- chapter 63: Modern approaches to Etruscan culture –
himself to his book, Etruscologia, the second edition of which was published after the war
ended, offered a “panorama of the knowledge and problems of Etruscan civilization” to the
general public and was a tremendous success. M. Pallottino also wrote for the second 1948
appendix of the Enciclopedia Treccani, the article “Etruschi.” This conception of a global
Etruscology, a conception that was shared abroad, was evident in the exhibition displaying
multiple aspects of Etruscan civilization: Mostra dell’arte e della civiltà etrusca, in 1955 and
- Taking into account different points of view went hand in hand with putting into
perspective again the particularity of the Etruscans within the framework of pre-Roman
Italy. The growth of economic, sociological and archaeological sets of issues makes it
possible to map out other unities, different from linguistic or artistic unities. In 1951, the
Istituto di Studi Etruschi became the Istituto di Studi Etruschi ed Italici, whose aim was to favor
studies “on the origin and development of the Etruscans and ancient peoples.” Henceforth,
an attempt was made to understand the relations between different peoples and the role
each of them played in the history of their time. The idea of a hierarchy between peoples
was dismissed and the old problem of origins was simultaneously rethought.
Etruscology even underwent its Copernican revolution. The concept of derivation
from a single origin was progressively discarded for the idea of a formation process for the
Etruscan people and its civilization. M. Pallottino in L’origine degli Etruschi (1947), then
F. Altheim in Der Ursprung der Etrusker (1950), voiced the idea of a very progressive ethnic
formation, a far cry from the usual theory of an unknown invader. For them, henceforward, a
people resulted from the melding of different elements, it did not prolong a previous single
origin. The change of points of view can be perceived by comparing the fi rst edition of
Etruscologia in 1942 with the second edition in 1947 and the third edition in 1955, in which
M. Pallottino noted that nobody wondered where the Italians or the French came from but
the formation of the Italian or the French nation was discussed at length (see Chapter 2).
In the 1960s, the publication of discoveries of Etruscan objects in Ampurias, Spain;
in Pech-Maho, in Saint Blaise; and in Burgundy, France, broadened further the scope
of study (see Chapters 17 and 19). The Etruscans, once considered as an Italian people,
became a European people. In 1957, Studi Etruschi asserted their international character:
G. Devoto justifi ed an application for funding by the international character of the Istituto
di Studi Etruschi ed Italici. Although in the years that followed, M. Pallottino took on
responsibilities within the Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica and of the Unione
Internazionale degli Istituti di Archeologia, major exhibitions kept nevertheless a continental,
European character. Before the treaty of Rome was even signed, the 1954–56 Etruscan Art
and Civilization exhibition moved from the Zurich Kunsthaus to the Milan Palazzo reale and
to other European sites (The Hague, Paris, Oslo, Cologne) and people came in droves to see
it: 140,000 in Zurich, 100,000 in Milan) thanks to the participation of German, French,
Swiss, Austrian, English and American museums. Then, before the fall of the Berlin wall,
the exhibition Die Welt der Etrusker-Archäologische Denkmäler aus Museen sozialistischer Länder,
was presented at the Berlin Altes Museum. More recently, in 1992, when the Maastricht
treaty on the enlargement of Europe was signed, the exhibition: “The Etruscans and
Europe,” conceived by M. Pallottino, G. Camporeale and F. Gaultier, placed the Etruscans
within their European framework: Rome is presented both as heir to Etruscan civilization
and as mediator between it and Europe.^4 Finally, in the twenty-fi rst century we witnessed
the return of the origin issue stemming from new DNA analyses^5 that showed that the
Etruscans are related to Asia Minor populations and the repetition of these analyses in a
European press where the place of Turkey in Europe is a contentious issue.