- chapter 4: Fleshing out the demography of Etruria –
estimated by more reliable methods (Borgognini Tarli and Mazzotta 1986: 154). Finally,
as is true of all but the most sophisticated of anthropological studies even today (e.g. Fox
2005), there is relatively little attention to standardization, quantifi cation and careful
contextualization, (or to the challenges of the “osteological paradox” (Wood et al. 1992),
the potential of most anthropological samples, coming as they do from cemeteries, to
misrepresent the health status of living populations), when analyzing possible indications
of nutritional or health stress, such as linear enamel hypoplasia or LEH, Harris lines,
cribra orbitalia or porotic hyperostosis, periostitis, caries, abscesses and ante-mortem
tooth loss, arthritis and the like. Attempts are gradually being made to bring together
and organize fairly large collections of Etruscan skeletal material (Coppa 1997: 21; cf.
Becker et al. 2009), and a few signifi cant synthetic articles, unfortunately now somewhat
dated, cover certain important aspects of the data (Borgognini Tarli and Mazzotta 1986;
Pacciani et al. 1996). Nevertheless, for the most part the Etruscan material is not nearly
as well studied as the Roman, and this sketch must remain very broad and tentative,
calling for signifi cantly more up-to-date research, and more attention to skeletal remains
in future excavations.
Although the stature evidence is arguably the most signifi cant for our reading of
Etruscan living standards, some of the data on other indicia of lifestyle, health and
nutrition, while not yet studied in enough depth to allow clear conclusions to be drawn,
do still deserve some brief discussion.
Archaeologists and physical anthropologists have collected and studied Etruscan
teeth in some depth from a relatively early stage. Sophisticated gold and silver dental
appliances have attracted considerable attention, and we have some good recent surveys
of the evidence (Becker 1992a, 1995/1996; Bliquez 1996; Becker 1999, 2000). Roman
literary sources, which suggested a medical use for such appliances, anchoring false teeth,
rather than a cosmetic one, have been questioned (Becker 1999: 110–11) on the grounds
that such appliances have yet to be found in Roman contexts (Becker 1999: 104), but this
objection now seems to be contradicted by at least one recent fi nd from Roman imperial
times (Minozzi et al. 2007).
Most studies suggest relatively good levels of oral health and signifi cantly fewer cases
of caries than in most modern populations, the result of the absence of refi ned sugar and
carious foods, and reasonably low levels of heavy tooth wear, LEH, abscesses, calculus
and ante-mortem tooth loss. Still, dental hygiene is sometimes poor, and the Etruscans,
like the Romans, although arguably to a signifi cantly lesser extent (Capasso 1987),
were more prone to cavities than pastoral or hunter-gatherer populations, as a result
of less reliance on meat and fi brous foods, and greater access to processed cereals and
carbohydrates (Fornacieri et al. 1984; Brasili Gualandi 1992; Brasili Gualandi et al. 1997;
cf. Catalano et al. 2007). There is evidence for a very broad secular trend for human teeth
to decline in size with the overall introduction of more soft cooked and processed foods,
and the transition from a raw or poorly processed diet, with a great deal of grit, or the
consumption of hard-to-eat foods that need to be gnawed or crushed, a trend beginning
in the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, reaching a
climax among the Etruscans and Romans, and, after a regression in the early Medieval
period, resuming a broad secular decline to Greco-Roman levels among the moderns
(Manzi et al. 1997; Manzi et al. 1999: 475 Fig. 1; Belcastro et al. 2007). Some of the
more detailed, largely Roman era studies offer some helpful insights to interpreting the
Etruscan evidence. For example, analyses of the caries rate, and its association with the