- chapter 4: Fleshing out the demography of Etruria –
statistical morphological studies of skulls or teeth (see, most recently, Pacciani et al. 1996;
Coppa et al. 1997; Rubini et al. 1997, 2007; Claasen and Wree 2004), now supplemented
by genetic studies comparing ancient, often Etruscan, and modern DNA (Vernesi et al.
2004a; Levy-Coffman 2005; Belle et al. 2006; Achilli et al. 2007). Although DNA has
been used, for example, to identify the sex of poorly preserved skeletal remains (Vernesi et
al. 1997; Vernesi 1999) or to show that bodies in a particular tomb group are genetically
related and may represent a single family group (Cappellini et al. 2004), the most ambitious
aim of ancient genetic studies has been the drive to clarify the geographic or ethnic origin
of population groups. To this point, the results remain highly controversial, if not entirely
unconvincing (Perkins 2009), and have arguably been deeply undermined by the failure
to integrate archaeological, historical and ancient DNA evidence into the interpretation
of the modern genetic material, which, while certainly more abundant, may not provide
convincing evidence for population dynamics a few centuries ago in the Paleolithic or
Neolithic, as is rather optimistically claimed (references in Simoni et al. 2000).
Some of the fi rst large-scale studies of ancient DNA have focused upon the Etruscans,
presumably inspired by the great appetite to clarify the origin of this mysterious people.
They have revealed some dramatic discontinuities between Etruscan and modern Tuscan
DNA profi les with some intriguing, if inconclusive, evidence of haplotypes rare in Europe,
but not uncommon in modern Anatolia and the Middle East (Vernesi et al. 2004a; Belle et
al. 2006; Achilli et al. 2007; Brisighelli et al. 2009). A number of scholars, most notably
Hans-Jürgen Bandelt (Bandelt 2004; 2005; Gilbert et al. 2005), have charged that this
Etruscan material, and much ancient DNA, present anomalies, which cast doubt on its
authenticity, suggesting that it is likely to be contaminated or degraded by postmortem
damage. On the other hand, the authors of this pilot Etruscan study claim that they used
the most rigorous controls (Cooper and Poinar 2000), and, while there are a number of
mutations which seem inconsistent with the results from much larger databases of modern
genetic material, some of the incongruities are simple errors in reporting, and many of
the nucleotides affected do seem to be prone to rapid mutation and need not invalidate
the overall results (Vernesi et al. 2004b). Bayesian statistical tests of these Etruscan
studies (Ligia and Rannala 2008) suggest that the anomalies are few and minor, and need
not cast any doubt on the overall reliability of the results, and Vernesi and his co-authors
are surely right to insist that we cannot assume that authentic ancient DNA studies
may not yield results which seem surprising or inconsistent with what we know from
contemporary material. Some extremely careful recent studies seem to give confi dence
that archaeological DNA samples can indeed yield reliable results. The analysis of Viking
DNA from well-sealed contexts, for example, reveals haplotypes exceedingly rare in
modern Scandinavian samples (Melchior et al. 2008), and signifi cant discontinuities in
ancient and modern genetic material can also be demonstrated for Iceland, Britain and
the Netherlands (Guimares et al. 2009: 2164); whereas studies of ancient DNA from
Iberians (Sampietro et al. 2005) and Sardinians (Ghirotto 2010), populations plausibly
considered to have experienced limited immigration, reveal much greater consistency and
continuity between ancient and modern genetic material. Until more studies of Italian
material are completed, it will remain diffi cult to properly interpret these pioneering
Etruscan studies, or to judge how typical they are of pre-Roman and Roman populations
in Italy, but, as a recent study has shown (Guimares et al. 2009), the genetic material
from samples in modern Tuscany seems entirely consistent with DNA from medieval
sites. This suggests that the origin of the discontinuity lies sometime before 1000 ad,