Nuove riflessioni su sacrifici umani e omicidi religiosi nel mondo etrusco

This paper aims to examine the testimonies (literary, iconographical, archaeological) that are usually considered in order to assert the historicity of human sacrifice in the Etruscan culture. As a result of the review, it does not seem plausible to recognise with enough certainty the practice. The author tries then to focus his attention to the real core of the issue: the definition of what we should intend for “human sacrifice”. If we accept that the sacrifice is a ritual action, it should be clearly recognisable and characterised by repetition. Those characteristics seem to be absent in the supposed cases of human sacrifice in the Etruscan documentation. Finally, a new proposal is put forward to distinguish two different categories: the one of the human sacrifice (that does not seem to be performed by the Etruscans) and the one that could be defined as “religious killing”, that may instead have occurred occasionally.