The word “bucchero,” most commonly used to describe the black ceramics produced in Etruria, began to be used for pottery made elsewhere in the Mediterranean that relied upon the same technology – an oxygen-reducing kiln environment to achieve a firing that is dark through the biscuit and requires no slip or glaze. This chapter questions whether the term “bucchero” was ever used for ceramics from Anatolia in order to support Herodotus’ claim that the Etruscans were immigrants from Lydia. An examination of literature from the early twentieth century through today reveals that bucchero is understood as a “national” pottery for the Etruscans but is not a defining ceramic for any other culture. Therefore, while “bucchero” is used in a variety of contexts, it is indelibly linked with Central Italy. Over time, publications gradually shifted toward using “bucchero” only for Etruscan ceramics and “grey ware” for East Greek material, at times explicitly rejecting the use of the word for anything other than Etruscan material. Instead of uniting ancient cultures or demonstrating influence through shared ceramic technology, this term became a way to separate them.

Tridents and bidents appear to have been used in early Italy as symbols of divinatory power associated with lightning and are known by the evidence of rare representations and actual metal objects placed in Italic rulers’ tombs of the eighth through the seventh centuries BCE (Golasecca and Etruria). Fragile or even deliberately blunted, these implements could really only be symbolic emblems, and two show evidence of intense destruction during the funerary ritual. A possibly analogous situation, with deeper roots in the Near East (especially Assyria, Urartu, and the Levant) may also have occurred in Anatolia, especially Phrygia (Gordion). A trident planted in the earth may have symbolized divination.

Close examination of Etruscan and Anatolian depictions of dogs from the sixth century BCE reveals curious connections and a common artistic language. In fact, the context, medium, and style of dogs are so strikingly similar that these depictions merit review not just for their shared artistic styles but also customs and values. Dogs at banquets, chariot races, and hunting scenes speak to analogous aristocratic practices in two distinctly different regions. The premise for this study is not necessarily to discover who did what first, because our evidence from the ancient world is so fragmentary, but to explore how these two regions, separated by quite a distance, practiced artistic exchange. One exceptional example of a very unique dog-lead shows that technology was also shared vis-à-vis dogs. Since poetry and monuments have dominated the discourse in ancient Mediterranean studies for centuries, such topics as comparing detailed depictions of dogs can further enhance our understanding of exchange in the ancient Mediterranean.

Special pottery shapes (phialai and dinoi) with polychrome or relief decoration are the focus of this study. These vessels, deposited in Etruscan graves as “prestige pottery,” reveal the central role of southern Etruria in the cultural relationships between Anatolia, the eastern Aegean, and the Italic peninsula in the Orientalizing and Archaic periods. Caere and Vulci appear to be catalysts of many of these novelties, with a gradual handover from the first center to the second over the decades at the turn of the seventh and sixth centuries BCE.

From about 550 to 510 BCE, Etruscan terracotta roofs display many innovations linked to terracotta roofs in Anatolia stratigraphically datable between 585 and 560/550 BCE: decorative motifs including double volutes and scrolls, lotuses, star-flowers, meanders, birds, landscape elements, centaurs, and animal battles; chariot race scenes with dogs and hares running below the horses, and particular horse trappings; painted motifs, without relief; a new polychrome palette of brown, gold, blue, and green; a white background and black outlines; L-shaped simas with an overlapping flange system; and high-relief pedimental sculpture. These features are documented pre-550 BCE at the sites of Larisa on the Hermus; Phocaea and Sardis in Anatolia; and post-550 BCE at Tarquinia, Veii, and Cerveteri (ancient Caere) in Etruria. The correspondences are so close as to indicate that artisans from Anatolia were active in Etruscan terracotta workshops for one generation after 550/540 BCE, recalling Herodotus’ stories of refugees fleeing west from Anatolia when the Persian king Cyrus began advancing into the area around 560 BCE and of Phocaean captives taken to Caere after the Battle of Alalia in 540 BCE.

This paper compares how ideas of power, rank, and status were communicated in Etruria and Anatolia in the Orientalizing period by the use of material items and images. By employing and exhibiting specific objects, elites used a non-verbal language to communicate with each other across frontiers in the Mediterranean area as well as to show their wealth and their sophistication in their own surroundings. Trade networks have been discovered, analyzed, and exhibited on various occasions in the last decade. However, we now have to deal with the significance of the selection, collection, and use of certain luxury items to the ostentation of accumulated wealth that are better known from the courtly societies of the Near and Middle East. The desire for possessing these items can be perceived in personal or private as well as social terms. As many of the items belong to the sphere of banqueting, it is mandatory to link the two worlds in question vis-à-vis this praxis of consumption and social events.

The inner part of South Etruria and several parts of Anatolia are characterized by impressive rock tombs and monuments. The highest concentration in Anatolia is found in Lycia and neighboring Caria, but they are documented also in Pamphylia, Pisidia, Cilicia, Cappadocia, Phrygia, Lydia, Paphlagonia-Pontus, and Urartu, ranging in date from the ninth through the eighth centuries BCE to the Roman period, with a remarkable concentration between the fourth century and the Hellenistic period. There is a rich variety in typology, architecture, and decoration, and in some cases also function. In Etruria the phenomenon of rock tombs is documented mainly from the second quarter of the sixth century to the early second century BCE in the areas of Tuscania, San Giuliano, Blera, Norchia, Castel d’Asso, and Sovana, and includes tombs of cube, house, porticus, temple, aedicula, and tholos types. But there are other rock monuments, such as altars, thrones, and stepped monuments. This chapter discusses both the main common elements and the many differences between Etruscan and Anatolian rock tombs and monuments, examining position, chronology, typology, architecture, decoration, function, and death cult.

In the 1950s, University of Pennsylvania archaeologists recovered over fifty pieces of wooden furniture from three royal tumulus burials and the city mound at Gordion, Turkey. Tumuli MM and P (eighth century BCE) contained thirteen tables and three serving stands with characteristic Phrygian features. The style and joinery of the tables tie them to a long trajectory of wooden tables from the ancient Near East. A variety of fine wooden objects was found in two tombs excavated in 1972 at Verucchio in northern Italy (late eighth through early seventh centuries BCE). The finds from tombs 85 and 89 include wood tables, footstools, thrones, boxes, and other organic materials. Three tables from tomb 85 had legs attached to the table top with a version of the collar-and-tenon joinery used for the Gordion tables. Rarely are ancient wooden artifacts recovered in good condition; the finds from Verucchio and Gordion provide a large and important corpus from the early first millennium BCE. This paper examines the similarities (and differences) between Gordion and Verucchio wooden furniture and investigates the possibility of interaction between Near Eastern and Italic woodworking schools in the eighth through the seventh centuries BCE.

Similarities in the imagery of Etruscan and Western Anatolian dress fashions, such as pointed shoes and Ionic chitons, indicate an obvious connection between the clothing systems of the two cultures. Indeed, Larissa Bonfante (2003) in her groundbreaking book Etruscan Dress classifies an “Ionian Phase” (550–475 BCE) in the development of the Etruscan clothing system. This chapter investigates the adaptation of Ionian dress items into the Etruscan dress repertoire through a comparative iconographic study of dress fashions in western Anatolia and Etruscan funerary art of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. After an overview of prevailing dress fashions in both cultures, it explores the specific case of shoes with upturned toes (Etruscan/Hittite shoes, as they are commonly known) to show the changing meanings and cultural connections the adopted dress items conveyed.

The relationship between Etruria and Anatolia has been an important topic since Herodotus asserted a Lydian origin for the Etruscans. Seen as the first civilization within the Italian peninsula, the Etruscans held a pivotal place in Italian history, and therefore their origin has held larger political implications for the modern peoples of Italy and Anatolia. This chapter contrasts the historiography of the term “Orientalizing” within Etruria with the evolving presentation of the history of civilization in Ottoman and later Turkish Anatolia. The term “Orientalizing” was a project in orientalism, defining the beginning of Western civilization as it was born from earlier Eastern civilizations, and its historic explanations were used for nationalistic ends. In addition, modern colonialism shaped how Eastern influence in Etruria was conceptualized and guided Italian archaeological missions in the Aegean. In Italy and Anatolia, understandings of their ancient interactions have been influenced by modern political ideologies that sought to assert where civilization originated and how it spread throughout Europe.