- Jean MacIntosh Turfa with Marshall J. Becker –
as evident as famine, imperfect nutrition can be a crucial factor to survival if a community is
otherwise assaulted, as in wartime, seasons of bad weather or volcanic eruption, or epidemics
of infectious disease. Bronze Age eruptions of Vesuvius and other fi nds have preserved
evidence for populations on the Bay of Naples (Sant’Abbondio, San Paolo Belsito) that may
be extrapolated for most of Italy, including Etruria. Tafuri (2005) noted an increase in cases
of iron defi ciency (anemia) in the Neolithic Italian population, especially among women of
childbearing age: perhaps caused by reliance on cereals to supply most calories, a problem
that would be exacerbated by frequent childbirth or lactation.
In general, the people of Etruria would have eaten well, and studies of bones confi rm the
Mediterranean diet described by authors such as Cato, Varro and Pliny, based on cereals
(barley, wheat, often consumed as porridge rather than bread), with a high vegetable
content and relatively little meat or milk products (see Bartoli et al. 1997; Brocato 2000;
Chapter 43). Cities near the sea would also have had seafood, and everywhere nuts and
berries were gathered. Studies of burials at Sant’Abbondio show that, in contrast to many
cultures, girls and women enjoyed the same diet as men and boys and were not deprived
of calories or protein. Still, the condition of cribra orbitalia, a growth of the bone of the
skull and eye-sockets that betrays anemia, has been identifi ed in many skeletons of all
periods in central Italy including Etruria. Harris lines on bones and hypoplasia of dental
enamel attest that children’s early years saw a series of periods of poor nutrition and/or
fevers and illness that affected their absorption of iron and other nutrients. This could
have resulted from famine, infectious disease, or parasitic infections.
Parasites must have abounded: the “Iceman” from the Italian Alpine Similaun glacier
was infected with whipworms (Aspöck et al. 1996; Dickson et al. 2000), and other
Italian and European populations, from the Neolithic on, have harbored roundworm
(Ascaris), tapeworm (Taenia) (Aufderheide and Rodríguez-Martín 1998: 222–246) and
liver fl uke (Fasciola hepatica: Turfa and Gettys 2009). The huge middens of the Bronze
Age Terramare culture in northern Italy must have harbored all sorts of pathogens (cf.
Cocchi Gennick 1998: passim), although sanitation and fresh water supply in Iron Age
Etruscan settlements must have supported much better living conditions (consider the
Archaic Etruscan engineering feats of the Roman Cloaca Maxima, the cuniculi of Veii or
the waterworks at Orvieto: Chapter 36).
EnvironmentEtruscan wealth and power derived in great part from Etruria’s natural resources, and
especially its mines and metallurgy (see Chapters 1 and 37). But environmental and
occupational hazards accompanied the procedures by which thousands of families were
supported: the ancient mining and smelting processes liberated large amounts of heavy
metals and sulphur compounds into air, land and water, and some regions, such as that
around Scarlino, Lago dell’Accesa and Massa Marittima, have had to undergo remediation
today (Mascaro et al. 2001; Drescher-Schneider et al. 2007; Camporeale and Giuntoli
2000; Harrison et al. 2010). In the cool, rainy climatic period circa 800–500 bc, the
heyday of Etruscan iron mining and bronze production, rainwater swept toxic compounds
into the miners’ food stores and houses (some of which had foundations of iron slag), and
at Accesa and elsewhere settlements had to be relocated. Etruscan practices of divination
could have contributed to the abandonment of toxic sites, as well as avoidance of pastures
infected with parasites like sheep liver fl uke (Turfa and Gettys 2009; Harrison et al.