Recent discoveries confirm that, as some had already suspected, the bronze discs with
geometric decoration produced between the 8th
and 6th centuries BC among the peoples of the
Central Apennines are not cuirass discs but belong to female costume. The most usual practice
was to apply one relatively large and one smaller disc to the opposite ends of a stole worn hanging
from the neck, so that the larger disc hung over the breast and the smaller one fell over the pubis.
The discs not only alluded to the primary function of the woman in terms of continuation of the
line, but also associated her with the sun cult, recorded among the Sabines and Marsi, as also
observed in protohistorical Scandinavian and Hallstattian environments.
In the Appendix further
reference is provided on the Villanovan tomb of Veio containing two cuirass-discs and definition is
supplied of some variants of the Alfedena group of Italic cuirass-discs.
