- Geof Kron –
streets and well-planned insulae (Colonna 1986; Izzet 2007: 171–2 and Fig. 6.1; 174–81)
divided into large multi-room houses (Brandt and Karlsson 2001). The excavated houses
at Marzabotto are remarkably large, with a ground area ranging from 600 to 800 m^2
(Mansuelli 1963; Torelli 2001: 301–2), and while these are clearly the homes of an elite,
it is a remarkably broad one. Although few excavations have investigated the domestic
quarters as thoroughly as at Pompeii or Olynthus, the thatched wattle and daub huts
which were typical in the Villanovan period (Boëthius 1962; Brandt and Karlsson 2001;
Izzet 2007: 147–8; Izzet 2007: 148, Fig. 5.1. and cf. Liseno 2007) were now replaced by
rectilinear mud-brick and stone buildings with tile roofs by the mid-seventh century bc
(Izzet 2007: 148 citing Colonna 1986: 425; de Albentiis 1990: 29–30), and both elite and
ordinary dwellings increased signifi cantly in size. At San Giovenale and Aquarossa, over
the seventh and sixth centuries bc, houses went from two rooms to an average of three to
fi ve “articulated spaces”, with as many as 16 rooms in a number of fi fth-century bc houses
in Marzabotto (Izzet 2007: 158), and even the smallest houses now aspired to some degree
of privacy and comfort (Izzet 2007: 149 Fig. 5.2 and see Stefani 1922: 379–85; Mansuelli
1963; Colonna 1986; Brandt and Karlsson 2001).
The evidence of physical anthropology, both of mean fi nal heights, and of skeletal
markers of chronic under-nutrition, disease, or stress, suggests that the Etruscans, like
the Classical and Hellenistic Greeks, enjoyed reasonably good health and nutrition,
marginally better on the whole than much of the population of Latium and Italy over the
course of the Roman Republic and Empire, and certainly much better than that of the
working classes of nineteenth century Western Europe. This good health is likely only
partly as the result of greater overall prosperity, however. More likely, the key reason for
the relatively good health of the Etruscans, lay in their success in signifi cantly reducing
the proportion of the population’s suffering from extreme poverty, poor diet, over-
work, and other health stresses which would be refl ected in stunted heights or skeletal
abnormalities. There is good reason to believe, based on both literary and archaeological
evidence, that these indices of good health for the Etruscan population should be taken
seriously as an indication of relative social equality, and that we ought to question the
traditional view of Etruscan society as distinctly hierarchical, even more so than that
of the Romans, according to some. Instead, I would suggest that we see the Etruscan
political and social system as one of independent competing city-states, with substantial
urban and rural middle classes, rather more akin socially and culturally to the Greeks,
and arguably quicker to urbanize and democratize than their Roman and Latin rivals, and
certainly quicker than most of the Italic tribes of the Iron Age and the Roman hegemony
(Attema et al. 2010; Colivicchi 2011).
BIBLIOGRAPHYAchilli, A., Olivieri, A., Pala, M., Metspalu, E., Fornarino, S., Battaglia, V., Accetturo, M.,
Kutuev, I., Khusnutdinova, E., Pennarun, E., Cerutti, N., Di Gaetano, C., Crobu, F., Palli, D.,
Matullo, G., Silvana Santachiara-Benerecetti, A., Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., Semino, O., Villems, R.,
Bandelt, H.-J., Piazza, A. and Torroni, A. (2007) “Mitochondrial DNA Variation of Modern
Tuscans Supports the Near Eastern Origin of Etruscans,” American Journal of Human Genetics
80: 759–768.
Ambrosini, L. (2009) “An Attic red-fi gured Kylik from Veii and the distribution of the Zalamea
Group in Etruria” in Judith Swaddling and Philip Perkins (eds), Etruscan by defi nition. The