- chapter i: Etruscan environments –
winters and dry and hot summers. In Roman times the climate became gradually warmer
and dryer until about 400 ad.^36 The favorable climate of the Etruscan period allowed the
inhabitants to live in cities and smaller villages supported by farmers and farmsteads in the
countryside harvesting products from their land. Apart from tomatoes, maize and potatoes
they could cultivate most of the products typical of contemporary Tuscany.
THE LAND OF THE FLOCKSEtruscans hunted the woods for boars and deer. The importance of hunting for economy was
probably small (approximately 5 percent of all meat consumed) and the images of hunting
merely refl ect an aristocratic concept of a life free from hard manual labor. Sheepherders
and cattle breeders provided most meat.^37 The domesticated species now common in the
Maremma, Bos taurus, have been the uncanny target of the heated debate on Etruscan origins.
Scientists from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Piacenza have extracted
mitochondrial DNA (inherited in a maternal line) from cattle of Tuscan breed and found
these grouping with cattle of the Near East, whereas other Italian species resemble cattle of
northern Europe. Their conclusion was that this breed came to Italy in ships during the late
Bronze Age.^38 Be that as it may, scholars no longer believe in permanent, local constancy.
Professor Bonghi Jovino of the Milan University believes that small groups of immigrants
may have caused the cultural discontinuity seen at the beginning of late Bronze Age/early
Iron Age or proto-Villanovan times.^39 Long-distance trade and movements of people seem
to have been the rule in prehistory as well as in modern times. A moving testament to this
fact is the frozen body of “Ötzi,” the “Iceman,” who died as he travelled over the Alps 5,300
years ago. He can now be seen at the Archaeological Museum in Bolzano.
However impressive the Maremma breed is today, in Etruscan times oxen were mainly
used for dragging the plough and the carriages used in agriculture to bring in harvests
and to spread manure over the lands.^40 Most bones from oxen are of old animals that
had been eaten when their working days were over. Bones from most excavations in
Etruscan settlements demonstrate that sheep and pigs were the most common animals
used for meat production and for fertilizing the fi elds.^41 Grassland and water are essential
to a pastoral and farming economy. The hilly landscapes of Etruria provided grasslands
all year round. In summer, when the coastal plains or valleys became dry and the grass
withered, the herders took their sheep up to higher lands where grass was good and fresh.
The animals grazing in coastal lands in Etruria in winter were herded to hilly parts of
Umbria and Marche during summer. In order to preserve the products, cheeses were
made in cottages and tavernae during this stay and were carried back or traded along the
major transhumance roads.^42 The Etruscans had an early custom of placing a “grattatoio,”
a cheese-grater, among the symposium paraphernalia in their early tombs (see Chapter
43, also Chapter 6, Fig. 6.4) because apparently they liked to grate cheese into wine. A
rich social life evolved along the roads and shepherds met and exchanged cheese recipes,
stories and religious ideas. Heracles was worshiped in shrines along the various callis
leading from valleys and up into the mountains of the peninsula, some nodes eventually
growing into large commercial centers (for instance Hercules Victor at Tivoli).^43 These
old pack-trails went through innumerable deep river valleys in the southern landscape.
The dogana, for example, in function from Etruscan to modern times led from the coastal
plains between Cerveteri and Tarquinia, passed San Giovenale on its way and herders and
sheep had to cross the Vesca in order to proceed. Sometimes roads were cut into the cliffs