A clay figurine has spent millennia incomplete, waiting at the bottom of a lake for its long-dead craftsman to finish the Iron Age-era statuette.
During work at the underwater archaeological site of Gran Carro di Bolsena in Aiola, Italy, researchers pulled the rudimentary clay creation from the volcanic Lake Bolsena. The unfinished clay figure of a woman, dating from between the 10th and 9th centuries BC, looks more like a first draft than a ready-made piece of art. But just because the clay worker didn’t fully finish the figurine doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of clues available to show how it fits into Italian life in the Iron Age.
The feminine-looking, palm-sized statuette is so fresh that it “still shows the marks of the fingerprints” of its maker, according to a translated statement from the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts, and Landscape, part of Italy's Ministry of Cultural Heritage, and the imprint of a plot of fabric under the chest offers the best sign that the figurine was likely “dressed” at one point.
Cultural heritage experts say the figurine is reminiscent of something they’d normally discover in funerary finds, but the divers working at the site found this statuette in what was once a residential area. Still, it could have offered ritual uses, whether as a domestic piece or associated with a home of rituals within the residential core.
The Underwater Archaeology Service team gets credit with the discovery, but preserving the find and bringing it back to the surface came thanks to the Italian Cultural Property Restoration team working with government divers.
The volcanic rich area Gran Carro di Bolsena has a bit of an unknown history. Divers have helped to start piecing together that history, which wasn’t really on the archaeological radar until 1991 when researchers showed that the pile of shapeless stones that make up Aiola are linked to the presence of hot thermal water springs, and that wooden poles and ceramic fragments on the southwest side of the lake tie to the early Iron Age. There may be at least four other similar, albeit smaller, rock formations in the same lake, showing the power of the springs that spew gas and minerals in temperatures as hot as 40°C.
In 2020, experts found a mound of earth under the stones, the same area where the wood and ceramic originate from. That find led experts to determine that Aiola was around during the stilt-house period and was an integral part of the village of the early Iron Age. An additional discovery of coins and pots from the Constantinian era prove that there were inhabitants at the site until late in the Roman Empire.
The Aiola region has plenty more history to offer, and a poorly made clay figurine shows the fingerprints of that work.
Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland.