- chapter 4: Fleshing out the demography of Etruria –
scant, overwhelmingly cereal-based diet, and urban dwellers suffered very heavy stress
from gastro-intestinal diseases, as well as cholera and typhoid, caused by extremely poor
sanitation and contaminated water supplies. As a result, in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, mean heights for many adult male populations range from as low as 158 cm
to around 162 cm, whereas Roman era populations in Italy seem to have averaged mean
male heights much closer to 168 cm, with Classical and Hellenistic Greeks typically
reaching mean heights ranging from 170 to 172 cm. It must be acknowledged, however,
that some Greek colonial populations, such as those at the cemetery of Pantanello in the
chora of Metapontum (166.6 cm: Henneberg and Henneberg 1998: 520, Table 11.14),
or Apollonia in the Tauric Chersonese (168 cm: calculated from data supplied by Anne
Keenleyside, pers. comm.) were somewhat shorter.
Two relatively full surveys comparing Roman and Etruscan skeletal remains show
signifi cantly higher values for the latter (Borgognini Tarli & Mazzotta 1986; Giannecchini
and Moggi-Cecchi 2008: 289, Table 3; 291, Fig. 2; but note the under-estimate of the
absolute height equivalence argued above), and suggest that the Etruscans were at least
a good two centimeters or so taller on average. Both surveys do include, along with the
Etruscans, a few results from rural Iron Age populations, in which, as in the early Medieval
period, low population densities and the lack of urbanization allowed the population to
keep their own domestic livestock, permitting a higher-protein diet and greater mean
heights (cf. Kron 2005: 76–7; 78–9), perhaps thereby infl ating the Etruscan average
very slightly. Becker’s chronological breakdown of Tarquinian heights shows that for this
urbanized Etruscan population, living conditions seem to have improved as we move from
the Orientalizing and Archaic period to the Classical, and held up well under the Roman
hegemony (Becker 1997: Table 3: 167.24 cm (n=10) dated ca. 750–500 bc; 170.64 cm
(n=19) dated 375–90 bc). The evidence from individual Etruscan sites corroborates the
thrust of these broader surveys, showing mean male heights for populations in the core
of the Etruscan region clustering around 169 cm or 170 cm or more, as, for example, at
Tarquinia (Mallegni et al. 1979: 194, Table 2: 168.75 cm (n=31); Becker 1989: 169.2
cm (n=10); Becker 1990; Becker 1997: Table 3; Becker 2002), Camerano (Corrain 1977:
170.1 cm (n=23)), Selvaccia near Siena (Pardini 1981: 168.9 cm (n=9)), and Blera, near
Viterbo (Becker 2004). Results from regions under heavy Etruscan infl uence, but still
somewhat mixed in terms of their cultural background (e.g. Robb 2001: 214–5) and
lifestyle, show a more complex picture, and sometimes, as in the very well studied large
cemetery site of Pontecagnano (Pardini 1982; Lombardi Pardini et al. 1984; 1991; 1992;
Sonego and Scarsini 1994; Scarsini and Bigazzi 1995; Robb 2001), seem decidedly poorer
or more inegalitarian (Robb et al. 2001: 219, Table 4: 166.0–166.5 cm). The evidence is
rather patchy, but does tend to refl ect that regions under Etruscan infl uence were doing
relatively well, and, in many cases, arguably better on the whole than they would under
the Romans: Monte Bibele (Gruppioni 1980; Dall’Aglio et al. 1981; Brasili Gualandi
1989; Brasili Gualandi et al. 1997); Bologna (Sergi 1884: 166.7 cm (n=24); Facchini
1975: 168.1 cm (n=3)); Camerano (Corrain 1977: 170.1 cm (n=23)); Spina (Marcozzi
1969: 168.2 cm (n=5)); Civitanova (Corrain et al. 1982: 169 cm (n=67)); Capovalano, in
Abruzzo (Coppa et al. 1987: 170.6 cm (n=7)); and Atesino, near Pavia (Corrain 1971).
Although the stunted heights often common among Neolithic and early Bronze Age
farming populations (Auerbach 2011) are to some extent attributable to calorie under-
nutrition, it is the lack of protein in the diet, typically derived from meat and other more
expensive foods, that is the most signifi cant limiting factor. Studies of trace minerals