The Etruscans: everything you wanted to know

Summary

History Extra Podcast: "The Etruscans: Everything You Wanted to Know"

Host: Emily Briffet
Guest: Lucy Shipley, Researcher and Author of Etruscans (Reaction Books)
Release Date: April 19, 2025

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Introduction to the Etruscans

In this episode, Emily Briffet interviews Lucy Shipley to unravel the mysteries surrounding the Etruscans, an influential yet enigmatic ancient civilization that thrived in central Italy from the 9th century B.C. to the Roman conquests in the 1st century B.C. Shipley aims to shed light on the Etruscans beyond their portrayal as a mysterious people, offering insights based on archaeological findings and recent research.

Origins of the Etruscans

Shipley delves into the debated origins of the Etruscans, contrasting ancient historical accounts with modern archaeological and genetic studies.

• Indigenous Hypothesis vs. Migration Theories:
  "There is a wealth of archaeological evidence that suggests the Etruscans developed out of the late Bronze Age Italian groups and were always present in the region." ([18:06] Shipley)

• Herodotus’s Account:
  Shipley references Herodotus, who narrates a mythical origin story where the Etruscans migrated from Lydia during a famine, displacing the native populations. However, Shipley emphasizes that "the archaeological continuity from the Villanovan culture to the Etruscan civilization strongly supports an indigenous origin." ([18:06])

• Impact of DNA Studies:
  Early DNA studies posed challenges to the indigenous theory, suggesting foreign origins. However, a pivotal 2021 DNA analysis compared ancient Etruscan DNA with that of neighboring ancient Italian populations, "confirming the indigenous hypothesis and aligning with the archaeological evidence." ([25:49] Shipley)

Archaeological Discoveries and Insights

Shipley highlights significant archaeological sites and artifacts that provide a window into Etruscan life.

• Villanovan Culture:
  The Villanovan culture, characterized by cremation cemeteries with impasto pots and rich grave goods, marks the early phase of Etruscan civilization. Shipley notes the "archaeological continuity at sites like Cusi shows a consistent cultural pattern from the Villanovan period through the Roman conquest." ([18:06])

• Poggio Civitate:
  An exemplary site demonstrating Etruscan trade prowess, Poggio Civitate featured workshops for terracotta tile making, ivory carving, and perfume production. Shipley describes it as "a hub for trade with evidence of luxury goods like Murex shells used for purple cloth." ([26:06])

Etruscan Society and Hierarchy

The social structure of the Etruscans is explored, focusing on their political organization and urban development.

• League of Twelve Cities:
  The Etruscans organized into a league comprising twelve major cities, each renowned for specific trades and functions. Shipley lists cities like Tarquinia, Cerveteri, and Vulci, noting their roles as trade hubs.
  "These twelve cities would gather at the Fanum Voltumnae temple near Orvieto to elect leaders and make collective decisions." ([26:06])

• Elite Families and Magistrates:
  Society was dominated by powerful elite families, often referred to as silaf or magistrates, who oversaw various aspects like road maintenance and trade regulations. Shipley questions the term "kings," stating, "We don't know how these elite families perceived themselves, so labeling them as kings might be misleading." ([30:00])

Role of Women in Etruscan Society

Addressing questions from listeners, Shipley discusses the status and roles of women in Etruscan culture compared to their Greek and Roman counterparts.

• Greater Autonomy and Status:
  "Etruscan women appear to have had more freedom and autonomy than Greek and Roman women, involved in economic activities like weaving and property management." ([32:15] Shipley)

• Evidence of Social Participation:
  Archaeological finds, such as a weaving tool inscribed with a woman's name, and matronymics in inscriptions, suggest that women were recognized as property owners and partners in economic dealings.
  "The Tabula Cottonensis from Cortona names a man and his wife as partners in a land agreement, highlighting women's roles in property and trade." ([32:15])

Etruscan Art and Sexuality

The Etruscans are often depicted as sexually liberated, a portrayal influenced by both their art and classical sources.

• Erotic Tomb Art:
  Shipley references tombs like the Tomb of the Bulls and the Tomba della Fosticazione in Tarquinia, which contain explicit sexual imagery.
  "These depictions are not merely for titillation but reflect the cultural significance of sexuality in Etruscan society." ([35:44])

• Classical Sources' Perspective:
  Ancient authors like Theopompus and Livy portrayed Etruscan women negatively, emphasizing moral decadence to justify Roman dominance.
  "Livy uses the misconduct of Etruscan women as a narrative tool to explain the downfall of Etruscan kings in Rome." ([35:44])

• D.H. Lawrence’s Admiration:
  The famed writer admired Etruscan art for its representation of sexual freedom, further perpetuating the "sexy Etruscan" stereotype.
  "D.H. Lawrence saw the Etruscans as an example of a sexually free civilization, influencing modern perceptions." ([35:44])

Decline of the Etruscan Civilization

Shipley outlines the factors contributing to the decline of Etruscan power and the rise of Roman dominance.

• External Pressures and Internal Strife:
  Etruscan expansion made them targets, leading to conflicts with neighboring societies and internal divisions.
  "Their vast trade networks and prosperity attracted resentment, leading to conflicts similar to Viking raids in Anglo-Saxon England." ([45:34])

• Roman Conquests:
  The gradual and often violent conquest of Etruscan cities by Rome marked the end of their political autonomy.
  "The fall of Veii in 396 B.C. and subsequent battles led to the systematic dismantling of Etruscan power." ([45:34])

Legacy and Influence on Rome

Despite their decline, the Etruscans left a lasting imprint on Roman culture and society.

• Cultural Integration:
  Many Etruscan practices and artistic styles were absorbed into Roman culture, influencing areas such as clothing, religion, and urban planning.
  "The toga, gladiatorial games, and certain religious practices in Rome have clear Etruscan origins." ([45:34])

• Architectural and Artistic Contributions:
  Etruscan techniques in jewelry making, pottery, and architecture were admired and emulated by the Romans.
  "Artifacts like the Monte Leone chariot and Etruscan Bucher pottery showcase their advanced craftsmanship." ([42:13])

• Religious Practices:
  Etruscan religious roles, such as the Haruspex (soothsayer), were integrated into Roman religious frameworks.
  "The Piacenza Liver, an Etruscan artifact, highlights their intricate religious and divination practices." ([45:34])

Conclusion

Lucy Shipley provides a comprehensive overview of the Etruscan civilization, challenging misconceptions and highlighting their significant contributions to ancient history. The episode underscores the importance of archaeological evidence in understanding the Etruscans and their enduring legacy in shaping Roman culture.

Notable Quotes:

• "The archaeology is absolutely central to understanding the Etruscans." – Lucy Shipley ([04:26])
• "There is no Etruscan Homer, there is no Etruscan Thucydides." – Lucy Shipley ([12:00])
• "Etruscan women do seem to have had a better deal than their counterparts in Greece or in Rome." – Lucy Shipley ([32:15])
• "Etruscan culture quietly continues as it always has done. It's just that they're not in charge anymore." – Lucy Shipley ([45:34])

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Produced by: Daniel Kramer Arden
Subscribe for more episodes: History Extra

Transcript

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[Emily Briffet]

Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. Lasting from the 9th century B.C. right up until Roman conquests in the 1st century B.C. the Etruscans were a powerful ancient civilization who inhabited Etruria in ancient Italy and rubbed shoulders with the other iconic ancient cultures of their day. Often painted as a mysterious people whose story has largely vanished from our view. Researcher Lucy Shipley Instead presents us with a very different picture of the Etruscans. She speaks to Emily Briffet to reveal more. As with all of our everything you wanted to know episodes, we've had a lot of questions from our listeners. Now, some people have heard of the Etruscans, other people have not. Some people might be familiar, some might not not. Give us a 60 second brief introduction. Who were they? Who are we talking about?

[Lucy Shipley]

In kind of just a minute style. The Etruscans were a people who lived in central Italy during the first millennium bc. They're kind of neighbours and rivals of the Romans and the Greeks and they pop up in ancient sources quite often, but we only ever have accounts of them from that outside perspective because their own texts do not survive. We know they were writing something I'm sure we'll come on to later, but we do not have any kind of own voices accounts of the Etruscans that they've written for themselves. It's an amazing area, amazing landscapes, and the archaeology that they left behind is beautiful and fascinating and perplexing in equal measure. So I'm really looking forward to answering lots of questions and probably being stumped by a fair few because there's still lots of things that we don't know and we'd love to find out.

[Emily Briffet]

Another piece of context we need here is obviously they border other famous ancient civilizations. If we could pinpoint their location on the map, where are we talking about here?

[Lucy Shipley]

So the Etruscan heartlands are kind of the area that we think of as modern Tuscany, more or less, but areas of Emilia, Romagna, Umbria and Lazio as well. So really, the best kind of geographic boundary is to think about the two rivers, the River Tiber in the south and the River Arno to the north. But they do expand both north and south. They are down as far as the Bay of Naples, Campania, and they're also up and over to the Adriatic. So they're sort of spreading their areas of influence out, but their real heartland is kind of that central area there.

[Emily Briffet]

Now, this is something that we need to talk about. How exactly do we know about the Etruscans? You said it's only from outside sources.

[Lucy Shipley]

So there are these outside sources. But it would be a very sad day if all we had to rely upon were classical sources. And really, that's one of the things that I love about Etruscan archaeology so much, is that the archaeology is absolutely central to understanding the Etruscans. There's a long history of interaction and excavation of Etruscan materials. So some of the earliest accounts of the discovery of Etruscan materials material happened way back in the 1280s, when the people of Arezzo were digging a city wall because they were worried about sieges. And they come across all of this Etruscan material and they're trying to manage that. And there's just this long ongoing engagement with this Etruscan past, both in Italy by Italian archaeologists, but also by people from the uk, France, America, Sweden has a really big presence in Etruscan archaeology. So people from all over working on this fascinating culture. One of the issues that we do see in Etruscan archaeology is this kind of dominance of funerary remains. But they've kind of taken over the way that we think and imagine about the Etruscans, when actually they had a whole life to live before they ended up in these tombs. And kind of trying to get at that is one of the really interesting challenges of Etruscan archaeology and something that we're seeing more and more in the 21st century, which is very exciting.

[Emily Briffet]

I think, when we talk about, say, the ancient Egyptians, we're familiar about maybe some of the complexities that archaeological excavations have presented us when it comes to showing us the history. Is this a similar case with the 19th and 20th century excavations of the Etruscans?

[Lucy Shipley]

Yes, absolutely. And it's one of my kind of favourite areas to delve into, because archaeology was always taking place against a background of current modern day politics. So an Etruscan example, that's really interesting. If you look at Etruscan archaeology in the 1930s, during the fascist period in Italy, it's a really interesting period in that ideas about Etruscan origins being indigenously Italian get a real foothold for the first time. But that's kind of linked to these very uncomfortable ideas about Italian nationalism and superiority that were being championed by the political regime. So the archaeology that we do is entangled in the modern day and it's kind of inescapable. The 19th century is almost the flowering of Etruscan archaeology. There is this huge interest in these tombs. So Napoleon Bonaparte's brother Lucien becomes the ruler and sort of landowner of all these lands on the Tuscan coast, and he starts excavating these tombs and inside are these just amazing artefacts. So we have imported black and red figure vases which have been imported from Greece, and they just capture the imagination of almost the whole continent. So in Italy, it's called Etruscaria. Etrusco Mania. The potter Josiah Wedgwood calls his factory Etruria after these amazing ceramic inspirations and it just goes absolutely wild until everybody suddenly realizes that actually the Etruscans weren't making these things. So it's a little bit awkward and all of a sudden all that attention moves away and it's almost like the zeitgeist kind of moves on from the Etruscans to an extent. And then the only people that sort of continue that interest are the sort of specialist scholars. But it is amazing studying people who have had this moment where they are the very trendiest, latest thing that's happening in European archaeology in the early 19th century.

[Emily Briffet]

I have to pause here and just ask you this. You mentioned there about the Etruscans not making these pots so often attributed to them who was making them in that case.

[Lucy Shipley]

So the black and red figure vases are being made in Athens. So there's an original trade in vases from Corinth are coming across to Etruria and then this shifts onto the attic vases. So I think everybody who's been to a museum would have seen these and they pop up in kind of memes and in different culture all the time. I'm pretty sure nearly everybody listening to this podcast will have seen these vases. However, the vast majority of them do come from Etruscan tombs. And the only reason that they survive and in really lovely condition is because an Etruscan person wanted to place them in a tomb. And these tombs, a lot of them are sort of rock cut chambers. So it's not a case of something being put in the ground with sort of earth on top of it. They're carved out of the rock. So everything in there is positioned really carefully and can just be walked away from and left. A lot of them are laid out like eternal banquets. But in the midst of all this are these Greek vases which are kind of almost interlopers from somewhere far away. There's originally been this kind of idea that, well, of course the Etruscans wanted them because the Greeks made them and they must be superior. But actually it's not that simple. People don't just see something from somewhere far away and go, yeah, I like it, I want it. I'm going to put it in my tomb. It's more complicated than that. They have meaning for them. I've argued in print that they don't just get made to a Greek standard and then hoikt to Etruria because the Etruscans will take whatever they're given. It's actually the Etruscans are shaping the way that these pots are made and there are Literally forms. There's this nicasthenic amphora shape which seems to have its origins potentially in Etruria, and then is being made back in Athens. And the same with a special type of cup with these high handles called acantharos. So that's a form we see in indigenous Etruscan pottery. And then, hey, it shows up in Athens because they know the Etruscans like these things. They also know they like that black and red figure styling. So they're making them with a mix of both. It's that kind of fusion of cultures to make something that the market wants.

[Emily Briffet]

Amazing. Now, we've spoken a little bit about the archaeological record. What about the written record? Is there one?

[Lucy Shipley]

I said the Etruscans don't really provide us with a large amount of texts in their own language. So it's a non Indo European language. It is not related to other languages in the Italian peninsula. At the same time, it does have some kind of relationships to. To a language spoken up in the Alps called Rhaetic. And there's also on the island of Limnos, there's this Limnian language, which is related to Etruscan, but that's kind of a chicken and egg thing. We really think that that's Etruscan colonists ending up on Limnos, taking their language there rather than the other way around. We can read Etruscan script. So Etruscan script is drawn from that kind of Phoenician Alphabet with elements of kind of Greek Alphabet. So we can read it really clearly. The problem is that a lot of the evidence that we have is kind of inscriptions and short texts. So things might just say, this belongs to this person. And even the longer things that we have are very business like. So we have things like land indenture agreements, or we might have. One of the most spectacular texts from the Etruscan world are these Pergy tablets, which are these gold plaques with a bilingual inscription on. So it also has. It has it in Etruscan and in Phoenician, and it's a dedication of a temple to the goddess Uni. But the person who has paid for this temple is this magistrate called the Velienus. And he really wants everybody to know that he has paid for this. And the thing that gets me about these tablets is that there's an expectation of literacy here. So there's no point writing your name down and putting it on a tablet to go up somewhere if nobody's going to read it. And also we see people writing their names on things that are really simple. Like weaving tools. So one of the fascinating artefacts from a site called Poggio Civitaze is a rocchetto, or a weaving tool, and it has a woman's name on it. There's also one of the earliest alphabets, there's an abecedarium from Marsiliana d'albena. And it seems to be a kind of learning tool. These people are, for the ancient world, relatively literate and yet it kills me every day. There is no Etruscan Homer, there is no Etruscan Thucydides, there is no Etruscan Herodotus. There is one longer text that we do have, and that's Sagrebiensis. And as you might have guessed from the name, it kind of ended up in Zagreb, via Vienna, via Egypt. And it's composed of linen. So we know that the Etruscans were writing these linen books, the Libellenteus, that's their main way of writing things down. This one survives because it got cut up and used to wrap a mummy of a young woman from Thebes. And then again in that sort of 19th century period of European colonialism, her mummy gets acquired by this traveler who ships it back to Vienna. When he dies, it passes to his brother who is a priest in Zagreb, and apparently it was up in his living room. After his death, the mummy gets unwrapped and there's a whole series of bizarre incidents, including a chance encounter with the explorer Richard Burton, who's the person who looks at this script and goes, I don't think this is hieroglyphs, chaps. I think you need to talk to somebody who's an expert in other ancient languages. They argue, is it Coptic? No. Is it this? No. And then it goes to the script scholar in Vienna and he says, that's Etruscan. So it's just a series of amazing bizarre coincidences that ensure we have this longer text that survives to us. If you think of all the tiny chances that had to happen for that to survive, it makes you appreciate just A, how lucky we are to have it, and B, why we don't have very much else.

[Emily Briffet]

We've said that the Etruscans were surrounded by other ancient civilizations. What impression do we get of them through these other civilizations?

[Lucy Shipley]

The Etruscans have a really complex reputation in the ancient sources. Surprise, surprise. And I like to think of this period as kind of in the ancient Mediterranean. This is all these very different powerful civilizations, powerful societies who are all kind of striving with each other for similar resources. They're expanding into different places and they're sort of bumping up against each each other and you see these alliances forming and falling apart and it's quite fraught, to be honest. We have been really light about talking about timing here. So just to firm this up a bit, I'm kind of thinking of that kind of archaic period. So I'm thinking from sort of 550 to 400 is where I'm thinking. This big period, 600 to 400. If you wanted to be more broad, thinking about interactions between Greeks and Etruscans, we do have earlier interactions. There's this period known as the Orientalising period, when we get motifs from ancient Near Eastern art start popping up in Etruria, particularly in sort of metalwork. But I think the picture we should have is of these very complex societies all kind of intermingling and trying to coexist, but also trying to potentially dominate one another. And when you're trying to dominate your neighbour, or you're a bit frightened of your neighbour, but you don't want to admit this, you are not going to present them in the best light in the written sources. And that's exactly what we see. The Greek sources are quite hostile about the Etruscans, usually. So there's a sea battle off the coast of Corsica, the battle of Alalia, and that's in about 530. And the Greek sources tell us that the Etruscans and the Phoenicians teamed up to hoof the Phacaean Greeks out of this area. And they tell us there's a battle and the Greeks lose, but it's okay because it's a kind of Pyrrhic victory. And actually the Etruscans and the Phoenicians were defeated in the end. But it's a bit situation of kind of. Well, you would say that, wouldn't you? And actually your activities were reduced, weren't they? So actually it's kind of like a spin on that battle through the Greek sources. And again, in the kind of Roman sources this is later, every good story needs a baddie. And quite often the Etruscans pop up in that guise in Livy's stories about the early history of Rome. And again, I think if we take a step back, we can say if you have this powerful neighbour who is quite dominant over you, we have these Etruscan kings of Rome. You need to try and manage that through your narrative. What view are you presenting? You know, but they're very much presenting people who are alien, who are outsiders. These people are not like us and they are potentially dangerous and definitely very immoral and do things that no good Greek or Roman would approve of. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Shifting a little money here, a little there and hoping it all works out well. With the name your price tool from Progressive, you can be a better budgeter and potentially lower your insurance bill too. You tell Progressive what you want to pay for car insurance and they'll help you find options within your budget. Try it [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law.

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[Emily Briffet]

So let's put that viewpoint slightly to one side a little bit. You mentioned there about the origins of the Etruscans, and this is a much debated subject. What's the case then?

[Lucy Shipley]

So this is a real can of worms. And I think we've been quite light on chronology so far, but I'm going to go heavy with my chronology now. So, right, we are going to start way back in the late Bronze Age. So we're talking the sort of turn of the 10th century BC and in Italian you say it's the Bronzo finale. And we have these different cultures living in Italy throughout the Bronze Age with sort of a whole setup of material culture. And in the area that's now we recognize as those Etruscan heartlands, we're starting to see a package of behavior and material culture that we can trace through to later Etruscan civilizations. And this late Bronze Age develops into something called the Villanovan culture. The type site is at Villanova, just outside Bologna. And in 1853, they found a sort of cremation cemetery with this very clear pattern of cremated bodies placed in these impasto pots. That's the Italian word for this type of ceramic. And they have grave goods as well. So they have, like, fibulae, which are these very fancy brooches. They might have razors. They have additional ceramics. And it's a pattern that we see across Etruria throughout this Villanovan period, this package. So a really lovely case study is inland, there's a city called Cusi. At Cusi, what we see is this really lovely, consistent pattern that starts in this Villanovan period and continues all the way through to even after the Roman conquest of Etruria, where we have people who are being cremated, buried with additional ceramics and placed in these urns that have meaning. So it's a lovely example of archaeological continuity. And we could argue that all the way across the Troy, there's oodles of archaeological evidence that suggests that the Etruscans are an Italian people. They developed out of these late Bronze Age Italian groups, and they were always here. However, our old friend Herodotus argues something completely different. So he tells this kind of almost like a fairy tale. There's this famine in Lydia. It's terrible. There is not enough food. People are dying, People are starving. What are we going to do? We need a hero. And upsets this king's son, whose name happens to be Tyrannus. And he says, I will go westwards and find new land, and I will take those people that this land cannot support with me. And he, according to Herodotus, is the first person to sort of settle Etruria and presumably hoofs out a load of local people who are already living there and having a lovely time in the late Bronze Age. Thank you very much. So there is this idea that actually, are the Etruscans from somewhere else? And we've spoken about Etruscan being a non Indo European language, different from other local languages like Oscan or Latin or Umbrian. So very different. Maybe that actually is because they do come from somewhere else. So it's that tension between the archaeology and then the historic texts and to an extent, the linguistics, and which of those two is right. So we're at slight contretemps. I would say that the classical sources kind of had the upper hand for a long time in this 1930s period, where Italian nationalism is really dominating archaeological conversations. Amazing archaeologist, Etruscologist called Massimo Palotino sits down and writes in 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, his thesis that the Etruscans are indigenous. And it's some of the most nuanced, beautiful archaeological arguments. It is wonderful to watch this man's mind at work and you can feel that urgency as well. He's not sure what's going to happen, can see this kind of cataclysm coming in his own time, and he wants to get his ideas down on paper. He wants to argue for that indigenous hypothesis. And it's really tricky because sometimes bad politics can actually result in good science. So the need for him to justify those Italian origins actually resulted in him doing some fantastic deep work, looking at typologies of pottery, typologies of metalwork, comparing things with each other and making those connections. It's not very kind of sexy and exciting. It's not a fantastic fairy tale like the Herodotus story, but it is really dogged good work. So into the 20th century that really revolutionized everything, and people started recognizing, especially as archaeological discoveries got more and got better throughout the 20th century, that indigenous hypothesis really gained traction and was kind of the mainstream idea. But the Niri sin origins never went away. Enter DNA. Just as if this wasn't enough of a mess. So when the earliest archaeological DNA studies started happening, people working on the Etruscans got really excited. Understandably, of course, they did. Finally, we might have an answer. But unfortunately, a lot of those really early DNA studies on the Etruscans were kind of, I'm trying to be diplomatic, problematic in their methodology. So we had a series of studies where people were comparing modern DNA of people living in Tuscany. And I have worked in places where DNA samples were taken from modern populations, and people will talk about this to you. And they were compared with ancient remains. And people are like, oh, no, they're really different. So that does prove that the Etruscans came from somewhere else. It's like, well, no, it doesn't really. It's kind of that scientific logic isn't quite there to make that inference from that information. So not only do you have a very small sample size, one of the issues with the 19th century excavation of a large amount of burials is that they were not always the best at taking good care of the skeletal remains that they encountered, or burnt remains in the case of cremations. And so the pool from which we can use Etruscan human remains for DNA is relatively small, especially for those early studies that had really high parameters. So the authors of these studies argued that, hey, you know, maybe it looks like the external hypothesis is back on, and maybe they did come from the ancient near east until it was sort of roundly criticized. And people said, well, actually, look at Italy, the Roman Empire, you know, the invasions after the fall of the Roman Empire, people moving around the Mediterranean. I think it's really important to respect that kind of connection of landscape and place and feeling. But there's no reason that we might expect these people to be directly descended from the tiny individual Etruscan DNA genome that you've got hold of now. They also tried to do DNA on these special cattle, the Maremma cattle. They're from the Maremma marshes, and they said, oh, the cattle come from the ancient Near East. But the problem is all cattle come from the ancient near east, all domestic cattle breeds come from the ancient Near East. So we're not really any further forward. So this is whole mess going on. The DNA has kind of clouded the picture. It hasn't helped at all. But then in 2021, there is this fantastic DNA analysis comes through. And what they do is they compare ancient DNA from Etruria to other areas of ancient Italy. So they look at the Etruscans relationships with their neighbours rather than with their possible descendants, and it's just a completely different approach. And it works. They discover that actually the genomes that they've extracted from the Etruscan people who they've looked at are very similar to their neighbours, especially their neighbours to the south in Rome, also to the Umbrians higher up in the Apennines. So actually, this very good DNA study is looking like it confirms the indigenous hypothesis and that the archaeology was right. And it looks like whatever separation in terms of population genomics happened, it probably happened much later. I would not stick my neck out and say, etruscan origins, mystery solved, because, A, that spoils the fun, and B, you know, there could be another study in a couple of years that would make me look really silly, but I think it looks really likely that that painstaking archaeological work that was done in the 1930s is matching up with the very latest DNA evidence.

[Emily Briffet]

So if we've covered the origins, how does society develop from there?

[Lucy Shipley]

So one of the things that the classical sources do tell us quite nicely and clearly is that the Etruscan society is really centred on the Dodecapa literature or this league of 12 cities. And I'm kind of going to list them off. It's almost like a memory game. So we have Tarquinia, Cevetturi, Vulci, Vei, Vecelonia, Cortona, Chiusi, Arezzo, Volcinia, which is Orvieto now Perugia and Populonia. So we have these major 12 cities who were each kind of powerhouses, known for different things. These coastal cities like Tarquinia, Cerveteri, Vulci, and to extent Populonia as well. These are hubs for trade. So this is where people from other cultures in the Mediterranean are unloading their goods. And quite often they have a twinned port city. So you'll have the original older city high on a hill above the coastline. So Tarquinha is a lovely example of this. It's right up on this amazing kind of tableland. And then down at the coast you have its port of Gravisca. A lot of these Etruscan cities have kind of tricky names. They'll be known by an Etruscan name and then a modern Italian name and then a kind of English name as well. So I try and be consistent, but if I chop and change, do forgive me. So they have these 12 cities and there's this idea in the historical sources that they come together at this fanum, Voltumne, this temple near Orvieto, and they elect one of their leaders to kind of rule over them and make decisions for the whole of Etruria. I think that's a bit dodgy. It's kind of a bit of an iffy idea. But we do know that they were highly organized. This idea of the silaf or the magistrate. And there seems to be different levels of silaf, different people doing different jobs. So some seem to have been in charge of roads. Roads are important. If you're trading things, you're moving these around. You need your roads to be good. So you know, Etruscan roads, people in charge of weights and measures. Again, trade, if you are want to be taken serious as a trader, you need to be sure that trade is fair and you need a magistrate to oversee that. So what I think we might look at is possibly these zafs coming from these elite families who are very wealthy. They have great resources. Something we kind of glossed over when talking about Tuscany and sort of Umbria. That area, it's incredibly rich, fertile land. And even in areas where it's not, there are these metal bearing soils. So if you are a society where metal is important and you're very good at not only extracting those raw materials, but also turning them into beautiful things, you are going to do very well. So we have metal, we have grain, we have all of these different things going on in Etruria. It's a very rich land land. It's got these kind of natural resources that make it very wealthy. And there are, it seems, these elite families who are able, as the Villanovan period goes onwards, to start coagulating those resources and consolidating their power coming into these soon to be cities. The Etruscans quite often get used as a case study for urbanism, the development of towns and this idea about core and periphery. It's the city and then its surroundings. But there are also these huge sites out in the countryside. And initially, when the first of these was discovered in the 60s and 70s, people made noises to say, oh, they're just rural sanctuaries, it's fine. But actually, it looks like there are elite families living here as well, and things changing going on. So one site that I've excavated at is a site called Porgio Civitate, and that's just south of Siena. And this place is just absolutely extraordinary. It seems to have been a hub for trade. There's this workshop building that was destroyed by a fire. We have sort of the footsteps of people running away from the fire over these terracotta tiles that they were making. We have evidence for ivory and bone carving. We even have Murex shells which suggest that they were making purple cloth. So this is a kind of hub for trade. Very rich people building these enormous buildings. So one of the buildings at Poggio Civitate is a Square building that's 60 meters by 60 meters. It is the largest building in the ancient Mediterranean at the time that it is built. So, you know, this might not be a city, but it's definitely a very important place. It's not just some kind of rural backwater. So while we have that kind of idea of this league of 12, and those sites are undoubtedly really important and fascinating to look at the way cities develop. A, there are all these other places as well that we should be thinking about, and B, sometimes they are hard to understand. Archaeologically, they are difficult because they have remained occupied. So it's very tricky to try and excavate those Etruscan settlements. You have to look at these rural places that aren't in that big league of 12. There's a place called San Giovinali where they have lovely Etruscan houses. It's fascinating to try and navigate the reality of Etruscan social organization against this kind of idea set down by the ancient sources. Again, just as with Etruscan origins, there's a picture painted in the sources. And then there's the reality of what it would have been like for an Etruscan person living on the ground. There is also an idea that hangs around of these Etruscan kings. So kings of Rome, the Etruscan kings of Rome, the Tarquin dynasty, very much presented in this royal way, using that language in Rome. Is this an appropriate way to think about these elite, powerful families with lots of control, resources and power? Can we call them kings? When is a king a king? When do we make that distinction? It's really tricky. The things that these people were able to amass together are extraordinary. But does that make them a king? Can we use this word princely with any real meaning? We don't know how these people thought of themselves. So that's something I'd love to find out more about. And I think as kind of research goes on, we might understand this better. But for the moment, we can say, definitely, magistrate, definitely very powerful, fancy families. But kings? Not so sure.

[Emily Briffet]

While we're looking at the structuring of Etruscan society, we've had a question from mukimu320 on Instagram, who has asked us, did Etruscan women really have an equal standing with Etruscan men? And how did this compare to Greek and Roman women?

[Lucy Shipley]

Thank you for asking this mucky me, because this is one of my favourite pet topics and it's one of the reasons I became really interested in the Etruscans in the first place. I think equal is a tricky word here. I think you probably knew this was coming. I was going to start hedging and humming and whoring. But equal is a problematic word and it's coming again from our idea of what equality looks like in the present day, which is very culturally specific and it's very fictional. So there is lots of evidence, archaeological and classical sources, that Etruscan women do seem to have had. I'm going to be vulgar and say a better deal than their counterparts in Greece or in Rome. So the idea of the good Greek woman being confined to the house except for very specific festivals where she can go out and. Or for collecting water, because that's essential. That is not a thing in Etruria at all. It seems. We've talked already about a woman's name on a weaving tool. So that's a literate woman marking out her own property. Weaving seems to be really important in terms of Etruscan womanhood. And, you know, there's a tiny part of me who's like, weaving's boring. That's not very exciting. I want women to be doing other things. But if you think about the economy and the sale of cloth, especially luxury cloth, that's an incredibly important role. This is Boccanera plate that are now in the British Museum and they show women parading, wearing these beautiful textiles, these dresses and these thick cloaks that are richly dyed and coloured and would have been extremely time consuming, expensive to produce. So kind of the wealth of Etruria is also in its women's work. We also have evidence for women being important enough to be named. So the Tabula Cottonensis. So these tablets from Cortona, they were found in a building site pretty recently, but they name a man and his wife in this kind of property transfer. And the man and his wife are both partners in this agreement and that is important. So she's important enough to be a partner in that deal. That kind of land management situation going on there, and that's pretty late. So that's again after the Roman takeover of Etruria. So even Roman ideals of womanhood are not sticking. Whoever this wife was, she was not having any of being excluded from this property deal. We also have the existence of matronymics, so we have people who carry their mother's name as well as their father's name. So we will have this is so. And so his father is this, his mother is this. So a woman's lineage is important in identifying her children. And quite often women will be buried with an inscription that identifies them as their father's daughter and their mother's daughter, not necessarily wife of this person. And it's hard. You don't want to over interpret this and certainly I don't think Etruria was this kind of feminist utopia that sometimes it would be lovely to think about, maybe it was, but I don't think that's accurate. I think things were probably tough for a lot of people, men and women, but I do think that there's definitely a level of freedom that we see with Etruscan women. And this is really threatening to classical authors from other cultures. So if we hop from the archaeology to the classical sources, we can see that they do not like Etruscan women and the way that Etruscan women behave at all.

[Emily Briffet]

Here's perhaps the moment to talk about this. This is yet another listener question and that is, why have the Etruscans been considered so sexy?

[Lucy Shipley]

Well, you didn't name that listener, but thank you very much, anonymous listener, with your not suitable for work question. There's so much to get into here and Again, I think it's really fascinating. So part of this is Etruscan art and representation. So some very famous images from the Monterozzi necropolis at Tarquinia, where we have very. Not suitable for work, sexual images. So the oldest tomb here we have is the Tomb of the Bulls, and that date to about 54520 BC. And what we have here is a really quite touching, meaningful scene of Achilles and Troilus. So it's quite a fraught moment in the Trojan epic where Achilles stalks Troilus and murders him outside the gates of Troy. And it's quite some interpretations that can be quite sexually charged as well. But in the background, in other scenes in this tomb, we also have people having sex, having a great time. Another tomb from Tarquinia has this called the Tomba della Fosticazione, which is the Tomb of the whipping translates as. And it's three people having sex with one another. And simultaneously there's sort of a woman and two men and she's being beaten while this is happening. So this is quite extraordinary to the initial discoveries of this tomb, and I think it still raises eyebrows today. So there is that kind of representation of sexual behavior in quite a surprising way. Like, when we think about modern death rituals, we're not necessarily thinking about sex at the same time as a funeral. And yet these are clearly appropriate images to put in a tomb. This is fine. And we also have erotic vases. They're choosing to place these erotic vases in tombs. Why? So I think while it's kind of something that people almost like to giggle at, and you see in museum gift shops, you'll see little books called Sex in the Etruscans and like these little phallic keyrings and bits and pieces. Actually, for the Etruscans, this is deadly serious. We've talked a lot about those elite families. How do you maintain an elite family? You have to have sex and you have to have children. There have been arguments that these images are just about scaring away bad luck. There's that legend of the old woman Balbo, who shows her vulva. And it makes Demeter forget about Persephone being kidnapped for a minute because it makes her laugh. That kind of idea about comedy and breaking through sadness, maybe breaking through grief. There's also a really interesting idea about transformative moments. So the moment of death versus the moment of orgasm, potentially you can go anywhere with interpreting this stuff. Now, the ancient sources are also not quiet about this. So there's an author called Theopompus of Chios and he's writing, you know, he's born in 380 and he dies in 315. He writes in great detail about kind of morally reprehensible Etruscan society is. And he has this wonderful sentence where he says that at banquets, Etruscan men will bring in slaves and boys and even their wives and enjoy them is the phrasing that gets used. So there's this implication that, absolutely scandalous, an Etruscan woman might be, A at a banquet at all and B, potentially having sex with her husband or indeed, as he goes on to speculate, somebody else. He goes on and says, nobody knows who their fathers are here. This whole society is just like basically illegitimate because nobody knows who they're descended from anyway, so why should they have any right to the land? In addition to that age old idea that these people are not like us, therefore they are morally delinquent, there's also a really useful little political hook here, which is actually these people don't have a right to their land anyway. They're all illegitimate. Nobody knows who their father is. They're just a hot mess of a civilization. So it's absolutely fine if we wanted to muscle in and take over their trade routes or indeed take over their lands. If this is a society where elite families are really important and passing on your wealth and your power is really important, maybe this is a sort of way to hit them where it really hurts. So that's the kind of Greek source that's emphasising this. And then we have Livy. Etruscan women not behaving are basically the reason why the Etruscan kings of Rome fall. She says, very simplified, please don't come for me classicist. But I think a lot of people will have heard the story of the rape of Lucretia. It's quite a famous classical motif. But in the build up to this, one of the reasons why Lucretia is selected as a target for sexual assault is because she is this good Roman wife. So the Etruscan king, he asks for the Etruscan women to come to him and attend upon him and they say, no, we're having our own banquet, go away, don't tell us what to do, we're having a lovely time. And then when they call upon Lucretia, she is a good girl, sitting nicely at her loom, and she welcomes them in. And she is this ideal woman. And of course, when you see an ideal woman, what do people want to do to an ideal woman? They want to tear her down, which is really horrible. But the way Livy presents it is that it is these degenerate Etruscan women who are too busy partying, not attending to their loom like good women, and is again blaming women for the sexual assault of other women. So, again, there's that whole series of events that's centred around women's behaviour, women's sexuality and how we control those things. And we haven't even got on to D.H. lawrence, obviously, author of Lady Chatterley's Lover, this huge scandal, one of the most graphic and in some ways beautiful writers about sex in the English language of the 20th century. And he has this quite scandalous personal life where he falls in love with this older married woman and they run away together. Where do they run to? They run to a number of places, but they do end up in Tuscany for a bit. And he falls in love with Etruscan civilization. He writes this sort of elegiac book, Etruscan Places, and it's really lovely writing. And he sees Etruscan art, especially the tomb paintings at Tarquinia, he sees it as really full of life. Also he saw the sort of more erotic tomb paintings and he went, these people were sexually free. They were an example us all. Maybe we could all be libertines like the Etruscans. So I'm pretty sure that helps spread this myth as well. Again, with the Etruscans, nothing is simple and you're always picking your way between the classical sources, the modern interpretations and the archaeology. And the answer is probably somewhere in the middle of all of that, as.

[Emily Briffet]

The art was so revered by D.H. lawrence. We need to come on to talk about this culture. What can you tell us about perhaps the arts, food, clothing? What can we actually get close to in Etruscan history?

[Lucy Shipley]

Oh, just so many things are just extraordinary once you start getting down to these little details. So there are techniques in jewelry making that we know the Etruscans were using that we cannot replicate with all our technology today. We don't know how they were doing it in their gold jewelry. There's this Monte Leone chariot, which is now in the Met Museum in New York, and it is this representation of Thetis giving Achilles his armour. And it's got inlaid bone decoration as well as this bronze working. They were such talented craftspeople, and yet at the same time, they produce these really endearing and quite rubbish examples of things as well. So these vases in black and red figure that come from Greece. Very quickly the Etruscans start making them at home and they think, hey, we can do this. But the answer is that sometimes they can't. So there's some Etruscan red figure vases that are just. Just almost hilariously bad, like poorly painted. It looks like somebody's done this with a kind of terrible Tuscan wine hangover. We talked a lot about imported pottery and I'm a pottery girl and we haven't really talked enough about my favourite type of pottery, which is this Etruscan Bucher pottery and it's black, so it's been made in a very specific type of kiln environment that removes the oxygen to make the pottery black and it's made to look like bronze. So the whole idea is that your tableware will all look like metal, whether it is metal or not. So they have this wonderful high shine to them. They are decorated with quite often tactile decorations, so you're going to be feeling it with your fingers. If we think about people potentially drinking in the evening with low level lighting, they're using these tactile vases, which is just beautiful. They have these impressed cylinder seals that make a motif all the way around the outside or they have these, these molded decorations and they are beautiful. Some of them are enormous as well. Really extraordinary works of pottery, let alone the metalwork. They're perfume making. So recently there was a tomb discovered, it's called the Tomb of the Hanging Aryballos. And on the walls this perfume vessel and they've done analysis of the perfume that was inside. So they were making their own perfumed oils, potentially using important things as well, but also making them at home. We can also think about architecture. I've talked a bit about Poggio Vital in the size of that building, but it's also decorated with these amazing architectural terracottas. They don't survive well because terracotta is clay and it's quite friable, but there's enough of it has survived. There's life size human figures sitting on the top of the roofs. The Ara della Regina temple at Tarquinia also had amazing statuary and representation. But as with so much in Etruscan archaeology, it either doesn't survive in situ or in. It's been excavated in the 19th century, if it did survive that long. So it tends to kind of fly under the radar. All these remarkable things that are just waiting in these sort of beautiful regional Italian museums for you to go and see and discover and enjoy.

[Emily Briffet]

As we're coming towards the end of the episode, we need to come on to talk about the decline and the legacy of the Etruscans. Now CJ and David McMaster on X have asked us about how and why Etruscan power declined and also what role Romans played in the downfall. And if I can just squeeze in another additional third question, it would just be if there are any aspects of Etruscan culture that have persisted in the Roman civilization.

[Lucy Shipley]

Yeah, of course, let's try and go for all three in one. So the problem with all of this amazing wealth and these beautiful art and talent and trade and these huge trading networks extending from Germany to Portugal is that it makes you a target. It's kind of a bit like Anglo Saxon England with Viking raids. When you're doing very well, everybody around you would like a piece of that pie and you get this kind of resentment. The Etruscan sphere of influence at its height is spreading all the way from, as I've said, from the Venetian Lagoon down to the Bay of Naples. But it starts coming away at the edges. All these different Italian groups are sort of taking their power back. You've also got Greek influence and things are starting to fall apart and go wrong. We can see signs of decline in terms of the iconography that we see in Etruscan art. So there's a sort of vogue for quite scary looking demons suddenly start appearing in Etruscan tomb paintings, and they weren't there before. So the earlier phases of Etruscan tomb painting are, as we've said, really full of life and very beautiful. And then all of a sudden you get figures like this Kalu the wolf demon and Charon with his hammer and this kind of female figure of a Vanth, who's kind of topless with wings, and she'll take you to the other world. So that kind of optimism and sense of joy is kind of seeping away. And we can see that in the art in terms of relationships with Rome. We've talked a little bit about the removal of the tarquins, and from that point there's a kind of little civil war where they try and get their power back and they ally with the King of Cusi Las Porsenna. If we read our Livy, it'll tell us all about this. And there's this series of battles and then Lars Porsenna realizes this is never going to work and he sort of makes peace with Rome and everybody leaves each other alone for a while. And then what we start seeing is Roman power growing. So 396bc is the kind of date that's emblazoned in my mind, and that is the fall of Veii. And Veii is the nearest Etruscan city to Rome. So this is the beginning of the end and things do not happen quickly. So the next Etruscan city to fall is another one that we've talked about a lot, Tarquinha. But there's a really long sort of series of battles and truces and fighting seasons and then another truce for X amount of years. So it's from 358 to 281. That's a long time to be having this series of disagreements and making peace and making up. But then when it is conquered, it's really quite vicious. And it's interesting seeing the different routes that Etruscan cities take when they're trying to deal with Rome. We've talked a little bit about Civeteri, Ceres, and they seem to have gone a completely different way about dealing with Rome. So it ends up being almost like a finishing school for these Roman elites. So you send off your young men here and they learn all that the Etruscans have to teach them and then you send them back. So they kind of go appeasement, whereas Tarquinia, they try and hold out and hold that line further. A really interesting one is the fall of Orvieto Volcinia, and that seems to have been quite nasty. That Fanum Voltumnae that we talked about, that center for the Etruscan League is systematically destroyed and its statues and riches are taken back to Rome. It's very much making a point. Your political power system is over. We are in charge now. And this kind of spreads northwards as the Romans expand. And there's another long series of incidents and we just see this inevitable, slow, agonizing conquest of Etruria by the Romans. So we've spoken about Carae kind of assimilating. And to go to your third question, there are so many elements of Etruscan culture that do survive and some of these things are really iconic. So things like the wearing of the toga, that is an Etruscan phenomenon. You look at the clothing and dress styles of Etruria, you see them again in Rome, gladiatorial games. So lots of Etruscan tombs show representations of what look to be kind of boxing and fighting. These funeral games, if they're taken literally, seem to be the origin of Roman gladiators. If anyone knows anything about the Romans, they know about gladiators. So that's again an Etruscan phenomena that continues on. We also talked about that land agreement, the Tabula Cortonensis from Cortona. Those are Etruscan laws. That keep going even right up after the Roman conquest. So I think in a lot of ways, Etruscan culture quietly continues as it always has done. It's just that they're not in charge anymore. We know that they're paying vast amounts of their wealth, are now going as taxes to Rome, and they're gradually becoming more and more integrated into Roman culture. So by the time of the Emperor Claudius in the first century ad, the Etruscans have kind of already become a bit of an enigma and a mystery. So he is fascinated by the Etruscans. We haven't really spoken a lot about Etruscan religion, but it seems to have been a really important part of people's lives. And this idea of the Etruscan priest or Haruspex the soothsayer, the person who can read the future. And they do this through different ways. They might look at the way lightning forms in the sky, and you can also look at the flight of birds. One of the really kind of very Etruscan elements of this is looking at living. So cutting open a sheep usually and looking at its liver and looking for patterns of discoloration. There's this amazing artifact called the Piacenza liver. It's divided into these 16 areas, each of them aligned with an Etruscan deity. And that Piacenza liver, the dating is way after the Roman conquest of Etruria. So these ideas about Etruscan knowledge and Etruscan religion hang on. Claudius writes, he arranges for it to be written a history of the Etruscans, partly because he's married for a little while to an Etruscan woman whose name is Agulla Nilla. But he's fascinated by them. I would give so much for a copy of that history of the Etruscans to show up somewhere. So Etruria gets assimilated into Rome, and we do see groups of Etruscans moving around other Roman colonies. There's some Etruscan inscriptions, show up in Tunisia in a later context. They just kind of get absorbed into the Roman world, but sneakily, carefully putting through these influences. I also love that the Romans, having so thoroughly conquered and annihilated them, immediately got kind of remorse about this by the first century and were like, oh, no, look how fascinating they were. Whoops. But, yeah, it's all so interesting from the Bronze of Finale right up to the Roman period and on into the medieval period, how people are interacting with things. But the details were fascinated by their Etruscan ancestors. You could go on and on and on all day.

[Emily Briffet]

That was archaeologist and researcher Lucy Shipley, speaking to Emily Briffet. Lucy is the author of the Etruscans, published by Reaction Books. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Daniel Kramer Arden.