Caere de Grummond, Nancy Thomson; Pieraccini, Lisa
08/2016
eBook
The Etruscan city of Caere and eleven other Etruscan city-states were among the first urban centers in ancient Italy. Roman descriptions of Etruscan cities highlight their wealth, beauty, and ...formidable defenses. Although Caere left little written historical record outside of funerary inscriptions, its complex story can be deciphered by analyzing surviving material culture, including architecture, tomb paintings, temples, sanctuaries, and materials such as terracotta, bronze, gold, and amber found in Etruscan crafts. Studying Caere provides valuable insight not only into Etruscan history and culture but more broadly into urbanism and the development of urban centers across ancient Italy. Comprehensive in scope, Caere is the first English-language book dedicated to the study of its eponymous city. Collecting the work of an international team of scholars, it features chapters on a wide range of topics, such as Caere’s formation and history, economy, foreign relations, trade networks, art, funerary traditions, built environment, religion, daily life, and rediscovery. Extensively illustrated throughout, Caere presents new perspectives on and analysis of not just Etruscan civilization but also the city’s role in the wider pan-Mediterranean basin.
This catalogue brings together for the first time the wide-ranging Villanovan and Etruscan collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts with photographs and relevant bibliographic sources on their ...cultural and religious functions in antiquity.
The article deals with the etymology of toponyms “Rome”, “Italy” and Etruscan toponyms. The author concludes that the modern toponymic model of Rome, its environs and the Etruscan region were formed ...in the Celtic-speaking environment. The meanings of toponyms reflect the geographical features of the area and the architectural features of fortified cities. The results of the study allow us to take a fresh look at the migration processes of the pre-Roman era on the Apennine Peninsula.
New insights on the reception of Etruscan antiquity in the modernist period.
“L’Étrurie est à la mode”, French archaeologist Salomon Reinach bluntly stated in 1927. Since the beginning of the ...nineteenth century, Etruria had not only been attracting the attention of archaeologists and specialists of all sorts, but it had also been a fascinating and, in some cases, captivating destination for poets, novelists, painters and sculptors from all over Europe. This volume deals with the impact of the constantly expanding knowledge on the Etruscans and their mysterious civilisation on Italian, French, English, and German literature, arts and culture, with particular regard to the modernist period (1890–1950). The volume brings a distinctive point of view to the subject by approaching it from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective, and by looking at a quite diverse range of topics and artefacts, which includes, but is not limited to, the study of drawings, art works, travel essays, novels, cooking recipes, schoolbooks, photographs, and movies.
By exploring a new paradigm to understand ancient cultures, beyond the traditional ideas and models of “reception of the classics”, and by challenging the alleged fracture between the so-called “two cultures” of humanities and natural sciences, Modern Etruscans will be of interest to scholars from various disciplines. Designed as a learning tool for university courses on the interplay between literature and science in the twentieth century, it is suited as recommended reading for students in the humanities.
Contributors: Francesca Orestano (Università degli Studi di Milano), Chiara Zampieri (KU Leuven), Bart Van den Bossche (KU Leuven), Lisa C. Pieraccini (University of California, Berkeley), Martin Miller (Italienisches Kulturinstitut Stuttgart), Marie-Laurence Haack (Université de Picardie Jules Verne), Gennaro Ambrosino (University of Warwick), Martina Piperno (Durham University), Andrea Avalli (Scuola Superiore di Studi Storici di San Marino).
Ebook available in Open Access.
This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).
Excavations in the urban area of the Etruscan port city of Spina near Ferrara (Italy) have shown that the city had a roughly trapezoidal ground plan and covered an area of about 6 ha. In the east it ...was situated on the ancient course of the river Po (Padus Vetus) and in the west and south-west probably on a lagoon and another smaller river. The study project of the University of Zurich (2008–2017) had the goal of providing a clear stratigraphical sequence of the settlement phases as well as a geophysical investigation of the entire city area and indications of the natural environment. The excavation revealed several phases with wooden houses from the late sixth to the end of the fourth century BCE bordered by orthogonal water canals of different scales. After the violent destruction of the house, built between 375 and 350 B.C., in the third quarter of the fourth century the site changed its character. Not only was the level artificially raised, but the canals were abandoned and the area acquired a new function around 300 BCE. A series of very small, flat, round or oval impressions were found in the floor, in the vicinity of which lay a large quantity of thick, reddish terracotta fragments, coarsely tempered with organic material, very brittle, with cord impressions and finger marks. Fewer in number are accessory supports, round, or oval in section. Given their special technique, their large number, their distribution and the type of accumulation on the site, these fragments can be interpreted as briquetage deliberately smashed after use in order to remove the salt yielded by boiling. The fragments probably belonged to smaller, rectangular basins which stood on the round supports. The deeper channels from earlier phases had become in the last phase shallow gullies which served to supply fresh water.
•Salt production in the Etruscan city of Spina.•Briquetage technique used by Etruscans.•Early Hellenistic salt production on the Adriatic coast.
The Etruscan Brontoscopic Calendar is a rare document of omens foretold by thunder. It long lay hidden, embedded in a Greek translation within a Byzantine treatise from the age of Justinian. The ...first complete English translation of the Brontoscopic Calendar, this book provides an understanding of Etruscan Iron Age society as revealed through the ancient text, especially the Etruscans' concerns regarding the environment, food, health and disease. Jean MacIntosh Turfa also analyzes the ancient Near Eastern sources of the Calendar and the subjects of its predictions, thereby creating a picture of the complexity of Etruscan society reaching back before the advent of writing and the recording of the calendar.
Games as a pastime are rarely represented in Etruria. Based on a few documents with scenes of playful activities, presumed or certain, this article proposes to compare them with the ancient sources ...and archaeological data. A passage of Book I of Herodotus is the starting point for a reflection on the representation of board games in Etruscan culture.
Sebastiano Vassalli’s historical novel Un infinito numero (1999) is based on the myth of the lost wisdom and the secrets of the remote Etruscan civilization and shows effectively how literary ...imagination can attempt to ‘fill the gaps’ of historical science. The novel effectively portrays a problematic relationship with a hidden area of antiquity and the creative strategies that the novelist can put in place to imaginatively retrieve it. This article analyzes Vassalli’s unique perspective on the ancient and puts it in dialogue with other examples from Vassalli’s oeuvre (i. e. Terre selvagge, 2014), and with comparable case studies from Italian and British literature.
The late sixth century was a period of considerable change in Etruria; this change is traditionally seen as the adoption of superior models from Greece. In a re-alignment of agency, this 2007 book ...examines a wide range of Etruscan material culture - mirrors, tombs, sanctuaries, houses and cities - in order to demonstrate the importance of local concerns in the formation of Etruscan material culture. Drawing on theoretical developments, the book emphasises the deliberate nature of the smallest of changes in material culture form, and develops the concept of surface as a unifying key to understanding the changes in the ways Etruscans represented themselves in life and death. This concept allows a uniquely holistic approach to the archaeology of Etruscan society and has the potential for other archaeological investigations. The book will interest all scholars and students of classical archaeology.
PDF
