Offering

Votive offering of a womb, hole in the back. Mould-made in coarse, yellowish-orange terracotta with abundant inclusions and tracesof pinkish-buff slip. The model is intended to portray a human uterus with third-stage labour contractions, shown as wavy ridges covering the upper surface. It was constructed with a moulded convex upper surface attached to a flat, smooth back, the latter pierced with a vent hole near the centre. The coarse clay is characteristic of votives made in southern Etruria, Latium and Campania, part of a trend for anatomical votive models which developed around 300 BC and lasted for over a century.