Performing Power and Transitional Space: the Use of Acoustics and Multimodal AI in Etruscan Painted Tombs

This article presents a new multimodal AI and acoustic methodology using two 5th c. BCE Etruscan painted tombs at Tarquinia, Italy, the Tomba del Gallo and the Tomba dei Demoni Azzurri as case studies. Via the integration of AI computer vision–based visual saliency analysis, architectural affordance modelling, acoustic data, and agent-based perceptual trajectories, the study suggests that each tomb affords distinct experiential strategies. The Tomba del Gallo privileges visual sequencing, threshold control, and gaze discipline, whereas the Tomba dei Demoni Azzurri potentially induces perceptual disorientation and immerses the visitor into a sensory and spatial environment that has the possibility of inducing trance-like experiences. A central contribution of the study is the reinterpretation of subterranean funerary spaces as possible transitional spaces, where architectural and symbolic devices mediate between life and death, order and chaos, memory and transformation, and sensory manipulation operate as core ritual technologies. Ultimately, we argue that when combined with scientifically documented acoustic data, AI enables archaeology to move beyond representational interpretation toward the experimental modelling of ritualised experiences in the ancient Mediterranean.