I telai, la tessitura e le Aquane, indizi e suggestioni sulla Grande roccia di Naquane

Looms, weaving and Aquane, hints and suggestions on the Great Rock of Naquane. Starting from the new tracing and the recent study of the Great Rock of Naquane (NAQ1), Valcamonica, accomplished by the author, the theme of loom figures and weaving scenes is faced, analyzing rock art, archaeological, epigraphic, topographical and ethnographic data. Loom figures are present only on the sector P of NAQ1, and on no other engraved rock in all of Europe. These figures, on the basis of the superimpositions, belong to the early Iron Age, around the end of the eight-beginning of the seventh century B.C. The looms are seven, all vertical, five with weights – vertical warp-weighted looms – and two without. The new documentation makes it possible to recognize complete weaving scenes, composed not only by the already known figures of weavers, but also by a little bench, a loom sword, a basket with skein, two probable stands and a human figure intent to wrap the skein. Concerning the interpretation, coeval decorated finds from the Po valley, Paleovenetian, Hallstattian, Etruscan, Italic, Greek and Near Eastern areas are examined, which demonstrate how during the Iron Age Valcamonica was part of a dense network of relationships with the surrounding cultures, even under the aspect of figurative culture. The comparanda for the looms are just over 50 and mostly come from funerary contexts. Those of Greek vascular art in many cases illustrate mythological scenes, suggesting the hypothesis that the other finds, including NAQ1 figures, may also refer to mythological or divine characters, and not to the simple representation of everyday life. The place name, Naquane, which derives from Aquane, attested in cartography, must also be taken into consideration. There is a strong connection with the well-known female characters of the traditional sagas of the Triveneto and centraleastern Lombardy, the Anguane, a sort of rupestrian fairies that live among the rocks and inside the caves of the mountains, often in groups of three, and near watercourses and lakes, intent on washing white sheets in the moonlight at night and experts in the art of spinning. A Latin epigraph in Cantù contains a votive dedication to the Adganae, associating them with the Matronae, divine feminine triad. On this basis, the Adganae-Anguane-Aquane connection is hypothesized, suggesting the possibility that the figures and scenes linked to the Great Rock looms, as well as the place name, hide the reference to an ancient triadic female divinity expert in weaving, analogous to Greek Moirai, Latin Fates-Parcae and Norse Norns; these figures, weavers-spinners of destiny, protectors of pregnant women, guardians of birth and death, figures of the limit between the world and the other world, would have been worshipped with iconic votive offerings, to mark the extreme passages of human existence, leaving a legacy on the Naquane Great Rock.