The Ancients - Rise of the Etruscans

Episode Date: November 20, 2022

Situated in the North of Italy, the Etruscan's were once a powerful civilisation, dominating the Italian peninsular. Predecessors to Ancient Rome, the Etruscans excelled in trade, art, and sculpture, surviving for centuries from the early 1st Millenia BC until their fated clash with the Romans. The might of the Etruscans is undisputed - but what does the archaeology tell us about this mysterious civilisation, and why does is counteract ancient sources?In this episode Tristan is joined by Dr Lucy Shipley to give an introduction to the Etruscan civilisation and their meteoric rise on the Italian peninsular. Looking at their international relations, language and culture, just who were the Etruscans, and why were they so important in antiquity?Edited by Thomas NtinasFor more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program,

they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not, just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. it's the ancients on history hit i'm tristan hughes your host and in today's podcast well it's another one of those ancient civilizations that you've probably heard the name of but might not know that much about. I love it when we cover topics like this. We're talking all about an incredible Iron Age civilization situated in the north of what is today Italy in the region of Tuscany. You might have noticed recently that there was an incredible discovery of statues found in the region of

Tuscany and you might have also noticed with that discovery the name Etruscan associated with it because that's the civilization we're going to be talking about today. We're going to be focusing in on what the archaeology and the ancient literature is telling us about the Etruscans, these people who lived in this area of the world during the earlier stages of ancient Rome. We're going to be going from the start of the first millennium BC down to a period known as the Orientalising period. So we're not going to be covering all aspects of the Etruscans today. No, no, no. There is so much archaeology that has been uncovered about the Etruscans, which means archaeologists actually

know quite a lot. So in this podcast, we're just going to be focusing in on the early history, the early archaeology of the Etruscans. What do we know about their origins? What's this great debate around their origins? Were they from the Near East? Were they indigenous? And we'll be focusing in on how they start really growing in power, focusing on settlements, on trading ports, on burials, and so much more. Joining me for this fascinating chat all about the Etruscans, the rise of the Etruscans, I was delighted to interview a week or so ago, Dr. Lucy Shipley. Lucy is brilliant. She's such an eloquent speaker, so passionate about Etruscan archaeology. She's written a book all about the Etruscan civilisation too. It was wonderful to get on

the podcast to give us this overview of this incredible ancient civilisation that at one period was more dominant than Rome. These were the people who were dominant over the Italian peninsula, or at least the north of the Italian peninsula, before the Romans. But anyway, I digress. On to the podcast at hand. Here is Lucy to tell all about the rise of the Etruscans. Lucy, it is great to have you on the podcast today. I'm really pleased to be asked to be on the podcast and to talk about the Etruscans. Well, I mean, yes, I'm very, very happy that you agreed to come on for this topic because it's such an incredible one. As you've hinted at there, the Etruscans. When someone mentions the Etruscans, there is this feeling of mystery

that we don't know that much. But Lucy, correct us, we're completely wrong with this idea. Actually, we have lots of information surviving about them. We certainly do. And I mean, to be fair to people, this idea that the Etruscans are mysterious and unknowable is actually quite an old one. So you can forgive yourself for having that impression. Even in the reign of Claudius, what he's doing is he's fascinated by the Etruscans. He marries this woman from this Etruscan family and he sets people to work on researching these strange, mysterious Etruscans. So don't worry, it's been good for 2000 years to be thinking of the Etruscans as mysterious. But we're so lucky now because we're in the position that we can actually know an awful lot more about them. Which is very, very exciting indeed. I love the

fact that Claudius, even he didn't really know that much and, you know, asked people to learn more about them. But okay, therefore, set the scene with the background. Before we go into the sources, we've mentioned the word Etruscans, but whereabouts in Italy were the Etruscans living? Well, the Etruscans are living in, I'm going to be a bit partial here, but I think it's probably one of the most beautiful parts of Italy. And I think an awful lot of people will be really familiar with the land of Etruria, although we call it something different. So most of Etruria is taken up by the modern province of Tuscany, but they also extended into Lazio, Emilia-Romagna, and you can kind of use a broad brush between the rivers at the Tiber and the Arno. And, you know, when we think about this landscape, you get kind

of those screensavers and background pictures. It's very beautiful rolling hills and farmhouses. But from pollen evidence we know it really wasn't very much like that during the Etruscan period it was a lot more forest cover even though those soils were super fertile as they are today so there's loads of potential here and the other key feature of this landscape is it's got the Colline Metallifero which are these metal bearing hills so if we're thinking we're in the Iron Age, late Bronze Age, early Iron Age, then this is somewhere that you're going to want to be because this is somewhere with metal-bearing soils available. You could be rich with this

mineral wealth. Interesting. So it's a place, definitely an ideal place for agriculture, for settlements, but as you say, also for minerals, for craft production, for the use, very much the embracing of the best metals available, as you say, in this time when it is the Iron Age in the world. Yes, exactly. And I shouldn't neglect the maritime resources as well. So in addition to these kind of inland volcanic lakes, you also have this long coastline of the Tyrrhenian Sea. And there's kind of marshland and marginal zones in there that people are obviously not occupying. And there's kind of marshland and marginal zones in there that people are obviously not occupying. But there's a great potential for that coastline to be really important in terms of trade,

which I'm sure is something we'll go into extensively later. You're absolutely right there. Good to get that hint out straight away. Let's talk first of all, though, about the source material that we do have available for the Etruscans. First off, what sorts of literature do we have surviving for the Etruscans. First off, what sorts of literature do we have surviving about the Etruscans? So the majority of the sources that we have are classical sources. So we have Greek and Roman authors who are writing about the Etruscans from a kind of outsider's perspective. We do have, the Etruscans are writing we know that they're literate and we do have very occasional rare survivals fragments small tablets and one major text from the Etruscans but alas there's

no Etruscan Homer there's definitely no Etruscan Herodotus I wish there was I would love to read that although you know things are coming to light all the time. In fact, the week that we're recording, there's been a cache of bilingual Latin and Etruscan texts near Siena, well, province of Siena, it's quite a long way from Siena, that's been found. So, you know, our knowledge of what the Etruscans are saying about themselves is expanding all the time, but it really pales in comparison to the portrait that's been painted by those classical authors. that's been painted by those classical authors. And just to talk a bit more about the Etruscan language and the Etruscan alphabet, I mean, do we know much about the Etruscan language itself from these rare snippets we get of it? Yes. So I'm not a linguistic specialist, but one of the key really interesting things about Etruscan as a language is that it is non-Indo-European. So it's not related to other languages that are being spoken in the Italian peninsula at this point, which is fascinating. So it's a bit like something like Basque, a language that survives even though it's surrounded by lots of other languages that aren't related to it.

There's kind of theories about where it comes from. There's evidence for Lemnian and Rhaetian being possibly related to it. But the question is, it's kind of chicken and egg. Were they influenced by Etruscan or was Etruscan influenced by them? So I'll leave the linguists to battle it out, but it is fascinating. And there is one word in English. I think it's the only one. I'll check if there's others, but definitely this word in English is people that is from Etruscan, which is great fun. And so important a word too. Yeah, that is a great fact. People comes to the Etruscan. I mean, before we delve into the archaeology as this other key source, a little bit more on the literature. You mentioned how

our main sources of literature are these Greco-Roman authors. Do various authors portray the Etruscans quite differently? Yes. So quite often you're coming at things from a tangle of different viewpoints, depending on what the individual ancient author is thinking about the Etruscans and wanting them to do in terms of their narrative that they're writing. So I would say that the vast majority of both Greek and Roman sources have a tendency to portray the Etruscans in a slightly unflattering light, I think that's fair to say. And you have all sorts of kind of almost like hot gossip that kind of tumbles out of some of these sources.

And some of it's quite scandalous, really. But then very occasionally, people will try and portray the Etruscans as almost like these noble lost people who might be slightly related to us, but are still very definitely barbarians. And a really good case study for this is thinking about the origins of the Etruscans. And you can see really nicely in the classical sources just how messy they are when we look at this question. Lucy you are great at dropping hints as to where we're going to be going in this podcast in the coming minutes but I need to hold fire just now because let's first of all talk about the big

question that other key source we have for the Etruscans, which is of course the archaeology. And you mentioned earlier, this is an exciting week for Etruscan archaeology with these new discoveries. I also saw their statues discovered in Tuscany as well, incredible discoveries. So what sorts of archaeology do we have available when looking at the Etruscans? So traditionally, the major part of the Etruscan archaeological record has come from funerary assemblages. So people might already know the really famous, beautiful painted tombs that you see, also these sort of enormous chamber tombs, these dromos tombs that you see. And that's kind of a feature of the way that they've been encountered over the past 200 years. But in the sort of later part of the 20th century, we also

have really good field survey data, and we're starting to get a handle on sort of more day-to-day life of the Etruscans as well, in addition to exciting sites like the one at San Casiano d'Evany, which is the one that's come up this week. So we're starting to see the Etruscans as a more rounded picture, rather than just this kind of people of the dead. And that also would have really played into this kind of mysterious mystique that the Etruscans seem to have in the popular imagination. And we'll definitely delve more into that archaeology as this podcast progresses. But go on then, you mentioned the origins. We've already talked about the literature and the dividing opinions.

What does the literature say about the origins of the Etruscans and take it away these two sides which seem to emerge yeah let me set the scene it's kind of a rip-roaring tale for those interested so you know it's the obvious place to start but the place to start is kind of with Herodotus's account which is the oldest account of the origins of the Etruscans and he goes for a really classic migration adventure so he says there's this king in Lydia and at the same time there's a population crisis there's not enough food people are starving so what happens is the king makes his subjects draw lots and a group led by his son Terenos and I mentioned the Tyrrhenian coast earlier so you can see where this is going, and they get in their boats and they head off and they head out

to the western Mediterranean and they land in Italy and they develop into the Etruscans. So this is quite, you know, it's quite a nice story. It's got lots of ingredients that we know from other stories about how colonies are being founded in Greece. If you think about Tarantum or if you think about even the Aeneid, the story of Aeneas, people moving from east to west. And the people in Italy greet them as wonderful civilized people. And everybody sails off into a glorious future of economic and political success. And you can see why this is quite tempting. So archaeologists have kind of tried to tie this into the archaeological evidence. And latterly,

and they've also tried to kind of wiggle this into an idea about collapse in the late Bronze Age, maybe this is something that happened, maybe this is an echo of a story that the Etruscans did tell about themselves. The problem is that later Roman classical authors really don't like this at all. So a really lovely account comes from Livy. Livy goes on about the Etruscans on multiple occasions. They pop up again and again, both in the early and sort of later period. You've got those Etruscan kings of Rome. Livy's full of opinions about the Etruscans. But in terms of their origins, he's also really nice and clear. And he's completely the opposite of Herodotus. He says they're an indigenous Italian people.

There's a bit of influence from northern Italy and central Europe, but that's it. He's very clear about that. And then from these two kind of opposing camps that we have, what ends up happening is individual authors really line up. They seem to pick their team and go for it. So unsurprisingly, Philly the Elder, he's completely behind Livy. The Etruscans are an Italian people. And Dionysus of Halicarnassus also suggests that they're indigenous, although I think that's him sulking and saying, well, they didn't come from here. They're not my problem. I don't think that's necessarily a positive thing that he supports that indigenous etruscan origins theory but then weirdly you have tacitus who

is completely behind the anatolia theory so you've got a complete range of views and they all have their own little axe to grind in there as well i love that team livy versus team herodotus we're going to be coming back to, these two teams. Well, if we therefore fast forward to, let's say, the start of the 20th century, and archaeologists now looking at the Etruscans and trying to figure out which is the correct version from the sources. Did they come from the East or were they indigenous to Italy? What was the thinking, what was the scholarly thinking about this question, about this conundrum as the 20th century progresses? So just to skip back a tiny bit into the 19th century, during the 19th century

there's very much this idea that they have come from the east and as the Truscan tombs are being discovered and they have lots of artefacts in that show kind of the influence of eastern Mediterranean styles and the majority of archaeologists, especially those coming from outside of Italy, are fairly firm that this is people coming into Italy and developing it. And you get kind of quite snooty opinions from especially a British traveller and scholar archaeologist called George Dennis, who's in Etruria in the 1840s. And he's very clear that, oh, these Italians couldn't possibly have done something like this. So that's the background that it's coming from. Whereas Italian authors are kind of more inclined to support the indigenous origins argument. And what happens in the early 20th century is we see this growing and

flourishing of Italian nationalism. And that ends up becoming quite problematic. So Italy is a new country. It's only founded in the 19th century. This idea of Italian unification, one people. Their national anthem's a really lovely example of this. It's got lots of ancient history motifs in there. But it gets out of control. And during the fascist period under Mussolini, the Italian past gets kind of conscripted into these nationalist narratives.

And while his focus is on a second Rome, the creation of a wonderful Italian empire, the Etruscans inevitably do get tarred with the same brush. Right. So even Mussolini, as you say, Mussolini is not primarily focused on the Etruscans. As you say, you know, he's thinking of a new Roman empire at that time. But because of the Etruscan link, because of that growing sense that they were indigenous to Italy, to ancient Italy, they kind of get linked to the fascist regime, even though they are not prima focus. Yes. And some really interesting little events happen that really show that very nicely. So one of the very famous Etruscan sites is Tarquinia. I've name

checked it already, and we'll go on to talk about it in more detail. But the medieval name for that city is actually Cornetto and its name is changed back to Tarquinia in the fascist period to reflect that link with the Etruscan past. And I think the issue is not so much necessarily people deliberately choosing to do this, but maybe what's happening is if you want a successful career in academic research hey who doesn't it's tough then it's tough now what people are doing is kind of structuring their arguments to fit in with this idea of a glorious italian nationalist past and that's what's happening and the key moment really comes in 1939 which is you such a tense period i can't imagine this stress that this archaeologist,

Massimo Palatino, goes on. He survives the war. It's okay. You can tell when he's writing, you read this article, you can feel he's kind of, he doesn't know what's coming. He's almost like he's rolling the dice and he's going to say what he believes because he doesn't know if he's going to come through. He does come through, spoiler alert, and he goes on to really great things. Because what he does is he looks very closely at the archaeology itself. He looks at pottery forms and fabrics. He looks at site development. He looks at metalwork. And he says the archaeology really clearly supports the indigenous hypothesis for Etruscan origins. And that kind of becomes more and more accepted as

the 20th century goes on. There are still people who kind of grumble and rumble and say, no, no, no, you know, there's indigenous people and the sources say this and Herodotus can't be argued with this, that and the other. I'm paraphrasing very cruelly. That kind of rumbles on in the background until we get to the later 20th century. And some exciting things start to happen with the potential for using DNA to assess this question. Right, so how does DNA therefore add another part, I guess another set of pieces to this great origins puzzle? Yes, well, a classic metaphor to use. It's DNA, I think the minute archaeological uses of DNA come into vogue, I think people working on the Etruscans could see the potential for this

question. And as a result, what we have is some early studies that are kind of quite iffy methodologically, and they're trying really hard to get at this question, but not necessarily getting to those answers in terms of time depth. So we have a big survey of modern Tuscan people, and they say, oh, look, these people have got Near Eastern ancestry, so it might be a sign that they're different and the Etruscans did have this connection. But then it's a question of, well, when did that happen? And at the time, the techniques are not there, they can't get at that. There's even a really fun DNA study that is done on these special cattle that bred in the Maremma marshes. They're supposed to have ancient Near Eastern origins as well,

but, you know, all domestic cattle also have ancient Near Eastern origins, so it's a bit of a problem there. And if you're really interested in going down this rabbit hole, there's a wonderful YouTube video you can watch by an Etruscan specialist called Phil Perkins that I really recommend. Shout out there if anyone wants to go and find that. But more recently,

the DNA has kind of got more sophisticated and there have been some more recent studies that get at that time depth and they can sort of pull out the archaeological DNA. One of the issues with Etruscan funerary archaeology is that quite a lot of the human remains are not in the best of condition. So those early DNA studies, it wasn't really possible for them to go take DNA from Etruscan burials and compare it as they would. Whereas a study that came out in 2021, really lovely one, they sampled 86 burials and they managed to get DNA from 82 of them. So they've got quite a wide data set to look at. And it was lovely clear results in them. It showed that these people were more data set to look at. And it was lovely clear results from them. It showed that these people were more closely related to each other, but were also related to other central Italian groups.

There wasn't this suggestion of people coming in from the ancient Near East. And those burials came from a time range between 800 BC and the year zero. between 800 BC and the year zero. And the really pleasing part of this is they thought about the critiques that would be coming and this idea of, well, where did all that Near Eastern DNA come from? And they looked at other cemeteries later in time and they pinpointed it as coming in much later. So if we think about the history of the Italian peninsula,

we've got people moving around the Roman Empire, this entrepot, people moving all over the place, and then as well into the early medieval period, the invasion of the Lombards. So we've got lots of different people coming together. But this Sadi was able to zero in on that Etruscan period and say quite clearly, these people do not have Turkish or Eastern Mediterranean origins. How interesting how that's, you know, latest technology research has revealed that. So therefore, is it fair to say that the current consensus, and I hate to say it, but it's Team Livy rather than Team Herodotus at the moment. I know, I can see it's hurting you to say that. But yes, I think it is. You know, there could be, I don't know, in my worst nightmares,

there could be another DNA study published tomorrow after we've recorded today. And it says, hey, look, we've found quite the contrary DNA in a different group of Etruscan burials. But with the evidence that we have before us now, I think it's really satisfying to say that Palatino and his really, goodness me, if you look at his research, the amount of painstaking attention to detail that's gone into it, it's really pleasing to see that the archaeology is actually being backed up by the DNA. And let's leave Livy out of it and just focus on the archaeology, maybe. Well, there we go. There we go. Leave Livy out of it. I like those words indeed. I mean, I love all these origin stories that we can have from the ancient world. And the Etruscan origin

story is a fascinating one. So it was great to really delve into the detail of that. But let's therefore delve into the archaeology itself. And I want to go back really, really early. And I know this is really sometimes a difficult question to ask, particularly with secure dating of archaeology, especially as we're going hundreds and hundreds of years before the Common Era, before AD. But what's the earliest sorts of evidence that archaeologists have uncovered from northern Italy, which seems to be Etruscan or hint at the Etruscan civilisation? So in terms of central Italian development, what we have is this kind of almost, people tend to call it proto-Etruscan sometimes. So we have these late Bronze Age cultures, the Terramare culture, the Apennine culture,

who are very happily living in the Late Bronze Age. And then something sort of shifts and changes around about 900 BCE. And we see this cultural group who are usually called the Villanovans. And the site of Villanova is up near Bologna. It's not in kind of Tuscan heartlands really at all. But what we have is a kind of package of archaeological features that seem to go with these people so they get into cremation burial you get these burials that are very distinctive so they're using a ceramic container

called a biconical urn and it sounds like quite a complex word but it's biconical it's kind of like an hourglass shape almost and usually there's a bowl on top. Sometimes they'll put beautiful bronze helmets on top as well. So those are really stunning examples of their metalworking technology. And metalworking seems to be kind of one of their features as well. So you get lovely Villeneuve and horse harness equipment, fibula, other pieces in the grave goods accompanying these cremation burials. So that's one aspect. And I think it's really important to think about these in terms of, you know, we always say the dead don't bury themselves, but also the dead aren't buried for themselves either. It's kind of this display. So

you have this huge cremation, this pyre, the amount of effort it takes to, you know, even with the forest cover, it's going to take a lot of effort to create that pyre. And then you're placing it into this body of a pot, and then you're potentially crowning it with either another pot or one of these helmets, which is really amazing to imagine what this would have looked like to the people left behind. Settlement archaeology-wise, the Lenovin period is not great, but we do have some quite sort of exceptional sites. There's a lovely site called Gran Caro which is on Lake Bolsena and it's a wet site so there's really great preservation of organic remains there so we can see these kind of square shaped huts I don't like that word hut but I'm going to have

to use it and then other places that kind of coalesce into being Etruscan cities what we have is these little hilltop settlements these kind of scattered little settlements of small houses and huts that will later go on to kind of coalesce and form the beginnings of Etruscan cities. Well, I mean, talking about this continuity from this Villanovan Proto-Etruscan culture, with the earliest Etruscan archaeology that we have, can we see similarities in their burials, for instance, in funeral urns, in the design of these funeral urns? Or are there noticeable differences when we're looking at early Etruscan burials? So this is a really interesting question because I think there's a lot of similarity in terms of purpose and the way that people are

thinking about burial. So if we're skipping forwards in time just to have a little peek, the Etruscans, by and large, in large areas of Etruria, move away from cremation to inhumation. And if you're somebody that's supporting this argument that external influences are coming in, then you might say, hey, look, they've changed their burial ritual. But actually, there's an awful lot that stays the same, even though this kind of quite major thing has changed. And inland, at places like the city of Kewsee, what we see is that cremation actually survives for an awfully long time, even after it's not fashionable anywhere else. So that's a really interesting facet. And one of the things that I think really illustrates this beautifully is quite a rare artifact class. So there's only seven of these, but these Villeneuve and Hutt urns. And they are some of the most beautiful objects from

the ancient world. I think I'm biased, but I think so. And to try and describe them for people listening, they're almost exactly what they sound like. They're cremation urns made out of clay, they're ceramic in the shape of a hut or a house. But these aren't just kind of any hut or house, in the shape of a hut or a house. But these aren't just kind of any hut or house. They have these amazingly elaborate roof systems. Some of them have sort of little bird figures or ducks. And from the remains inside, we know they're for men and women. And there's even a suggestion that one of them had a couple inside, which is something really interesting. They have little doors that are attached. They're just really charming artefacts. That's a very unprofessional assessment to say that they're charming, but they really are. I defy you not to be charmed by them.

But the point that I want to make is that later when we look at rock cut architecture of tombs, what we see is the replication of house features. So what will happen is people are carving out of the rock things like furniture. so you'll get like the tomb of the chairs at Tevetri or Kere the ancient name Kere and you also have things like even in quite simple tombs simple in inverted commas there you have roof beams being carved out of the stone so people are making a real effort to make these tombs look like houses and that's such a long-standing tradition in funerary architecture and another aspect you even where people are still choosing to cremate is what they start doing is they move from those helmets that I described to making these incredible

ceramic faces and also masks that look like a person. So they're changing and shifting the cremation so that it's a person being recreated in the burial itself, which is really fascinating. Did you know that some of literature's greatest characters were real people? It's so fascinating, isn't it, that some of the Three Musketeers are also based on real soldiers. That Sir Walter Raleigh wasn't all that he's been cracked up to be.

Chemist, poet, scholar, historian, courtier. He could have been great in all these different things. And that if your name is Dudley, you better watch your back. For the Tudors, each one of them took something from the Dudleys, either by working with a member of the Dudley family, or of course by having one executed. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb,

and I'm learning all this and much more, bringing you Not Just the Tudors, twice a week, every week. Subscribe now to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. How interesting. I love those Hutton's. As you say, they are visually really, really striking. And as you say, we've only got a few of them surviving and i guess my question therefore is let's focus on one example that i know you've done a lot of work around the tarquinia funeral huttern from that piece of archaeology do you think we could potentially therefore get an insight of how these early etruscan houses

were built how they looked could these burial hut urns be basically showing what a settlement in the early Etruscan period looked like in regards to how their houses were built, but perhaps if they were made out of timber they don't survive? Does it kind of suggest potentially with, let's say, with a settlement like Tarquinia in this really early stages of the Etruscan civilisation, does it perhaps give us an insight into how this Etruscan city looked at that time? Yes I think they can I think there's some really interesting research by Holloway on this so that's the person to go with and also these hut ends have been used as inspiration for reconstructions up and down Etruria in sort of living history museums and other things so I think we can

and one of the things that I think bolsters this and gives us reason to believe this rather than just go oh these are just really special ones they don't look anything like what people actually lived in is that we can see key features of the urns turning up in later Etruscan architectural design so we end up with really highly decorated roofs appearing at other Etruscan sites. So I've worked extensively at a site called Poggio Civitate and that's really famous for these incredible seated figures that are placed on the roof. Now those are made out of terracotta so they survive and they've been reconstructed and my goodness I do urge you to google image them. The cowboy of Poggio Civitate

is quite a thing to behold. He's got some really snazzy headgear and his hat is really quite a lot to take in so you've got these immense roof figures but you also have them at other places so you have architectural terracotta being used at vey and you can sort of i don't know maybe am i over interpreting maybe some etruscan scholars will be will be shouting at me but i think you can trace that back very happily to a tradition of ornamental roofs and important roofs decorated roofs that we see in the hut urns which is great fun great fun indeed and it's really really interesting I'm really glad that we could talk in a bit of detail about these earlier stages and proto-atruscan stages as well because sometimes I guess you you don't really know much about but once again showing how actually we do have lots of information about the atruscans

and lots of debate long may that continue but let's move on to this period I've got on my notes it's called the orientalizing period the 7th century correct me if I'm wrong but this seems to be a time of great social change of increase of growth of rise for the Etruscans yes I think that's absolutely fair to say. So things are revving up in Etruria. So you can really see the kind of development of urbanism. You can see those hilltop settlements are coming together in sort of central places. You can see the development of broader spaces. You can see the development of public architecture. So again, this has been a very Taquinia-heavy podcast. I apologise. But if we use that as a case study, then, you know, by 750, we've got kind of stone masonry up on the

plateau of the Piazza Civita. And what we've got there is some really fantastic, over 20 years worth of excavations led by Maria Bonghi Giovino, who's done brilliant work there. And by 650, we've got terracotta roofs in place. And by about 600, what we're seeing is the development of really deliberately placed little sort of port cities attached to these Etruscan coastal places. So Tarquinia has its port of Hraviska. And then you have the same at Kere slash Cevetere, depending on if you're using ancient or modern term for the site. And they have their port of Pirgi as well. So it's really interesting to see this development of these trading hubs alongside these growing Etruscan cities. And when we see the containment of a city with a city wall and the

amount of space that's inside, we can really see what we're dealing with here. So at Tarquinio, the city wall seems to have been built between about 600 to 500. And it's huge. I mean, the walls of Rome are obviously the most enormous 10-kilometre circuit. It's super fantastic. But Tarquinio's not far behind at sort of eight kilometres for the circuit. And at Cerre Cerveteri, we're at seven kilometres. So these are big cities that are coming up I mean you know in context these are quite big cities if we're thinking about

population as well we might be up to 25,000 people there when Tarquinia is at its height sorry absolutely that's so so interesting and I love that idea you said that you've got these ports emerging alongside the cities connected with with the cities. And what do these trading ports therefore allow the Etruscans to develop? Does it allow them to also develop their connections, their commercial opportunities and more? Yes, it absolutely does. So I think that's very much in play before the development of these ports. I don't want to get into a kind of nitty gritty of which came first again. Here here we go again I think what's happening is we're seeing elite people developing trading networks with other people of a sort of similar status across the Mediterranean so what we're seeing in Etruria and they're turning up in these

extremely extravagant burials usually they get termed kind of princely but that's almost like a quirk of the language because as Christopher Smith has demonstrated really beautifully it's probably not really appropriate to be talking about princes necessarily at this point in Etruria but we definitely can talk about sort of powerful families who are commanding all these resources so what's happening is that they're getting things that they want from other places and they're trading for them and traditionally there's been this idea oh, these Etruscans just gave away their metal ores, and that was the raw product. And then these lovely civilised Greeks made it into something beautiful. But I think knowing the Villanova record as we do, and knowing the quality of Etruscan metalworking during the Orientalising period, even though some of the

motifs might be inspired by Eastern Mediterranean, Ancient Near Eastern ideas, I think we could quite happily think about Etruscan craftspeople making these. So that's very exciting as well. I like to think about not just a kind of primary product going out, but maybe finished products as well. And in terms of what's coming in, just things from all over the ancient Mediterranean. So there are burials, wonderful burial, very famous, sadly excavated in the 19th century, so not quite up to today's standards, but a burial at the site of Vulti called the Isis Tomb. And that has, in addition to Etruscan made metalwork, it also has scarabs

from Egypt, it has carved ostrich eggs, it has figurines that seem to be very heavily influenced by the ancient near east so what we can see is people who are sitting at almost at the center of this trading network and are acquiring different things from different places to suit them and to be able to display their luxury and display their connections as well you're kind of saying hey i have access to all of these wonderful beautiful things because I am so special and so important. And then again, we talked about it with the cremation burials. There's nothing like a funeral as a chance to show off. So by putting these things in the grave, you can say, hey, I'm that rich and that special. I don't even need these in life.

I can put them with my dead. It is so interesting how you see that again and again with prehistoric cultures across the world, whether it's this Etruscan elite showing off their wealth in their burials with what materials they could bring in, to Kilmartin Glen in western highlands of Scotland, where the elites are buried in these monumental cairns, and they also are buried with depictions of axe heads because that was the kind of metal trade.

They were overseeing the trading, the flow of metals coming from places like Ireland and perhaps further afield and going up into the Great Glen, further into Scotland. Lucy, it is wonderful to look at comparisons like that with the Etruscans as well, how they're elite with their burials. I know we're focusing on burial archaeology again, but how that archaeology once again reflects how they were determined to show off their power and their wealth. And one key way that they could do that was by showing what materials from far-flung shores they had access to. So yes, while we do, there is definitely that kind of focus on the funerary material. I think we also have to think about what a spectacle these objects would have made in life. So if you're going into an Etruscan home or Etruscan space,

and from places like San Giovinale and places like Roselle and the Etruscan new town of Marzabotto, we've got a picture of these Etruscan houses that people are living in. And wealthy people would have been able to put these beautiful decorated goods in there, presumably before depositing them. That's an assumption, but I think it's one I'm quite happy with. Considering that at places where we have evidence for craft production, we can see these fantastically luxurious objects in terms of time also being produced. So to go back to that site of Poggio Civitate, which is just south of Siena, what we have there is evidence for an amazing range of crafts being made in the Orientalising period.

And the existence of this huge workshop building which we know was a workshop because it burnt down while it was in use and people fled and left these artifacts behind so we have things like ivory plaques weaving tools so important to remember the objects that we don't necessarily see surviving organic materials there's been some really margarita gleber has done beautiful work on etruscan textiles and really painstaking analysis of those and how they're represented. So there's a whole world of luxury that's just at our fingertips, you know, whether it's inlaid ivory furniture or, you know, they're even using this to decorate things like chariots. You know, the very famous Verruccio chariot is covered in these

tiny little plaques and the amount of time and effort you know to say nothing of getting the raw materials just tells you how much clout these people had to be able to command this and acquire this i'll tell you what lucy of all of these peoples across the mediterranean which the etruscans evidently had connections with this time i hope you don't mind if we can focus in let's say particularly on the ancient gree, on Hellenic city-states all across the Mediterranean, because this seems a really striking example from the archaeology we have surviving, of some really extraordinary connections between northern Italy and Greek city-states, as mentioned, across the Mediterranean. Yes, oh, this really gets me going, because I just think it's such a

fascinating relationship that we have here between Greece and Etruria. And I'm not the only person who's been completely intrigued by that. The beginning point for this is that the vast majority of the black and red figure Greek wares that we see and we have in our museums today come from Etruscan tombs. So when they were first discovered in the sort of late 18th century, they were termed Etruscan vases. People would have Etruscan rooms. The potter Wedgwood has his factory called Etruria because he's so inspired by these past masters. And then this art historian called Winkleman comes along and he recognises that these are actually Greek. They're not Etruscan at all. And this kind of spoils the party. And Etruscan archaeologists

sort of ever since have been faced with why are they here what are they doing here and from the Greek side there's tends to be in our society generally I think it's fair to say we kind of valorize classical Greece ancient Greece we like to think we're their heirs we have democracy they have theatre they're so wonderful who are these weird people in central Italy and what do they want with these things? Which is a really interesting question to which I'm not really sure we have or ever really will have a secure answer. There's this kind of idea of are they being civilised by pottery, which is quite, I don't know, quite almost offensive to an Etruscan audience. I prefer

to give the Etruscans a bit of agency here and say that they are deliberately choosing these things and they relate to them. And there's even examples of forms that are from Etruscan Bucura pottery because Etruscan pottery is totally different. It's made to imitate bronze. They're all about the metals. Your pottery is imitating your metal vessels and you have lots of beautiful, you know, metal bronze cauldrons and candelabras and all sorts of other really elaborate metal work from Etruria so even their pottery they want it to look like bronze so these brightly coloured attic what Corinthian first and then attic vessels coming through are like something completely different it's a complete step change and in Etruria they start manufacturing their own sometimes they're successful sometimes they are less successful. If you want to go and

look for a Tuscan red figure, it looks like a lot of those have been painted with a terrible Tuscan wine hangover. So let's not judge people on the quality of their painting necessarily. It's just such an interesting relationship as expressed through the ceramic record there. It is so interesting. I mean, and you see examples of this pottery in the tombs of the elites as well. And is it the same as you've hinted at earlier? I was going to ask the question of why do you think the elite decided to be buried along with all their amazing goods such, you know, the ostrich eggs and so on and so forth? Why Greek pottery is such a big thing that they want to be buried with? So during this later period, something that comes into focus, particularly through the tomb painting art and other kind of in terms of what grave goods people are being buried with, is this idea of the funerary banquet. So in rock cut tombs, quite often there'll be long benches and we're doing inhumation now. We're past cremation unless we're up in Kisu and the deceased will be laid out on those in a kind of as if they are ready for the eternal banquet. And there are beautiful tomb paintings from a variety of tombs that depict these in great detail so you have deceased

presumably deceased people sometimes they're given names and labels at Orvieto there's a lovely example of a labelled example of this and they have servants who are with them and they have entertainers you get people juggling And this lovely idea of the afterlife as kind of an eternal banquet, eternal party. However, there is also some evidence that maybe this is what's happening during funerals as well. So at a place called Sartegna, which is in central Tuscany, what we have is possibly evidence for kind of public spaces in a necropolis that people may have been using for feasting rituals. And indeed, even something we're really familiar with in the modern world, this idea of the Roman gladiator, there's a suggestion it might have come from

Etruscan funeral games to go with a banquet and a party, which is just really tantalising. That is very tantalising indeed. But we've got to move on. I mean, it's fascinating but i mean you mentioned the word gladiator i'd like to go to another word which is kind of a an interesting like fighting word which is pirate because there does seem to be this myth doesn't there that the etruscans as seafarers as maritime people they were just pirates they weren't great traders they weren't you know great sailors in regards to being honorable sailors or anything like that but that depiction it seems to be a complete fantasy a complete myth seeing what you've been explaining over the past 10-15 minutes well i mean i think to be fair one man's pirate is another man's trader in lots of ancient contexts that's very true

and if you're writing from a greek, actually, these people are really uppity, and they're really difficult, and they're stopping you trading and colonising further north into Italy. And they have all this metal work wealth that you maybe don't. You're not very happy about this. So of course, you're going to depict them in a very particular way. What we see as well is kind of accounts of Etruscans behaving in ways that are less civilized than our lovely Greek audience might expect. So there's a fairly horrendous account of Etruscan treatment of prisoners of war, which doesn't reflect terribly well on them. Even compared with their allies, the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, the Etruscans just kill their

prisoners. So that doesn't go down terribly well. And then there's also this really scurrilous depiction of Etruscan women that comes through from the sources as well. Well, let's go into that. Come on, we can't leave it hanging right there, Lucy. No, and this is something that I think is really interesting that this gets picked up on so much. So, you know, if you go to a museum gift shop, there'll be sort of books of the Etruscans and sex, which is really quite funny as so much of Etruscan archaeology is emphatically not about sex you can't really get sexy when you're talking about biconical urns maybe you can but what we have is a really famous account that comes from the author Theopompus of Chios and what he says is that the Etruscans generally are really lascivious nobody knows who their real

father is they have these banquets we've just talked about Etruscanans generally are really lascivious. Nobody knows who their real father is. They have these banquets. We've just talked about Etruscan banqueting, but they have these banquets and it's so disgusting because they have relationships with dancing girls and slaves and even their wives. So it's this idea that it's acceptable, an Etruscan banquet, to share a couch with your wife. How scandalising and how awful could you possibly get? I think that's something that almost gets overemphasised and blown up and very occasionally sort of feminist perspectives like to use that and like to use other depictions of Etruscan women. So to go back to Livy, he has this lovely depiction of the Etruscan women

associated with the Etruscan kings of Rome and they're party girls too you know that's why poor Lucretia gets sexually assaulted is because the Etruscan women are too busy partying to attend to their husbands whereas she's a good Roman Latin woman sitting at home weaving so she's extremely desirable because she's doing something that's submissive so out of all of that kind of swirling hostile series of views of Etruscan women maybe there is something there in that these are women who are maybe not as subservient as we might see in other areas of the ancient Mediterranean and that's certainly backed up by things like couples being buried together, representation of couples almost as kind of equal partners, there's really

famous lovely sarcophagi that depict this, but also in tomb paintings. And then the use of a person's mother's name. So the mother's family will appear in Etruscan inscriptions as well as the father, which is really interesting. But from a kind of hostile classical author perspective, it's also a really great way to slander your enemy, isn't it? Because you're saying, well, actually, these people, they don't even deserve the land. They're all bastards. They're all illegitimate they they don't even know who their fathers are they've got no right to this land they're completely depraved wouldn't it be better for everybody if we were to come in and take it from them you can imagine the later roman

writers deciding oh let's let's see how we can derive the etruscans yeah they're all bastards but obviously you know make it a bit more add add a bit more word into that in their accounts. But it's so interesting, as you say, you know, the bias of the accounts of the Etruscans, literary accounts that we have, which you highlighted right at the start. That's also interesting. I do realise I've only got a little bit more time, but there are a couple more things I'd like to ask about. And I'm glad you mentioned Rome there. Because, well, first of all, talking about the settlements of the Etruscans themselves during this period you mentioned how

they're different cities they've got these different ports linked to their cities now as well do we have any idea with how they're managed with how they're administrated is it one Etruscan city is independent of the other and then there's Etruscan city versus Etruscan city or are they all kind of united by that shared identity? Do we have any idea of how these cities cooperated with each other in this period? Yes, we do. So we have a quite clear depiction from the classical sources of this Dodecapolis, or the Etruscan League of 12 cities, and these are the 12 major cities of Etruria. We also have from the archaeology evidence of other centres that are important and other places that aren't on this later sort of source-based map.

So we have a lot of different relationships going on. However, from the inscription evidence, we do seem to have the figure of people who are undertaking a civic duty. We have this figure of the zilaf or the magistrate. So we get descriptions of people who are in charge of weights and measures. There's a lovely example, the Pirgi tablets that come from Pirgi near Cevetri. And these are these extraordinary gold tablets with an inscription in both Etruscan and Venetian. And they record that a magistrate called Thefaria Velianus, and it gets translated as Tiberius Velianus a lot of the time, he has made donations, he has ensured that the temple of the goddess Uni has been well looked after and he wants everybody to know about

this. So that's really a really lovely example of somebody who's flexing their muscles as a kind of I'm a big man in the city and I'm in charge of making sure that this religious complex is being suitably supported and I want everyone to know about it and I just love the way to get everybody to know about it is to write about it and put it up in a public place because that implies such a degree of literacy there's no point just writing something down and leaving it on a wall if nobody can read it so that's really interesting that is indeed isn't it that's fascinating you have that evidence surviving as well i mean i wish i could ask more but i've got to ask about one particular figure and it's kind of going back to that link with rome i believe again which would be quite a

nice place to wrap up this episode and this is a figure originally from the greek world a man called demaratus of corinth now lucy take it, who is this figure and how does he fit into this early story of the Etruscans? Sure, so where Demaratus comes in is he kind of cuts through quite a lot of those historical models of how we think about Etruscan origins. So supposedly in the classical sources Demaratus is I think the grandfather or great-grandfather of the Etruscan kings of Rome who come from Tarquinius. So he is the person they're descended from, and it gives a nice little link back to Greece for a Roman audience as well, sort of claiming that role.

And supposedly, Demaratus of Corinth brings literacy to the Etruscans, and get this, he brings terracotta roofing systems to the Etruscans as well. However, the archaeology completely blows this out of the water because we have objects like the Marcelliana tablet, which is a wonderful abecedarium, so a little alphabet of Etruscan that dates to about the year 700. And we also have those roof systems that are clearly much earlier than any possible historical figure, even if we're happy with this person being a real historical figure and then nothing to do with him it's just kind of been tacked on later and that's such a great example you know this is a roman author who's saying that these etruscan cultural achievements

are actually all to do with this person who comes from greece and who ends up being very important in rome anyway lucy that's absolutely fascinating i mean everything so far has been fascinating i have so many questions i wish i could ask, because I must admit, initially, when approaching you, having looked at your book about the Etruscans, initially I thought, OK, let's do one podcast episode just on the Etruscans, get an overview on the Etruscans. more on this because as mentioned right at the start this idea that they're quite a mysterious people we don't know that much about them but actually we have so much archaeology surviving which means we can go into detail about even these earlier periods in Etruscan history we can get a real idea of this civilization how it interacted with a much wider world. And I guess, yeah, like from women to administration, to seafaring, to I guess also their early interactions with Rome. It's absolutely fascinating to delve into the detail. It must be very exciting to talk about too. It is. And I think one of the really exciting things is that things are changing all the time.

So Etruscan archaeology, every few years, there seems to be a sort of flurry of really exciting things. And we don't have time to go into all of these discoveries. But, you know, the earliest depiction of a woman giving birth is from the Etruscan site of Podgacola. And then we have this very recent discovery at the opposite end of Etruscan history with these amazing figurines coming out of this sort of sanctuary and healing bathing waters up at San Cassiano dei Bagni. You know, the tomb of the Silver Hands being discovered at Volci. All the time, even the DNA, all the time, there are these new discoveries being made. Really brilliant etruscologists who are working on them.

So I feel like every year the Etruscans get a little bit less mysterious. So we'll have to come back and see what else we can talk about. I mean, absolutely. I mean, to sum it all up at the end, when we reach the end of the 7th century in Italy at that time, I mean, how powerful do we think the Etruscans are by this point? Is Rome just a tiny speck at the bottom of the Etruscan, well, land territory of control in Italy at this time? So throughout our conversation, we've kind of gone well beyond that kind of boundary into the Archaic period. So we've

gone kind of forwards in time from there. But I think there's no denying at all that the Etruscans are the dominant power in the Italian peninsula. I think even your most committed Roman archaeologist would have to admit that, you know, their sphere of influence is extending all the way from the Adriatic to the Bay of Naples. We've got Etruscan new towns like Spina up there on the Adriatic to exploit those trading resources. We've got Etruscan metalwork turning up in central Germany. They're reaching huge distances and they're really a kind of economic powerhouse in the region, but not forever. some time well lucy this has been incredible we'll have to do another one on the etruscans in due course because it is just insane there's so much to talk about last but certainly not least you have written a book all about the etruscans which is called it's called the etruscans and it's part of the reaction books lost civilization series there are lots of real gems in that series

and then i'd be very flattered if you thought mine was among them so there's a little plug well there you go well a little plug is the least that you deserve for this Lucy it's been absolutely great and it just goes for me to say last but certainly not least thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today oh thank you so much for having me it's been a real pleasure I've really enjoyed it well Well, there you go. There was Dr. Lucy Shipley giving you a lovely overview into the earlier history of the Etruscans. I'm still, I must admit, slightly upset that Team Livy has beaten Team Herodotus, but we must bow down to the experts on this one.

It was a fascinating chat, and I really do hope you enjoyed this interview with Lucy today. There's so much more to talk about with the Etruscan civilization. If this episode proves popular, which I've got a very strong feeling it will do, we'll be sure to get Lucy back on the podcast in due course to talk more about the Etruscans.

Do let me know your thoughts. I'm on social media. I'm on Instagram at Ancients Tristan. Same handle for Twitter too. So let me know your thoughts about the episode and about episodes in general, what you'd like to see on the podcast in the near future. Now, last thing from me, you probably know what I'm going to say. I'm going to say that if you enjoyed this episode and you want to help out the podcast as we continue our infinite mission to share these incredible stories of ancient history with you from the well-known like Julius Caesar to the more mysterious topics like the Sumerians like perhaps the Etruscans like ancient Americas like the world's earliest hand and footprints

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