- Jean MacIntosh Turfa with Marshall J. Becker –
improved food and water supply, comfort, and sanitation because of Etruscan agricultural
and engineering advances – and it may have suffered due to industrial pollution and
the movement of foreign immigrants, ultimately brought in by Rome’s conquests.
Rome probably benefi tted from Etruscan medicine as it certainly did from agriculture
and engineering, but the authors of the Late Republic and Augustan periods might not
have realized this and in any case were beguiled by the literature of Hellenistic Greek
culture, and so we do not see acknowledgment of this. As in other fi elds, it remains for
archaeological and scientifi c research to fi ll in the lacunae.
NOTES1 This is only a sampling of published data; see Chapter 4 for more on evidence of disease and
trauma; for review of paleopathological research in Etruria, see Mallegni and Vitiello 1997,
and articles in Journal of Archaeological Science, and medical and anthropological literature.
2 Social considerations may skew our data: in funeral cippi inscribed with Latin epitaphs at
Tarquinia (fi rst century bc), in addition to octogenarian men, two Etruscan women (Spurinnia
and Netia) reached 94 and 95 years, so we are not safe in making determinations from small
samples. See Kaimio 2010: nos 91 and 227.
3 The provenance of one other example, said to be from Bisenzio, could possibly be Iron Age/
late seventh century bc, since this settlement appears to have been abandoned around the end
of the Archaic period; at the moment the piece is considered lost, however. The 19 fi nds from
peninsular Italy range from Satricum and Bisenzio over all of Etruria (Bolsena and Bracciano
lake regions, Orvieto, Tarquinia [possibly four examples], perhaps Cerveteri and Vulci, and
the territory of Chiusi) and into the Ager Faliscus (Valsiarosa = Falerii-Celle), Latium (actually
Satricum, also Palestrina/Praeneste) and Campania (Teano, one of the latest, dated circa 300
bc).
4 The Liverpool objects were collected by goldsmith and antiquarian Joseph Mayer, but lack
provenance information; much of his collection was purchased in the second quarter of the
nineteenth century, and came from the excavations of the Vulci necropoleis, and it seems
possible that the pontics also came from Vulci.
5 The likelihood of an accidental or medical loss of a front tooth in such populations is extremely
low; these are the last teeth to be lost in an aging individual, and front teeth can usually be
detected in the ancient skeletal populations of central Italy.
6 The Roman Law of the Twelve Tables, recorded by the early fi fth century bc, and with likely
older antecedents, states “ne aurum addito”: “No gold may be added” to a body that is about
to be buried, but for decorum allows gold prostheses to be left in place, a serendipitous
confi rmation of their use in archaic Italy.
BIBLIOGRAPHYFor thorough background on diseases etc. in antiquity, see Aufderheide and Rodríguez-Martín
1998 and Kiple 1993; for zoonoses see T-W-Fiennes 1978 and Turfa 2012, chapter 6.
Albore Livadie, C. (2002) “A First Pompeii: the Early Bronze Age village of Nola-Croce del Papa
(Palma Campania phase),” Antiquity 76: 941–942.
Allegrezza, L. and Baggieri G. (1999) “Come leggere i votivi anatomici” in G. Baggieri and M. L.
Rinaldi Veloccia (eds), L’antica anatomia nell’arte dei donaria (Ancient Anatomy in the Art of Votive
Offerings), Rome: MelAMi, 34–76.