Cinerary urn in the form of a house,

8th century BCE

Shaped like a simple hut with a thatched roof and walls of packed earth, this bronze urn functioned as a container for cremated human remains. The type is well known in ceramic examples of the late ninth and eighth centuries BCE from central and southern Etruria and is associated with the earlier Villanovan culture. This is one of only three known examples in bronze. The walls are formed from a single sheet of hammered bronze that is connected to an oval floor and a larger oval roof. Four pairs of roof beams with bird’s-head finials pivot freely on a wire. Stylized birds’ heads reappear in the decoration on the walls of the hut, where they face one another in pairs. The shape of the urn as a house suggests a belief in an afterlife that resembled the world of the living, where necessities of life were required and comforts of home desired.