Ritual and meaning

This chapter aims to offer some speculation on avenues of research which may provide insight into this type of offering and its place in the wider practice of votive religion in Hellenistic Italy. There is no literary evidence for any sacred ritual at which swaddling bands were put aside, but the end of the swaddling phase seems a significant point in a child&s;s development. L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi had held the censorship himself it shows that both start and conclusion of childhood were marked by parallel rituals conducted by the family but very much in a public context. In Hellenistic-period Italy the custom is attested by terracotta votive statuettes representing infants wrapped in bands of fabric. They form part of a category of votive offering which also includes terracotta models of human internal and external body parts, veiled and unveiled heads and statuettes of humans and animals.