A Companion to the Etruscans

Sinclair Bell, Alexandra A. Carpino, Sinclair Bell, Alexandra A. Carpino

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781118354957
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This new collection presents a rich selection of innovative scholarship on the Etruscans, a vibrant, independent people whose distinct civilization flourished in central Italy for most of the first millennium BCE and whose artistic, social and cultural traditions helped shape the ancient Mediterranean, European, and Classical worlds.

• Includes contributions from an international cast of both established and emerging scholars
• Offers fresh perspectives on Etruscan art and culture, including analysis of the most up-to-date research and archaeological discoveries
• Reassesses and evaluates traditional topics like architecture, wall painting, ceramics, and sculpture as well as new ones such as textile archaeology, while also addressing themes that have yet to be thoroughly investigated in the scholarship, such as the obesus etruscus, the function and use of jewelry at different life stages, Greek and Roman topoi about the Etruscans, the Etruscans' reception of ponderation, and more
• Counters the claim that the Etruscans were culturally inferior to the Greeks and Romans by emphasizing fields where the Etruscans were either technological or artistic pioneers and by reframing similarities in style and iconography as examples of Etruscan agency and reception rather than as a deficit of local creativity

PART I
History

CHAPTER 1
Beginnings
Protovillanovan and Villanovan Etruria

Simon Stoddart

1. Introduction

This chapter provides the terminological, typological and chronological basis of the second millennium and the early first millennium BCE, otherwise known as the Bronze Age and first Iron Age of Etruria. For scholars of the European Iron Age, the Etruscans were also part of the Iron Age, but Italian Classical scholars tend to separate the later phases of the millennium into a different field of study for historiographical reasons. All study of what was later to be designated Etruscan, however, needs to start in the second millennium BCE to demonstrate the nature of the social and political transformations that led to Etruscan identity. This chapter covers the material forms of that identity, whereas the human geography of these developments is treated elsewhere (see Chapter 5).

2. Origins and Dating

All debates on origins are dependent on the creation of well-structured frameworks of dating. Lengths of periods and cross relationships with other parts of the Mediterranean are at the heart of understanding the nature of the radical changes in political organization in central Italy. A crucial problem for all dating is the reconciliation of dendrochronological and radiocarbon dates (where available) with the traditional sequences of material culture. This latter framework has been traditionally tied into more easterly parts of the Mediterranean by cross-dating to create an apparently secure historical sequence. Early attempts at forming a new dating framework were more radical than the more recent relatively nuanced changes in the traditional framework. The dating below follows the more recent, less radically altered, chronologies, appropriate for broad trends, and does not attempt the fine chronologies posited by some scholars which will, in any case, be subject to further research.

The traditional approach to the question of origins was established by Pallottino (1978). He covered the historiography of this issue in great detail in many of his works. He critiqued the Eastern and northern provenance of the Etruscan ethnos, and replaced these ideas with the idea of a formation in situ, drawing on the political change of populations present from at least the Middle Bronze Age (see also Chapter 13). Although the terminology has changed, modern scholars have built on this reworking of our understanding of the second and first millennia BCE. The contribution of the study of settlement organization in its various forms (see Chapter 5) has been crucial in providing complementary evidence to the data on material culture and burial which form the main thrust of this chapter. Different scholars, in no small measure influenced by their period and field of study, give different prominence to different periods as thresholds or tipping points in the process. However, in spite of this difference of important detail, most scholars are agreed today that political changes were already under way at least by the beginning of first millennium BCE, and that these became entangled with, rather than were caused by, developments in the rest of the Mediterranean.

3. The Transition from Prehistory

The Early Bronze Age is difficult to define in central Italy, but can be broadly dated to 2200–1700/1600 BCE (Bietti Sestieri 2010). The succeeding first phase of the Middle Bronze Age is a little clearer and often given the designation Grotta Nuova, dated broadly in the period 1600–1400 BCE. This phase is defined by pottery forms and styles that have been subdivided into regional groups. The forms include plates, carinated bowls, jars, and biconical vases. Once the Bell Beaker tradition went out of fashion, there was little decoration beyond cordons, although upright elbow and protruding handles began to be distinctive, in a manner detected in later Bronze Age forms. On this basis, regional groups have been identified within central Italy in the lower Arno valley (e.g., Sesto Fiorentino, Candalla, Asciano), focused on the Grossetano, in the Val di Chiana (e.g., Grotta dell’Orso, Cetona, Grotta Bella) and bridging north (e.g., Lago di Mezzano, Crostoletto di Lamone, Contigliano, Palidoro) and south (e.g., Torre Spaccata) of the Tiber in an area that includes much of the modern administrative region of Lazio. We can also infer from the forms of these vessels that the socially embedded practice of drinking and eating together was already important in these societies.

Recent work by Dolfini (2014) has dated a local tradition of copper and arsenical-copper working in central Italy as early as the Early Copper Age (c.3600–3300 cal. BCE). Dolfini suggests that arsenical and arsenical/antimonal alloys were still exclusively manufactured during the first phase of the Early Bronze Age, although he admits that some tin bronzes may have appeared at broadly the same date (c.2200 BCE). In the Early Bronze Age, metalwork continued to be relatively rare, or at least highly curated, redeployed and thus not left in the archaeological record. Most analysis has been restricted to the study of axes, with most material coming from hoards of well-preserved (rather than broken or obsolete) objects, and generally found outside settlements, or other stratigraphic contexts. The main concentration of hoards appears, at least in part, to be related to mineral-rich areas (e.g., Cervara Alfina in the Viterbo area, Campiglia d’Orcia, Castelnuovo Berardenga, and Sovicelle in the Siena area, Capalbio, Montemerano, Montagna di Santa Fiora, Saturnia and Scansano in the Grosseto area, and S. Michele di Campiglia Marittima and Torrenuova S. Vincenzo in the Livorno area).

The range of metal types is restricted and related to prestige forms. The axes are flat, with raised margins; their sides also appear to become less straight and more concave over the course of time with a more rounded splaying cutting edge and higher raised margins. The interpretation has been traditionally drawn from the stylistic analysis of hoards (Carancini and Peroni 1999) but, in fact, also relates to more efficient hafting and cutting, as mold techniques became more effective. Other metal forms do exist, including sickles, points, halberds, daggers, and pins. New forms such as swords and more sophisticated axes begin to appear towards the end of the phase. Metalwork was retained because of its intrinsic value and entered the archaeological record in greater quantity in deliberate deposits, such as hoards. Evidence for exchange, other than metalwork, was limited to some amber beads, probably from the Baltic, and glass beads, probably from the Aegean. The location of some settlements along the coast or on islands such as Giglio suggests an increased maritime connectivity by this stage.

Evidence of ritual and settlement (see Chapter 5) was also rare, apart from hoards. The most prominent funerary ritual is the collective tomb that had been so prominent in the preceding millennium. The best example is the tomb of Prato di Frabulino near Farnese, which preserved at least two individuals who were accompanied by glass beads, a faience necklace spacer, and silver hair spirals, as well as a ceramic bowl with an upright elbow handle (Casi et al. 1995). More substantial skeletal remains, supporting the collective rite, have been found at Naviglione, also near Farnese. These were accompanied by a wider range of pottery forms and arms, and it has been suggested that they are indicative of some social differentiation within society, where burial was only offered to more highly ranked groups, and where rich females were distinguished by personal jewelry and males by arms (Casi et al. 1995: 95). Other rituals included deliberately structured deposits in caves, namely of agricultural produce in Grotta Misa, and of human remains, including children, at Grotta dello Sventatoio south of the Tiber (Tusa 1980).

The full middle Bronze Age (Macchiarola 1987; Bietti Sestieri 2010), often designated Apennine (c.1400–1300 BCE), is much more easily defined in material terms and settlement organization (Chapter 5). The term Apennine was first coined by Puglisi (1959) and has endured as a well-defined ceramic style zone across much of the peninsula, associated particularly by Puglisi with a new form of pastoral and transhumant economy. More recent authors (e.g., Barker 1981; Bietti Sestieri 2010) have continued to stress the link between interconnected economy and interconnected styles, primarily in ceramics, but subsequently in the Recent Bronze Age in metalwork as well. Connectivity between the Aegean world and central Italy was much less marked since the evidence has primarily been found in southern Italy. If connectivity were to be considered essential for sociopolitical change, all expectations might have been for a major sociopolitical development in southern Italy on the back of this interaction, but it was in central Italy that the later more prominent developments occurred.

The Apennine ceramic forms comprise bowls and cups of gentle and carinated profile, as well as oval and biconical containers of larger dimensions. The cups are sometimes accompanied by concave handles with raised edges and a cut-out interior. It is, however, the incised or cut-out decoration that is their most prominent feature, arranged in bands of zig-zags and points. Some chronological and spatial distinctions have been interpreted from this evidence, reaching perhaps a peak of conspicuous display in the later phases. The Apennine ceramic style has been divided into three groups for central Italy (and a further nine for the rest of the peninsula). The northerly group is concentrated on the Monte Cetona (Belverde/Grotta Lattaia/Grotta dell’Orso) and a cave slightly to the south (Tane del Diavolo). The dominant decorative motifs here are undulating lines, rectilinear meanders, and lines of inset squares resting on their apices, as well as zig-zag motif set within oblong squares for the later phase. The middle Tyrrhenian group to the south is much more numerous and includes 28 sites north of the Tiber such as Tuscania, Luni sul Mignone, S. Giovenale, Narce, Tofa, Sasso di Furbara, and Palidoro. Distinctive motifs include simple festoons, ribbons with fine dense dots, repeated lunate impre...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Map of Etruria
• Introduction
• PART I: History
• PART II: Geography, Urbanization, and Space
• PART III: Evidence in Context
• PART IV: Art, Society, and Culture
• PART V: The Etruscan Legacy and Contemporary Issues
• PART VI: Appendix
• Index
• End User License Agreement