At first glance, the burial beds and couches in many Etruscan tombs look very similar to those found in Lydia, Phrygia, and other parts of Anatolia. Closer inspection reveals striking correspondence of formal details like carved headrests while at the same time highlighting essential differences of arrangement and usage. Iconographic evidence for beds and couches in Etruscan funerary art (tomb paintings and relief cippi) also shows a distinctive Etruscan approach to covering these furnishings with textiles. While the formal similarities do indicate that Etruscan and Anatolian elites knew and used shared furniture styles, they cannot be used to support theories of migration or cultural influence from Anatolia to Etruria since most of the Etruscan examples are earlier than the Anatolian parallels. Key differences in usage further remind us that even with a shared vocabulary of form, distinct cultural dialects can persist.

Luxurious dress and jewelry were important in public self-representation in Perso-Anatolian and Etruscan cultures. What distinguishes jewelry use in these societies is that jewelry was equally significant for elite males as it was for females. In fact, most of the visual evidence for jewelry in the East comes from ornaments worn by soldiers, court officials, and kings. Persian, Anatolian, and Lydian women are rarely represented in the surviving art, making it unusually difficult to reconstruct the jewelry styles and types they favored. Etruscan men, too, showed themselves with rings, bracelets and armbands, necklaces, and earrings. This chapter examines the male adoption of jewelry and explores the meanings of personal ornaments in both cultures.

This paper examines the relationship between images of women on funerary monuments in Etruria and Anatolia, with particular focus on the so-called “female assembly scenes” on Chiusine cippi of the Late Archaic period. In these reliefs, groups of seated women drape and exchange textiles among each other. Although scholarly opinion differs on the meanings of these scenes, the visual focus on cloth as a component of social or religious ritual is paramount. The importance of the textile within the specific Etruscan context of these scenes is further emphasized when considered alongside contemporaneous reliefs in Anatolia associated with females, most notably those on the Polyxena sarcophagus from a tomb in the northern Troad. Through both visual analysis and attention to broader issues of gendered representation and identity, this chapter examines the importance of cultural context for interpreting female-focused narratives in both ancient Etruria and Anatolia.

Relations between different regions of Anatolia and Etruria show main movements from east to west, but they also reveal some objects going the other way, from west to east. Exchange was made in several ways, including trade in goods and substances as well as immigration of skilled workers. The idea of a monumental funerary landscape developed in Etruria, probably influenced by North Syria or Anatolia. Tomb- and vase-painting show intense East Greek activity in Etruria, and East Greeks returning home brought goods from Etruria and gifted them as votive offerings to divinities: Bucchero – the national Etruscan pottery – has been found at Miletus and Samos, and Etruscan wine amphoras have been found at Miletus and Phocaea. Through East Greek cities (especially Miletus), Etruscan bucchero also arrived at the northern Black Sea coast. Such imports show that Etruscan goods were appreciated in East Greece and that some reflections of their knowledge may be identified in Greek and non-Greek handcraft. In Anatolia Etruscans also had connections with other non-Greek peoples, such as Lydians, and Lydian imports are known in Etruria.

Although the local character of Etruscan black-figure vase painting was recognized as early as the 1830s, later scholarship was dominated by the Panionian paradigm. This view assumed that the style was initiated by migrants from East Greece before losing its “Greek” character and becoming “barbarized.” New studies of Etruscan black-figure have begun to revise this paradigm. In particular, it has been proven that the founder of the so-called Pontic workshop, called the Eyre Painter, owed nothing to East Greek art. In addition, certain groups of vases once thought to be products of Ionian painters who migrated in Etruria (the Campana dinoi and the Northampton Group) are now regarded as imports. Since these developments affect the very essence of the established paradigm, it is now time to reassess all available evidence. This paper deals not only with style, ornament, and vase-shapes, but also addresses questions of iconographic influence, especially in matters of ritual and divine iconography, and thus offers a more balanced view about the contribution of Anatolia to the development of Etruscan pictorial styles of the second half of the sixth century BCE.

Excavations conducted by the University of Pennsylvania at Phrygian Gordion have so far only revealed wall paintings from one small building. This structure was prominently located between two large Middle Phrygian megara at the outer court of the citadel and dates to the beginning of the Achaemenid period (ca. 500–490 BCE). The building was unique regarding both its decoration and architectural features. It was a semi-subterranean structure that consisted of one main chamber measuring about 3.50 × 4.75 m with a narrow antechamber in front. The mudbrick walls, once decorated with painted plaster, had collapsed during the Persian period, probably because the walls had been robbed of their supporting timber beams. Thousands of painted plaster fragments were recovered during the excavations of the late 1950s. This paper discusses the artistic style, techniques, and iconography of these paintings from an Anatolian perspective, and takes into account contemporary Etruscan wall paintings.

A plethora of archaeological evidence retrieved from regional and panhellenic sanctuaries in Greece suggests that from the eighth century BCE and throughout the Archaic period sanctuaries functioned as seminal nodes of cultural interaction between Etruria and Anatolia. This chapter discusses evidence from Greek sanctuaries that functioned as arenas of actual physical contact and tangible or intangible exchanges between visitors from the Italic peninsula and visitors from Anatolia and proposes a heuristic classification of two major categories of sanctuaries: transactional, in which exchanges of an economic nature would have taken place, and heterotopic, in which some transactional exchanges may have been arranged or taken place but which mainly configured themselves as wondrous places only for very few and exclusive visitors seeking to enhance their prestige by simply being there. Contacts between Italics and Anatolians would have taken place in both transactional and heterotopic sanctuaries, while only the high, exclusive elites would have frequented the heterotopic sanctuaries.

A comprehensive examination of material connections and artistic exchange between Etruria and Anatolia has never been the focus of an in-depth and heuristic study. Remarkable connections in Etruscan and Anatolian material culture show a growing body of fascinating evidence for various forms of contact and exchange between these two regions. This book establishes a new framework for discussing such similarities, and it invites new conversations about materiality, connectivity, and exchange among two regions separated (literally) by Greece. It examines recurring threads of a rich and varied Etruscan and Anatolian fabric of material networks surfacing in a wide variety of artistic styles and narratives. The traditional ways of looking at the ancient Mediterranean, within strict disciplinary boundaries, can no longer be useful when it comes to this type of cultural, artistic, and ideological query. The time has come to decolonize the ancient Mediterranean framework regarding how peoples and cultures have long been viewed, examined, and packaged. This volume offers a wide range of remarkable connections between Etruria and Anatolia, opening up new ways for examining the ancient Mediterranean.

Anatolia and Etruria have been separated by scholarship as much as by the Mediterranean itself. Although Anatolian archaeology has rested in the preserve of Near Eastern scholars, with Etruscan studies falling more within the domain of Classical-oriented scholars, neither sits at the center of Near Eastern or Classical Archaeology. Recent theoretical developments that seek to connect communities more effectively have begun to emphasize the links between these cultural groups and thus bring together their respective scholarly disciplines. This contribution examines the history of interest in the relationship between Anatolia and Etruria, and it reassesses our evidence for it within a Mediterranean-wide context. To do this, it considers historical interpretations of these connections and presents a new perspective that balances shared practices with localized differences, which increasingly is preferred to characterize this period of Mediterranean history.

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.