FLR in Populonia investigates the relationship between Man and the Sea.

On Saturday, July 21, the temporary exhibition Sapere di mare (Knowledge of the Sea) opened at the Etruscan Museum of Populonia Collezione Gasparri at the Populonia Castle in Piombino. Man and the sea a millennial bond.

The exhibition, curated by archaeologists Giorgio Baratti (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan) and Carolina Megale (Etruscan Museum of Populonia), was organized in collaboration with the Luigi Rovati Foundation, which is displaying a preview of a small selection of artifacts from its Etruscan collection. Three 7th-century B.C.E. Etruscan ceramics of southern Etruscan-Falisque production with incised decorations and a splendid amphora painted red on a white background produced in Cerveteri in the early 7th century B.C.E.

The occasion for the exhibition was provided by the new layout of the museum's Sea Room, which houses artifacts from the waters of the Gulf of Baratti, including lead anchors from the tuna fishery. The room has been enriched with reconstructions, videos and didactic-illustrative panels that recount, in addition to the navigation systems and ancient naval architecture, the fishing and fish sauce production activities documented in Populonia.

We find the meaning of this exposition in the words of French historian Fernand Braudel: "What is the Mediterranean? A thousand things together. Not one landscape but countless landscapes. Not one sea, but a succession of seas. Not one civilization, but a series of civilizations piled on top of each other. To travel in the Mediterranean is to encounter the Roman world in Lebanon, prehistory in Sardinia, Greek cities in Sicily, Arab presence in Spain, Turkish Islam in Yugoslavia."

Knowledge of the Sea. Man and the sea, a millenary bond.
Curated by Giorgio Baratti and Carolina Megale
Populonia Etruscan Museum - Gasparri Collection, Populonia Castle (Piombino, LI)
July 21-November 4, 2018