and one at which women were featured prominently2. Te second fgure, a terracotta votive head from Cerveteri, now in Berkeley, illustrates the extraordinary interest in jewelry that appears in ffth- and fourth-century Etruscan sculpture (fg. 2)3. Te veiled female is adorned with a high, beaded crown and large horseshoe earrings embellished with an upper disk of concentric bands of beads and tubes4. Two small dolphin fgures cavort directly below the protruding boss; a cluster of fve bulg- ing hemispheres fnishes of the earring5. What is striking about the stock of jew- 1 Maggiani 2005 with earlier bibliography. 2 Bonfante 1981. 3 Nagy 1988, 50 IA3. 4 Coen 1999, 144, notes that some of the main crown types found in the subset of votive heads – beaded diadems, such as the one seen here, and a woven high crown that may have been made from wheat or some other organic material – cannot be paralleled with real examples. 5 Comella 2001, 40, reports that the dolphin motif appears also on two individual horse- shoe earrings (from the same matrix) found in the sanctuary at Punta della Vipera. See below for discussion of this evidence. Römische Mitteilungen 116, 2010, 159–204