CHAPTER NINETEEN

ETRUSCAN GOODS IN THE

MEDITERRANEAN WORLD AND BEYOND

Jean Gran-Aymerich with Jean MacIntosh Turfa

INTRODUCTION

A

good estimate of Etruria’s wealth and economy, and its impact upon neighboring

• and subsequent – cultures may be predicated upon a survey of its imports and
  exports and the range of foreign infl uences it embraced and adapted. The meeting
  of different cultures is discussed in Part III of this book, and the interaction and
  immigration of foreign craftsmen (and others) is treated in Chapters 6 and 48. The
  character of the evidence, both objects and contexts, differs from east to west across
  the Mediterranean, with – thanks to quite recent excavations – a rapidly growing
  body of material to be analyzed for the western Mediterranean, both Europe and
  North Africa.
  Etruria and the central Italian Peninsula occupy a favorable position vis-à-vis
  Mediterranean and European exchange (Fig.17.1). This region, at the heart of the
  Tyrrhenian Sea, is roughly the same distance from Marseille, from the foothills of
  the Alps, and from Carthage, and, at a larger scale, just as far from Gibraltar as from
  Cyprus. At the end of the proto-historic period, the tenth through eighth centuries (all
  dates bc), Etruscan objects appear all along these long circuits of distribution, in both
  the Mediterranean and temperate Europe. During the seventh century this diffusion
  took place by both land and sea. The apogee of maritime exports occurred in the sixth
  century, lasting into the fi fth century for exports into the Celtic hinterland. These fi rst
  exports from the Italic Peninsula did not cease in later eras, but marked the beginning of
  a long period of exchanges, both cultural and human, which continued into the Roman
  Republican period. At the core of our enquiry is the period of the greatest diffusion of
  Etruscan objects, from the seventh to the fi fth centuries. The clearest evidence of these
  far-fl ung Etruscan enterprises are bucchero kantharoi, transport amphorae and bronze
  vessels. However, the reality is far richer and more complex than these simple categories
  might suggest, especially for the regions of the western Mediterranean where Etruscan
  objects are the most numerous and varied.^1