Last updated Cover of the 4th edition of "Etruscologia" by Massimo Pallottino
Etruscology is the study of the ancient civilization of the Etruscans in Italy, which was incorporated into an expanding Roman Empire during the period of Rome's Middle Republic. Since the Etruscans were politically and culturally influential in pre-Republican Rome, many Etruscologists are also scholars of the history, archaeology, and culture of Rome.
The premier scholarly journal of Etruscan Studies is Studi Etruschi. A recent addition to the scholarly literature is the American journal, Etruscan Studies: Journal of the Etruscan Foundation, which began publication in 1994. A more informal organ is Etruscan News and the accompanying cyber-publication Etruscan News Online.[1]
Thomas Dempster (1570–1625), Scottish scholar and historian, is perhaps the godfather of Etruscology. Under the patronage of Grand Duke Cosimo II of Etruria, Dempster researched and wrote De Etruria Regali Libri Septem in Latin.
Various organizations promote Etruscology. The Etruscan Foundation supports Etruscan scholarship in the United States and abroad. The foundation provides internships and fellowships, and publishes the journal Etruscan Studies. It also sponsors an annual lecture.[2]
Etruscan was the language of the Etruscan civilization in the ancient region of Etruria, in Etruria Padana and Etruria Campana in what is now Italy. Etruscan influenced Latin but was eventually completely superseded by it. The Etruscans left around 13,000 inscriptions that have been found so far, only a small minority of which are of significant length; some bilingual inscriptions with texts also in Latin, Greek, or Phoenician; and a few dozen purported loanwords. Attested from 700 BC to AD 50, the relation of Etruscan to other languages has been a source of long-running speculation and study, with it mostly being referred to as one of the Tyrsenian languages, at times as an isolate and a number of other less well-known theories.
The Etruscan civilization was developed by a people of Etruria in ancient Italy with a common language and culture who formed a federation of city-states. After conquering adjacent lands, its territory covered, at its greatest extent, roughly what is now Tuscany, western Umbria, and northern Lazio, as well as what are now the Po Valley, Emilia-Romagna, south-eastern Lombardy, southern Veneto, and western Campania.
Veii was an important ancient Etruscan city situated on the southern limits of Etruria and 16 km (9.9 mi) north-northwest of Rome, Italy. It now lies in Isola Farnese, in the comune of Rome. Many other sites associated with and in the city-state of Veii are in Formello, immediately to the north. Formello is named after the drainage channels that were first created by the Veians.
Etruria was a region of Central Italy delimited by the rivers Arno and Tiber, an area that covered what is now most of Tuscany, northern Lazio, and north-western Umbria.
Thomas Dempster was a Scottish scholar and historian. Born into the aristocracy in Aberdeenshire, which comprises regions of both the Scottish highlands and the Scottish lowlands, he was sent abroad as a youth for his education. The Dempsters were Catholic in an increasingly Protestant country and had a reputation for being quarrelsome. Thomas' brother James, outlawed for an attack on his father, spent some years as a pirate in the northern islands, escaped by volunteering for military service in the Low Countries and was drawn and quartered there for insubordination. Thomas' father lost the family fortune in clan feuding and was beheaded for forgery.
Volsinii or Vulsinii, is the name of two ancient cities of Etruria, one situated on the shore of Lacus Volsiniensis, and the other on the Via Clodia, between Clusium (Chiusi) and Forum Cassii (Vetralla). The latter was Etruscan and was destroyed by the Romans in 264 BC following an attempted revolt by its slaves, while the former was founded by the Romans using the remainder of the Etruscan population rescued from the razed city.
The Villanovan culture, regarded as the earliest phase of the Etruscan civilization, was the earliest Iron Age culture of Italy. It directly followed the Bronze Age Proto-Villanovan culture which branched off from the Urnfield culture of Central Europe. The name derives from the locality of Villanova, a fraction of the municipality of Castenaso in the Metropolitan City of Bologna where, between 1853 and 1855, Giovanni Gozzadini found the remains of a necropolis, bringing to light 193 tombs, of which there were 179 cremations and 14 inhumations.
Mario Torelli was an Italian scholar of Italic archaeology and the culture of the Etruscans. He taught at the University of Perugia.
Massimo Pallottino was an Italian archaeologist specializing in Etruscan civilization and art.
Tyrsenian, named after the Tyrrhenians, is a proposed extinct family of closely related ancient languages put forward by linguist Helmut Rix (1998), which consists of the Etruscan language of northern, central and south-western Italy, and eastern Corsica (France); the Raetic language of the Alps, named after the Rhaetian people; and the Lemnian language of the Aegean Sea. Camunic in northern Lombardy, between Etruscan and Raetic, may belong to the family as well, but evidence of such is limited. The Tyrsenian languages are generally considered Pre-Indo-European and Paleo-European.
Filippo Buonarroti, the great-grandnephew of Michelangelo Buonarroti, was an Italian official at the court of Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany and an antiquarian, whose Etruscan studies, among the earliest in that field, inspired Antonio Francesco Gori. The Etruscan art and antiquities in the family palazzo-museum of Florence, Casa Buonarroti, are his contribution to the artistic-intellectual memorial to the Buonarroti.
George Dennis was a British explorer of Etruria; his written account and drawings of the ancient places and monuments of the Etruscan civilization combined with his summary of the ancient sources is among the first of the modern era and remains an indispensable reference in Etruscan studies.
Kyle Meredith Phillips Jr. was a leading American Etruscologist.
John Franklin Hall was a professor of Classics and Ancient History at Brigham Young University. He was a student of R. E. A. Palmer. Hall specialized in Rome during the reign of Augustus. He also made contributions in the subdiscipline of Etruscology. Hall is best known for his work on the Secular Games, which was published in the well-respected ANRW. He has written on a variety of topics, a number of which focus on figures of Roman history with an Etruscan background. For example, he proposed that the Roman poet Vergil had Etruscan ancestry.
The Fanum Voltumnae was the chief sanctuary of the Etruscans; fanum means a sacred place, a much broader notion than a single temple. Numerous sources refer to a league of the "Twelve Peoples" (lucumonies) of Etruria, formed for religious purposes but evidently having some political functions. The Etruscan league of twelve city-states met annually at the Fanum, located in a place chosen as omphalos, the geographical and spiritual centre of the whole Etruscan nation. Each spring political and religious leaders from the cities would meet to discuss military campaigns and civic affairs and pray to their common gods. Chief amongst these was Voltumna, possibly state god of the Etruria.
Antonio Francesco Gori, on his titlepages Franciscus Gorius, was an Italian antiquarian, a priest in minor orders, provost of the Baptistery of San Giovanni from 1746, and a professor at the Liceo, whose numerous publications of ancient Roman sculpture and antiquities formed part of the repertory on which 18th-century scholarship as well as the artistic movement of neoclassicism were based. In 1735 he was a founding member of a circle of antiquaries and connoisseurs in Florence called the Società Colombaria, the predecessor of the Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere la Colombaria, to foster "not only Tuscan Poetry and Eloquence, or one faculty only; but almost all the most distinguished and useful parts of human knowledge: in a word, it is what the Greeks called Encyclopedia".
In antiquity, several theses were elaborated on the origin of the Etruscans from the 5th century BC, when the Etruscan civilization had been already established for several centuries in its territories, that can be summarized into three main hypotheses. The first is the autochthonous development in situ out of the Villanovan culture, as claimed by the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus who described the Etruscans as indigenous people who had always lived in Etruria. The second is a migration from the Aegean sea, as claimed by two Greek historians: Herodotus, who described them as a group of immigrants from Lydia in Anatolia, and Hellanicus of Lesbos who claimed that the Tyrrhenians were the Pelasgians originally from Thessaly, Greece, who entered Italy at the head of the Adriatic sea in Northern Italy. The third hypotheses was reported by Livy and Pliny the Elder, and puts the Etruscans in the context of the Rhaetian people to the north and other populations living in the Alps. The first Greek author to mention the Etruscans, whom the Ancient Greeks called Tyrrhenians, was the 8th-century BC poet Hesiod, in his work, the Theogony. He mentioned them as residing in central Italy alongside the Latins. The 7th-century BC Homeric Hymn to Dionysus referred to them as pirates. Unlike later Greek authors, such as Herodotus and Hellanicus, these earlier Greek authors did not suggest that Etruscans had migrated to Italy from elsewhere.
Sybille Edith Haynes, is a British expert on Etruscology. She grew up and was educated in Germany and Austria before moving to the UK in the 1950s. She worked with Etruscan artefacts at the British Museum for many years as well as publishing numerous books, for fellow scholars and also for the general public. In the 1980s she joined the Centre for the Study of Greek and Roman Antiquity at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
Luisa Banti (1894-1978) was an Italian archaeologist, art historian, and educator specializing in the Etruscan and Minoan civilizations. Her best known work is Il mondo degli Etruschi. First published in 1960 and translated into several languages, it influenced scholarly opinion for many years and became a classic text.
Curzio Inghirami, was an Italian archaeologist and historian, but also forger of Etruscan artifacts.
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