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The Peoples of Europe
The Etruscans
The Etruscans are one of history's extraordinary casualties. For many centuries they flourished exuberantly in central Italy, only to be completely absorbed into the growing Roman state. Their power, at its height, extended well beyond their borders: they were known and feared by Romans and Greeks alike. Their arresting visual culture was second to none in the peninsula, embracing complex funerary and domestic architecture, tomb-painting, narrative art, and jewellery of great luxury and refinement. Their cities grew to notable size and sophistication.But they wrote no connected account of themselves that survives, and so this book focuses on three types of evidence for reconstructing Roman society: the extremely rich archaeological data, the accounts of Greek and Roman writers, and the inscriptions on Etruscan monuments.Until recently there has been little effort to relate the Etruscans to ancient Mediterranean society as a whole or to the physical landscape that sustained them. This book attempts both. Included are some of the more recent findings from landscape archaeology which help to explain in what kinds of settlement the Etruscans lived, how densely the land was peopled, and how the landscape was organized for agriculture.This approach is balanced by sections on material and visual culture, where the focus is on interpretation within the specific context and setting, and even here the landscape is never far from view. The landscape, ancient and modern, figures too in what is one of the book's unique features: a description of more than sixty sites and a listing of some thirty-five local museums in a format that is both analytical and practical.
397 pages, Paperback
First published May 25, 2000
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About the author
Graeme Barker
26 books3 followersGraeme Barker is Disney Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. His research focuses on the relationships between past human societies and their environments and how they have transformed each other. He has worked in many different ecologies and with societies at different levels of complexity from the emergence of our species to Roman farmers and, currently in Borneo, present-day rainforest farmers and foragers.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 29, 2024
A solid and very readable, yet ever so slightly outdated, introduction to the Etruscans.
August 17, 2022
This is my second book of "The Peoples of Europe" series, and I was surprised to find it was brand new. Turns out it was done via print-on-demand at the time of purchase, but is otherwise the 2004 printing (including all the information after the title page; the POD info is at the very back). Print on demand is a great way to keep books like this available, especially as there's no ebook version. I assume that they have basically electronic 'plates' for the book, but no one to do formatting for ebook. The sad part is seeing the seven "in preparation" titles in the series listing that obviously are never going to happen since they still don't exist after seventeen years, and Blackwell was bought by John Wiley & Sons, whose website seems to talk about anything other than their books.
The two authors of this volume seem to be past collaborators, and active in Etuscan field studies. The first (of 3-4) time there was a "when we did [blah]" was a bit startling. A wide range of papers and publications are referenced throughout the book, a few are by the authors, singly or together, but the number is low enough that I assume they were very conscious of the appearance of just citing themselves. It also shows a fairly wide ranging representation of the scholarship. As a people who basically ceased to be as the Romans took over Italy, we don't have much direct knowledge, and surprisingly little written knowledge of the Etruscans, so this book is mostly engaged with laying out the archaeological record. My understanding is that there have continued to be great progress in this over the last two decades, so this is a book that could very usefully use a second edition.
Like with most ancient subjects relying on archaeology, there's a lot of very careful supposition going on, and the book does a good job laying that out. Something that comes up early is that Etruscan is one of three known separate non-Indo-European languages in Europe (and the only dead one; the other two are Basque and the Finnic family) that didn't arrive in historical times (like Hungarian, Turkic, etc.). Unlike in The Basques, the authors here generally brush aside any thoughts on figuring out how that came to be, but assume the settlement records indicate that, well, it was here as far back as we're going to know. Interestingly, the language is pretty well figured out given the lack of, say, literary works that were done in it. It would seem that the Latin alphabet came from Greece through the Etruscans, and there is a nice full page chart of the variations in the Etruscan writing system. Also of interest is that ancient writers also commented on the fact that the language was notably different from the others around it.
In addition to copious footnotes, there's an extensive bibliography, a summary of "selected reading", and a 30+ page appendix guide to where to find Etruscan ruins and museums. Much of the main book is generally technical in direction, but the authors' enthusiasm for the subject does come through, and helps a bit there. So, it's a very good introductory guide, that packs as much material into the book as it can. Finally, I also need to point out that it's nearly as well illustrated as your typical Osprey book (minus the color plates), with photographs and archaeological plans, though many of the photographs seemed extra-grainy to me; that might be an effect of the print-on-demand process.
The two authors of this volume seem to be past collaborators, and active in Etuscan field studies. The first (of 3-4) time there was a "when we did [blah]" was a bit startling. A wide range of papers and publications are referenced throughout the book, a few are by the authors, singly or together, but the number is low enough that I assume they were very conscious of the appearance of just citing themselves. It also shows a fairly wide ranging representation of the scholarship. As a people who basically ceased to be as the Romans took over Italy, we don't have much direct knowledge, and surprisingly little written knowledge of the Etruscans, so this book is mostly engaged with laying out the archaeological record. My understanding is that there have continued to be great progress in this over the last two decades, so this is a book that could very usefully use a second edition.
Like with most ancient subjects relying on archaeology, there's a lot of very careful supposition going on, and the book does a good job laying that out. Something that comes up early is that Etruscan is one of three known separate non-Indo-European languages in Europe (and the only dead one; the other two are Basque and the Finnic family) that didn't arrive in historical times (like Hungarian, Turkic, etc.). Unlike in The Basques, the authors here generally brush aside any thoughts on figuring out how that came to be, but assume the settlement records indicate that, well, it was here as far back as we're going to know. Interestingly, the language is pretty well figured out given the lack of, say, literary works that were done in it. It would seem that the Latin alphabet came from Greece through the Etruscans, and there is a nice full page chart of the variations in the Etruscan writing system. Also of interest is that ancient writers also commented on the fact that the language was notably different from the others around it.
In addition to copious footnotes, there's an extensive bibliography, a summary of "selected reading", and a 30+ page appendix guide to where to find Etruscan ruins and museums. Much of the main book is generally technical in direction, but the authors' enthusiasm for the subject does come through, and helps a bit there. So, it's a very good introductory guide, that packs as much material into the book as it can. Finally, I also need to point out that it's nearly as well illustrated as your typical Osprey book (minus the color plates), with photographs and archaeological plans, though many of the photographs seemed extra-grainy to me; that might be an effect of the print-on-demand process.
May 14, 2020
This seemed a strange book to me. It was necessarily largely archaeological but it seemed more could have been done with the history of the Etruscans particularly as it related to other groups, especially since that seems to be most of what they have information about.
Note that the book is considerably shorter than it looks since the last 100 pages is taken up with a long, alphabetical guide to Etruscan sites and a very extensive bibliography.
Note that the book is considerably shorter than it looks since the last 100 pages is taken up with a long, alphabetical guide to Etruscan sites and a very extensive bibliography.
May 17, 2021
Very informative, with in-depth analyses of various topics concerning Etruscan culture, history, architecture, lifestyle, countryside and so on. The apendix provides a great guide for Etruscan sights (many of which you can't even find in google).
November 7, 2020
The Etruscans are one of the most intriguing pre-roman peoples of western Europe. Not only because of their apparent prominence in pre-roman Italy, but also for its unique and apparent separated origin from every other italic people. They even got to rule Roman politics and influence their culture before the eternal city began its expansion across the peninsula.
This book is not directly about Etruscans political history, since as of 2020 most of pre-roman history is very scant, recovered only though contradictory Greek and Roman sources. We know of their relative power for maintaining Greeks and Phoenicians (and later Carthaginians) at bay; at the point that we still know their see as the Tyrrhenian see. We know they were city states, and that at some point they took down their Kings, however besides this the chronology of politics is completely unknown. That at least until they fought and lost against the romans and slowly lost all their independence; subsequently romancing. The book uses a vast and well researched archeological survey in an attempt to explain Etruscans Civilizations in their traditions and beliefs. Unfortunately for us, archeology can only tell us so much.
The authors explain from the beginning of the book the parallels between Greek’s and Etruscan’s society. Their periods are roughly defined on the same terms and chronologies, considering the Villanovan culture of iron-age Etruria as a prelude of a defined Etruscans city state’s civilization. Sadly, as I said before, this is mainly derived from pottery, liturgical and burials remanences.
As sources are scant, the authors try to describe their culture using a study of the territory, all the way from the creation of the Apennines millions of years ago, passing through the bronze age and arriving to the Villanovan iron age “culture”. By attempting to draw prehistory Etruria’s territory the authors shows that many interesting conclusions can be made about their inhabitants. While doing this, many pages go by confusing a reader that lacks the knowledge of a vast numbers of mounts, mountains, lakes and rivers. Information that could have been placed in a map of the region as a guide.
The journey through the bronze and iron age cultures of the people who inhabited Etruria before the rise of the city states is quite interesting. Waging on the different theories for its origins the only sure thing we can conclude is that we do not know where they came from, or if they were in fact indigenous to the land. Personally, I was very interested in the Lydian theory, but as it may seems, it is the less strong of them. The journey takes on hard archeology data on the sites from around 2000 BC to 700 BC, which at some parts may be tedious. Nonetheless the discussion of their language and about their developing as a culture alongside ancient Greeks and Phoenicians and NOT because of them, had very strong and interesting points.
The book uses a vast survey on archeology, mainly center in southern Etruria to describe early and later Etruscan civilization (720-300 BCE). Through the scant records they strove to explain many aspects of society: their urban and rural centers; the extent of the wealth of some “cities” and their economy; their level of expansion within Italy into the Campania Region, Rome and even north onto the Po Valley. Some parts are very interesting historical conclusions, while others may seem as a rather long description of archeological items.
As no other means are available, we still miss to much information about them, even as their might and prominence was well renown, we still cannot have a history book. Archeology will have to tell us all it can, for the time being.
This book is not directly about Etruscans political history, since as of 2020 most of pre-roman history is very scant, recovered only though contradictory Greek and Roman sources. We know of their relative power for maintaining Greeks and Phoenicians (and later Carthaginians) at bay; at the point that we still know their see as the Tyrrhenian see. We know they were city states, and that at some point they took down their Kings, however besides this the chronology of politics is completely unknown. That at least until they fought and lost against the romans and slowly lost all their independence; subsequently romancing. The book uses a vast and well researched archeological survey in an attempt to explain Etruscans Civilizations in their traditions and beliefs. Unfortunately for us, archeology can only tell us so much.
The authors explain from the beginning of the book the parallels between Greek’s and Etruscan’s society. Their periods are roughly defined on the same terms and chronologies, considering the Villanovan culture of iron-age Etruria as a prelude of a defined Etruscans city state’s civilization. Sadly, as I said before, this is mainly derived from pottery, liturgical and burials remanences.
As sources are scant, the authors try to describe their culture using a study of the territory, all the way from the creation of the Apennines millions of years ago, passing through the bronze age and arriving to the Villanovan iron age “culture”. By attempting to draw prehistory Etruria’s territory the authors shows that many interesting conclusions can be made about their inhabitants. While doing this, many pages go by confusing a reader that lacks the knowledge of a vast numbers of mounts, mountains, lakes and rivers. Information that could have been placed in a map of the region as a guide.
The journey through the bronze and iron age cultures of the people who inhabited Etruria before the rise of the city states is quite interesting. Waging on the different theories for its origins the only sure thing we can conclude is that we do not know where they came from, or if they were in fact indigenous to the land. Personally, I was very interested in the Lydian theory, but as it may seems, it is the less strong of them. The journey takes on hard archeology data on the sites from around 2000 BC to 700 BC, which at some parts may be tedious. Nonetheless the discussion of their language and about their developing as a culture alongside ancient Greeks and Phoenicians and NOT because of them, had very strong and interesting points.
The book uses a vast survey on archeology, mainly center in southern Etruria to describe early and later Etruscan civilization (720-300 BCE). Through the scant records they strove to explain many aspects of society: their urban and rural centers; the extent of the wealth of some “cities” and their economy; their level of expansion within Italy into the Campania Region, Rome and even north onto the Po Valley. Some parts are very interesting historical conclusions, while others may seem as a rather long description of archeological items.
As no other means are available, we still miss to much information about them, even as their might and prominence was well renown, we still cannot have a history book. Archeology will have to tell us all it can, for the time being.
March 6, 2018
Excellent.
June 26, 2013
Good overview, written with scientific rigour and some interesting comments on recent archaeological work. Certainly worth reading if you want to find out about the Etruscans.
July 9, 2016
This is a long book to tell us that we don't know very much at all.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews