- Introduction –
the great necropoleis described in Chapter 32, followed by a brief consideration of the
imagery and relevance of offerings placed in tombs (Chapter 33). The sanctuaries of
Veii, the other major south Etruscan center, have not been discussed separately, but the
Portonaccio sanctuary and its terracotta acroterial sculptures (such as the Apollo of Veii)
have been studied and familiar for almost a century; with other Veian sanctuaries it has
yielded massive votive deposits from the Iron Age through Late Republican periods.
Many fi nds are discussed in various chapters throughout the book.^6
Special aspects of Etruscan culture appear in Part VI: Etruscan science and inquiry
(Chapter 34), Architecture (Chapter 35) and town planning (Chapter 36). We can
never know exactly how much of modern science and technology we owe to Etruscan
“trendsetters,” passed on through Rome. We may be sure that, beneath its Greek
ornamentation, Roman architecture (and thus our own) owes its structural core to
Etruscan engineering and materials science. The hydraulic engineering and surveying
in town planning, including implementation of gridded plans, are also Etruscan feats.
Other major fi elds of Etruscan expertise, even fame, in antiquity include mining and
metallurgy (Chapter 37), warfare and implementation of arms and armor (Chapters 38
and 39), including the chariots developed for war and display (Chapter 41), and seafaring:
whether they were pirates or honest merchants, Etruscan seafarers were unequalled for
centuries in the central and western Mediterranean (Chapter 40). On the home front,
essentials of Etruscan life that are often overlooked today (but not in antiquity) include
textiles and their production (Chapter 42), cuisine (Chapter 43) and its presentation
in the banquet ceremony (Chapter 44), and entertainment, often a means of worship,
honoring the ancestors, or maintaining political control with spectacle (Chapter 45) and
with music (Chapter 46). Etruscan health and the unique character of medicine in central
Italy are treated in Chapter 47.
The highly distinctive character of Etruscan art, in many media, follows in Part VII,
beginning with Etruria’s debt to immigrant foreign artists (Chapter 48), including
the sudden creation and subsequent development of architectural terracotta in Etruria
(Chapter 49). Chapters 50 through 58 survey a wide array of artistic media in which
Etruscan artisans excelled: goldsmithing and jewelry; engraved gems, painted pottery
(over several centuries), bucchero pottery, the black ware today (and in antiquity)
emblematic of Etruscans, terracotta fi gurines, the art of portraiture, fresco painting,
noted for its landscape motifs and illusionism, bronze votive fi gurines and statues, and
Etruscan engraved mirrors. All these categories of art had profound impacts on society
and economy in antiquity, and continue to do so today (as in Josiah Wedgwood’s naming
the location of his pottery “Etruria”). Sculpture in bronze and terracotta can also tell
us much about religion, in its votive dedications, while luxury goods and monumental
art reveal the interests of ruling classes, and pottery, manufactured at many levels of
simplicity or extravagance, illuminates the daily lives and public occasions of all classes
of society. The terracotta production of anatomical votive models combined religion and
artistic representation, and has much to tell us of intellectual history and medicine in Late
Republican Italy (Chapter 59). Animals, so pervasive in art of every period, are analyzed
in a novel way through their artistic representations, indicative of animals’ position in
Etruscan life and thought (Chapter 60).
Processes of exchange and cultural interaction were undoubtedly much more dynamic
than we often envisage from behind our desk or computer: exactly how did the alphabet
come to be transferred from Etruria to the Scandinavian cultures? Was that rare object