Etruscan Urbanization

The first main area of interest related to the origins and character of Etruscan urbanization. Debates over this have centred around the chronology of its emergence and the role of Greece as a possible source of inspiration. Some historians have tended to see the question in terms of the importation of an already fully developed Greek model c. 700 bc, the beginning of the Orientalizing period (so-called because of Eastern influences discerned in Etruscan art from this time) (Reference DrewsDrews 1981; Reference HarrisHarris 1989). Genetic studies of modern central Italian populations were taken as evidence for an east Mediterranean/Anatolian origin of the Etruscans (Reference Achilli, Olivieri and PalaAchilli et al. 2007; Reference Brisighelli, Capelli and Álvarez-IglesiasBrisighelli et al. 2009). Some studies of ancient DNA in Etruscan skeletons did not find persuasive evidence for significant genetic continuity with later Italian populations (Reference Belle, Ramakrishnan, Mountain and BarbujaniBelle et al. 2006; Ghirotto et al. 2013); others proposed indigenous rather than exotic origins (Reference Tassi, Ghirotto, Caramelli and BarbujaniTassi et al. 2013). The most recent, using the ancient DNA (aDNA) of around 80 individuals from Etruria spanning from 1000 bc to ad 1000, including around fifteen from the centuries of Etruscan hegemony and independence from Rome (the seventh to the fourth centuries), proposes an Indo-European-associated steppe ancestry for the Etruscans in line with the steppe ancestry that geneticists have also proposed, equally controversially in relation to the archaeological evidence, for the wider European population in later prehistory (Reference Allentoft, Sikora and SjögrenAllentoft et al. 2015; Olalde et al. 2015). While acknowledging the profound cultural impacts of Phoenician and Greek settlement and commercial activity, most archaeologists have argued that there is no need to look beyond Italy for the dominant impulse towards the formation of the Etruscan city states, because the seeds of state-level or urbanized societies were present already in the communities of the Villanovan Iron Age in Etruria c. 900–700 bc, and even perhaps before then (Reference Barker and RasmussenBarker and Rasmussen 1998; Reference BroodbankBroodbank 2013; Reference FulminanteFulminante 2014; Reference GuidiGuidi 2006; Reference Rasmussen, Osborne and CunliffeRasmussen 2005; Reference RivaRiva 2020; Reference Spivey and StoddartSpivey and Stoddart 1990; and see Chapters 4 and 5). While this is the view that we ourselves have favoured (Reference Barker and RasmussenBarker and Rasmussen 1988) and continue to favour, demonstrating a significant increase in social complexity is one thing but explaining it quite another. Advancing understanding about the trajectory of urbanism in Etruria has been greatly hampered by lack of detailed knowledge about the nature of settlement in the centuries before the appearance of Etruscan towns, and in the initial stages of their development. Had there been a gradual process of nucleation, with people coming together into fewer, larger, settlements in the preceding phases of prehistoric occupation, or had the growth of central sites been rapid? In either case, to what extent was the surrounding countryside depopulated?

Etruscan archaeology for generations has been concerned with the controlling elites and with the expensive goods with which they surrounded themselves that fill the world’s great museums today. What has been conspicuously missing has been any focus on the lower end of the settlement hierarchy, most of whom are assumed to have been living on the land (Reference Barker, Grant, Rasmussen and BoguckiBarker et al. 1993a; Reference Potts and SmithPotts and Smith 2021). Knowledge about Etruscan lives had been derived almost exclusively from necropolis archaeology, and D. H. Lawrence, writing in 1932, was hardly exaggerating when he commented that ‘now, we know nothing about the Etruscans except what we find in their tombs … Of first-hand knowledge we have nothing except what the tombs offer’ (1986: 31). It is, of course, because the tombs have offered up so great a wealth of objects, from the great assemblages of the Orientalizing period, such as that from the Regolini-Galassi tomb at Cerveteri to the Hellenistic riches of the Volumnii tomb at Perugia, that the temptation to pillage, and later to excavate, cemeteries has always been extreme. At first, objects were simply pulled out of context and treated in museum displays as objets d’art. Later, they were studied for the creation of coherent typologies of artefacts on which the major chronological divisions of Etruscan culture are based: Orientalizing (700–570 bc), Archaic (570–470 bc), classical (470–300 bc) and Hellenistic (300–31 bc). (The Hellenistic phase encompasses the final retreat of Etruscan power in the face of Roman territorial expansion, 31 bc being the date when Augustus, Rome’s first emperor, came to power.) Researchers, especially in more recent times, have also tried to make sense of Etruscan museum collections in social, economic and ideological terms (e.g. Reference IzzetIzzet 2010; Reference RivaRiva 2020), but their success has always had to be tempered by the biases in the material itself: that it is mainly funerary, and that it is concerned for the most part with the highest strata of society (Reference Potts and SmithPotts and Smith 2021).

Settlement archaeology came late in Etruscan studies and, with the exception of Marzabotto near Bologna on the edge of the Po plain in the north, especially late where investigation of the major urban sites is concerned. Attention on the city sites has, by intention or luck, focused mainly on sanctuary sites. At Cerveteri this is true both of the old excavations of Mengarelli and of more recent initiatives (Reference Cristofani and NardiCristofani and Nardi 1988; Reference De Grummond and Pieraccinide Grummond and Pieraccini 2016), though a huge deposit of dumped material looks more domestic in nature (Reference CristofaniCristofani 1992–1993). It is true, too, of excavations on the acropolis of Populonia, at Volterra, Fiesole and also on the Pian di Civita at Tarquinia (Reference Bonghi Jovino and Chiaramonte TreréBonghi Jovino and Chiaramonte Treré 1997). Part of an industrial complex was uncovered in the lower town of Populonia (Reference Cristofani and MartelliCristofani and Martelli 1979), as was a series of Iron Age huts on the Monterozzi ridge at Tarquinia (Reference LiningtonLinington 1982). At some other sites, investigations have been on a larger scale but have penetrated through to Etruscan levels only at certain points – notably at Roselle to a substantial archaic house (Reference DonatiDonati 1994) and to one or two even earlier domestic structures. Rather different are the cases of Doganella (Reference Perkins and WalkerPerkins and Walker 1990) and Veii (Reference Cascino, Di Giuseppe and PattersonCascino et al. 2012; Reference GuaitoliGuaitoli 1982; Reference Patterson, Gennaro and Di GiuseppePatterson et al. 1999; Reference Tabolli and CerasuoloTabolli and Cerasuolo 2019; Reference Ward-PerkinsWard-Perkins 1961), both large urban sites which have been carefully surveyed and field-walked, but at which only relatively small areas of domestic structures have been excavated. At Cerveteri too, in addition to excavations mentioned above, survey resulted in a series of settlement maps of the urban area from the Early Iron Age to the first century ad (Reference Merlino, Merenda, Maffei and NastasiMerlino and Merenda 1990).

A few smaller sites – towns and large villages rather than cities – have been investigated with considerable care. The process began with the Swedish excavations at San Giovenale and Acquarossa in the 1960s and 1970s (Reference Wikander and RoosWikander and Roos 1986) and continued at Poggio Civitate near Murlo (Reference PhillipsPhillips 1993). The latter is usually discussed in terms of a large isolated building complex but is more likely to have been part of a larger settlement (there is a necropolis area nearby). Work was conducted also at a group of houses set in the vicinity of Lago dell’Accesa in the Colline Metallifere (‘metal-bearing hills’) east of Populonia (Reference CamporealeCamporeale 1997). However, it is buildings and farms out in the countryside that have received least attention by excavators – the humble dwelling of the kind that leaves traces in the form of small surface scatters of artefacts that can be encountered in many parts of Etruria. Some of these have proved on further investigation to have been completely ploughed out, but an example of the high quality of data that can be extracted from a poorly preserved rural site was the Etruscan farm at Podere Tartuchino (Reference Perkins and AttoliniPerkins and Attolini 1992), a striking discovery of the Albegna Valley Survey (Reference Cambi, Carandini and CambiCarandini and Cambi 2002). Field survey therefore has significant potential to tell us about the nature of rural settlement patterns and densities. Agriculture lay at the heart of the Etruscan socio-economic system and of the conditions necessary for the development of Etruscan urbanism, as elsewhere around the ancient Mediterranean, and we wanted to devise a research programme that would shed light on the exploitation of land resources in a chosen area and on the density of rural settlement both at the beginning and height of Etruscan power and as it was affected by the aggrandizing power of Rome in the last centuries bc.

Etruscan society was characterized by clientship, and the economy of Archaic Etruria was pre-monetary in the sense that coinage was not used extensively or systematically, with most economic relations being embedded in networks of social and ritual obligations (Reference Barker and RasmussenBarker and Rasmussen 1998; Reference IzzetIzzet 2010; Reference RivaRiva 2020). However, beginning before the advent of coinage, bronze ingots (aes rude) are thought to have acted as some kind of standard medium of exchange and, as they have been found in both towns and farms, there could have been some form of primitive market exchange between urban centres and their surrounding rural populations. Could such relationships be investigated from comparisons of urban and rural material culture? Could we by the same means also gain insights into the nature of rural Etruscan societies, and the extent of their independence from or obligations to urban societies from factors such as wealth indicators from structural remains and artefacts? Were Etruscan cities and towns nucleated centres housing not only elites and specialist groups such as craftworkers but also people who farmed the surrounding landscape (what are sometimes called ‘agro-towns’)? Or did they function more as administrative centres or markets of some kind for dispersed rural populations? Did some Etruscan elites in fact live in the countryside and not – as always assumed – in the city? Could graves and grave goods in the countryside be used as signatures of the rural population’s participation in or exclusion from the norms of Etruscan ideology? In short, could field survey around a typical Etruscan centre cast new light on how Etruscan towns interacted with their hinterlands in economic, social and ideological terms?

‘Romanization’ and Roman Imperialism

The next major group of research questions concerned processes of Roman imperialism in central Italy. Much historical work on this process of ‘Romanization’ in Italy, as in the rest of the Roman empire, has suffered from a Romano-centric, colonialist perspective (Barbara Bender’s ‘Western Gaze’ again), characterized by an assumption of a normative experience of Roman imperialism and an evolutionary cultural paradigm in which under-developed societies succumbed inevitably to Roman power and culture. More recent approaches have tended to emphasize the diversity of people’s engagements with Roman power and cultural norms, and the dialogues and negotiations between colonizers and colonized (Reference AlcockAlcock 1993; Reference Ceccarelli, Bell and CarpinoCeccarelli 2016; Reference Keay and TerrenatoKeay and Terrenato 2001; Reference MattinglyMattingly 1997, Reference Mattingly2006, Reference Mattingly2011; Reference MillettMillett 1990; Reference Webster and CooperWebster and Cooper 1996; Reference WitcherWitcher 1999). To what extent was Romanization an active policy imposed on subject peoples, or the result of local elites actively emulating Roman ways, and in the latter case was motivation primarily socio-political or economic or ideological (or, more likely, complex combinations of these)? Much of this rethinking has been stimulated not only by the changing paradigm of post-colonial perspectives but also by the results of archaeological research: the complex changing social relations of Romanization manifested themselves in changing material culture in towns, changes in rural settlement forms and systems of land use, and changes in town and country relations, all of which were amenable to archaeological investigation.

Although there has been a considerable history of research on individual Roman towns in Italy as elsewhere in the Roman empire, most excavation has concentrated either on exceptionally well-preserved and in many respects atypical towns, such as Pompeii and Ostia, or on major public buildings within selected towns. Understanding of Roman urbanism in Italy has been transformed in recent decades by the systematic investigation of different kinds of urban sites in the area of the British School at Rome’s South Etruria Survey using a variety of remote sensing techniques that in favourable conditions are capable of surveying hectares of land per day (e.g. Reference CampanaCampana 2018; Reference Carlucci, De Lucia Brolli, Keay, Millett and StruttCarlucci et al. 2007; Reference Gaffney, Patterson, Roberts and PattersonGaffney et al. 2014; Reference Hay, Johnson, Keay and MillettHay et al. 2010; Reference Johnson, Keay and MillettJohnson et al. 2004; Reference Keay, Millett, Poppy, Robinson, Taylor and TerrenatoKeay et al. 2000, Reference Keay, Millett, Poppy, Robinson, Taylor, Terrenato and Patterson2014; Reference OpitzOpitz 2009; Reference Verdonck, Launaro, Vermeulen and MillettVerdonck et al. 2020), enhancing survey archaeologists’ ability to ‘fill in the white space’ of an archaeological landscape (Reference CampanaCampana 2018). Modern excavations of rural sites are still remarkably rare in central Italy. An early example was Barri Jones’ excavation of Monte Forco in the Ager Capenas, a small rural site was investigated at Giardino Vecchio in coastal Tuscany (Reference CarandiniCarandini 1985b: 106–107) and a modest Samnite and Roman villa was excavated at Matrice in the Biferno valley (Reference Lloyd and BarkerLloyd 1995a), but the picture has recently been transformed by the excavation of a series of small rural sites around the villages of Cinigiano and Pievina in inland Tuscany (Reference BowesBowes 2020; Reference Ghisleni, Vaccaro, Bowes, Arnoldus, MacKinnon and MaraniGhisleni et al. 2011; Reference Vaccaro, Ghisleni and Arnoldus-HuyzandveldVaccaro et al. 2013). The largest-scale study has been of the Settefinestre senatorial villa at the top end of the social and economic spectrum in the territory of the city of Cosa (Reference CarandiniCarandini 1985a).

By collecting new survey data from the countryside around Tuscania, a town we knew was occupied in Roman as well as Etruscan times, we hoped to inform current debates about the nature of Roman imperialism in its first critical phase of expansion north of the Tiber. An obvious question regarded the extent to which the conquest and Romanization of Etruria meant continuity or rupture in rural settlement. Reference PotterPotter (1979) had concluded from the South Etruria Survey data that in the Ager Faliscus to the north of Veii the survival rate of farms into the Roman period was less than 20 per cent, whereas around Veii itself the ratio was much higher – about two-thirds. Hemphill’s survey of the westernmost part of the BSR survey area, between the Via Cassia and Via Clodia (Reference HemphillHemphill 1975), showed a similar continuity of settlement between the Etruscan and Roman periods to that of the Veii area. Yet there were also clear examples elsewhere in Etruria of disruption to patterns of rural settlement. The rich farmlands of the Maremma coastal lowlands, for example, attracted particular Roman interest once the Roman colony of Cosa was established on the coast in 273 bc. The Albegna Valley Survey had picked up traces of ‘centuriation’ (systems of Roman land division) around this centre, as well as around the colonies of Heba and Saturnia further inland, revealing how a landscape that was quite densely populated in Etruscan times became much reduced in population immediately after the Romans moved in, and once under Roman control the land was increasingly intensively farmed in the last two centuries bc (Reference Attolini, Cambi, Castagna, Barker and LloydAttolini et al. 1991; Reference Perkins, Herring, Whitehouse and WilkinsPerkins 1991). On the Adriatic side of the peninsula in Samnite territory, the Biferno Valley Survey had picked up a marked decline in numbers of farms, a drop in fact of around 40 per cent, when this area became part of the Roman state after 80 bc (Reference Lloyd and BarkerLloyd 1995a, Reference Lloyd and Barker1995b).

The reliable demonstration of settlement continuity and discontinuity is one of the most debated areas of field survey methodology (Reference Francovich, Patterson and BarkerFrancovich et al. 2000). One significant problem concerns the difficulties of dating site foundations and abandonments when rich sites with plentiful fine wares can be dated more precisely than the (usually) many more sites with poorer ceramics. Another is judging the significance of mixed sherd assemblages: when do a few sherds of Etruscan pottery in a rich Roman assemblage denote continuity, and even if continuity of occupation has been demonstrated, what did that mean in terms of continuity of settlement forms and social and economic structures – of ways of living? Could we contribute to these methodological issues, and understanding of the Romanization of Etruria, by a detailed study of the transition between Etruscan and Early Roman (Republican) settlement in the countryside around Tuscania?

Formalist or modernist perspectives on the Roman economy emphasize money, markets, long-distance trade in low-value goods, and specialization in craft and agricultural production, whereas substantivist or primitivist models argue that production and exchange were embedded in social relations, in particular the social and economic needs and aspirations of elites. The survey and excavation data from Roman Italy had been cited notably by Andrea Carandini as evidence in support of general historical models broadly within the formalist paradigm, concerning the impact of conquest on agricultural development in Italy, in particular the investment of wealth in land and the growth of large villa estates sustained by the ‘slave mode of production’ at the expense of the small farmer (Reference Carandini, Giardina and SchiavoneCarandini 1981, Reference Carandini1985a, Reference Carandini1985b, Reference Carandini1988). Could the surface archaeology of the countryside around Tuscania inform such debates about the nature of the Roman economy, and the changes to the agricultural landscape of central Italy, through the several centuries of the Roman Imperial period? Methodological concerns were critical here. For example, could historically attested settlement forms such as the villa be satisfactorily identified from archaeological survey sites using measurements of size, density and wealth of surface remains? To what extent could negative evidence in an archaeological survey (mindful of our earlier comments about different survey methodologies) be used to support historical models regarding the collapse of the peasantry (Reference FoxhallFoxhall 1990)?

Medieval Settlement and Incastellamento

South Etruria in the Early Medieval period was one of the principal arenas where changing power relationships between the Lombards and Carolingians on the one hand, and Rome and the Church on the other, provided the context for the emergence of the city states of Medieval Italy (Reference ChristieChristie 1991, Reference Christie2006). Our final set of questions concerned the transformations to the landscape in the post-Roman period onwards, in particular the origins and development of the phenomenon called incastellamento whereby populations moved from lowland habitations and established fortified hilltop sites – in the case of Tuscania, the hilltop settlement of Colle San Pietro now crowned by the magnificent Early Medieval church of San Pietro (Fig. 1.4). The nature of these processes, their chronology, and in particular their cause or causes, were and remain much debated (Reference Francovich and La RoccaFrancovich 2002; Reference Francovich and HodgesFrancovich and Hodges 2003; Reference Wickham and RandsborgWickham 1989) and, exactly as in the case of Etruscan nucleation, much of the debate has concerned the nature of rural settlement across the Roman/Early Medieval boundary: was the countryside abandoned, or did lowland farms and hamlets continue to be occupied as vestiges of the Roman landscape? Were the new hilltop villages agro-centres from the outset, or did they function more as seats of feudal power controlling rural populations in their environs?

Figure 1.4 Tuscania’s Colle San Pietro acropolis, looking south-east from the Medieval/modern town.

(Photograph: Graeme Barker.)

Most modern Italian hill villages have foundation dates around a thousand years ago, giving the impression of a rather static landscape since then of long-lived successful villages surrounded by dispersed farms. However, archaeological surveys such as that in the Biferno valley had shown how some regions of the Italian countryside had witnessed significant episodes of population expansion and contraction over the past thousand years, with ‘lost villages’ from past phases of high population marked today by isolated churches in the countryside, or by concentrations of surface archaeological materials around what are now isolated farms (Reference Hodges, Wickham and BarkerHodges and Wickham 1995). Such episodes were not apparent in the evidence for Medieval and Post-Medieval settlement collected by the South Etruria Survey (Reference PotterPotter 1979), but studies of post-Roman ceramics had advanced considerably since that project’s completion, making it an open question whether the rather stable post-Roman landscapes indicated by the South Etruria Survey reflected genuine evidence of an absence of episodes of settlement expansion and contraction, or were more a question of archaeological invisibility and insufficiently refined ceramic chronologies. (This was in fact an important focus of the major re-study of the South Etruria Survey material in the late 1990s and early 2000s: Reference Cascino, Di Giuseppe and PattersonCascino et al. 2012; Reference Harrison, Rajala, Stoddart, Witcher, Zubrow and PattersonHarrison et al. 2004; Reference Patterson and PattersonPatterson 2004.) Could a new survey project give better understanding of the development of post-Roman landscapes in South Etruria?

Tuscania’s Settlement Archaeology and History

Tuscania seemed likely to be typical of many towns in this part of central Italy in its evidence for more-or-less continuous occupation since Etruscan times, and with some indications of earlier settlement too. The Colle San Pietro hill had produced a sporadic find of a Neolithic axe of dark stone, perhaps 5000–6000 years old (Reference Gianfrotta and PotterGianfrotta and Potter 1980: 438). In her survey of the known archaeology around Tuscania for the Forma Italiae series (Figs. 2.6 and 7.5), Stefania Reference Quilici GigliQuilici Gigli (1970: 148; figs. 211 and 212) had illustrated a sherd with the characteristic stippled decoration of the Earlier or Apennine Bronze Age (2200–1400 bc) that had been picked up at a site some 2 km to the south on the right bank of the Marta river. A number of sherds of the Late and Final Bronze Age (1400–900 bc) had been reported from the foot of the hill itself (Reference ColonnaColonna 1974: 256, plate 54). In 1974 traces of Early Iron Age (900–700 bc) huts were found on its north-west slope in an excavation directed by F. Boitani (Reference Sgubini MorettiSgubini Moretti 1986b: 247, note 7).

In February 1971 Tuscania was struck by a devastating earthquake which ruined much of the town (Fig. 1.5) and killed many inhabitants. Before reconstruction of the urban centre began, the British School at Rome (BSR) was asked to help conduct archaeological soundings and investigations on Colle San Pietro and in the centro storico, the historic centre of the town within the Medieval walls (Reference Johns, Ward-Perkins, Lamarque, Beddoe and Ward-PerkinsJohns et al. 1973; Reference Ward-Perkins, Ward-Perkins, Gibson and WhitehouseWard-Perkins et al. 1972). Immediately after the earthquake, hasty explorations and clearance operations had taken place on Colle San Pietro in an area measuring some 55 m by 35 m. The subsequent investigation of exposed surfaces and structures by an archaeological team revealed a long sequence of occupation from the Early Iron Age to the Late Middle Ages (Reference Gianfrotta and PotterGianfrotta and Potter 1980). A detailed study of the Medieval town walls was also undertaken (Reference Andrews, Andrews, Osborne and WhitehouseAndrews 1982). This work had enabled a reasonably clear picture to be drawn of the development of Tuscania, showing that Colle San Pietro had been the focus of pre-Etruscan, Roman and Early Medieval occupation, with settlement then shifting a few hundred metres north-westwards to the Rivellino hill, the site of the later Medieval and present-day centre of habitation (Fig. 1.6). One consequence of the earthquake for our own project was that a small school or asylum for the children orphaned by the earthquake was built outside the town adjacent to the church of the Madonna del Cerro. Long empty at the time of our fieldwork, it was made available by the comune as the project base for the first three seasons of fieldwork.

Figure 1.5 The historic centre (centro storico) of Tuscania after the 1971 earthquake.

(Photograph: Graeme Barker.)

Figure 1.6 Tuscania: plan of Colle San Pietro and the later Medieval town; the dashed lines indicate David Andrews’ suggested reconstruction of the town walls, incorporating suggestions of earlier studies by Turriozzi and Campanari (the dashed lines with question marks).

(Adapted from Reference Andrews, Andrews, Osborne and WhitehouseAndrews 1982: fig. 3.21.)

The first major exhibition of Etruscan objects staged outside Italy, in Pall Mall in London in 1837, was in fact organized by excavators who were themselves based at Tuscania (Reference Swaddling and SwaddlingSwaddling 2018: 45–53). It consisted of a series of ‘walk-in’ reconstructions of chamber tombs, together with their contents, from Tuscania, Tarquinia, Vulci and Bomarzo, and was clearly a great success, with enthusiastic reviews in The Times. A full catalogue accompanied it (Reference CampanariCampanari 1837), and graphic designs for the tomb interiors are in the possession of the British Museum. One of these (Fig. 1.7) shows a chamber with several stone sarcophagi, all of which were found in a tomb near Tuscania by the road to Tarquinia. The repercussions of the London exhibition were far-reaching. The British Museum bought up much of the material, including the sarcophagi from Tuscania, to augment its burgeoning Etruscan collections. One visitor to the show was Elizabeth Caroline Hamilton Gray, who was inspired by it to go out and visit some of the sites of Etruria. These included Tuscania, where she was entertained by the Campanari family who had been responsible for the Pall Mall event. In Vincenzo Campanari’s courtyard-garden she was shown a full-scale reconstruction of the tomb of the Vipinana family, with its several generations of sarcophagi, excavated on the lower slope of the San Pietro hill only a few months before her arrival (Reference ColonnaColonna 1978: 93). It was partly in response to her travel book (Reference Hamilton GrayHamilton Gray 1841) that George Dennis wrote his classic work The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria (Reference DennisDennis 1848) to correct what he considered to be deficiencies in her work. He included a substantial chapter on Tuscania’s antiquities.

Figure 1.7 Restored tomb interior with sarcophagi from Tuscania, displayed at Pall Mall, London, in 1837.

(After Reference PrycePryce 1931, fig. 48.)

After these pioneering and momentous activities of the Campanari family, tomb discoveries continued to be made around Tuscania, the Statlane tomb found in 1896 producing even more sarcophagi than the Vipinana tomb. The big find of more recent times was the three tombs of the Curuna family excavated in 1967–1970 at the Madonna dell’Olivo necropolis 1 km south of the town (Reference Moretti and Sgubini MorettiMoretti and Sgubini Moretti 1983). The sarcophagi and associated material from these and from other tombs are on display at the Museo Nazionale in the cloister of S. Maria del Riposo.

In microcosm, Tuscania presents to the public the kind of Etruscan archaeology that is well known throughout Etruria, one that is very much cemetery-based. The visitor can see this material in the town’s attractive museum, and there are more sarcophagi laid out in the aisles of San Pietro church and dramatically crowning the walls of the Piazza del Comune (Fig. 1.8). The tombs from where all this material comes, however, are not themselves especially dramatic: at Tuscania they tend to be very plain rock-cut chambers, though some of the tombs discovered later do have considerable architectural and sculptural elaboration (Reference Sgubini MorettiSgubini Moretti 1982, Reference Sgubini Moretti, Wikander and Roos1986a, Reference Sgubini Moretti1989). However, these latter have been little publicized and today the tourist will probably only be directed to the very intricate series of chambers of the Tomba della Regina complex (of Hellenistic date) at the Madonna dell’Olivo 1 km south of the town.

Figure 1.8 Etruscan sarcophagi on the walls of Tuscania’s Piazza del Comune, with the Late Medieval walls and towers of the centro storico behind.

(Photograph: Graeme Barker.)

At only 8.4 ha (hectares), Colle San Pietro was a rather small Etruscan settlement. The five major settlements of South Etruria – Veii, Caere (modern Cerveteri), Tarquinia, Vulci and Volsinii (modern Orvieto) – each measured between 100 ha and 200 ha. The Etruscan remains known from Tuscania before our project were also few. In the rescue excavations on Colle San Pietro after the earthquake, most early Etruscan material, beginning from the later eighth and early seventh centuries bc, was found out of its original context mainly mixed in with later Medieval deposits. Two rough chamber tombs, one with material from the later sixth to early fifth centuries bc, the other with black-glazed pottery from the end of the fourth into the third centuries bc, suggested that the hill itself, or part of the hill, was not a centre of habitation in these periods. Yet the Etruscan cemeteries around Tuscania are very extensive, prompting the question as to whether the Etruscan centre was in fact somewhere else in the vicinity (Reference TorelliTorelli 1993: 227). The Tuscania Archaeological Survey did in fact confirm that the San Pietro hill was the main centre of habitation, the Etruscan levels having been almost completely obliterated by the large-scale Medieval building works, but that settlement extended down the southern slopes to near the Marta river, where we found dense spreads of domestic Etruscan settlement material (see Chapter 5). Presumably the hill functioned primarily as an arx or acropolis for the Etruscan population living on its flanks.

Clear evidence of sophisticated urban life in the Archaic Etruscan period (600–500 bc) is provided by figurative architectural terracottas. Some of these have been known for a long time, though their precise findspot is uncertain (Reference AndrénAndrén 1940: 73). Others have been excavated, not on Colle San Pietro, but at the Ara del Tufo necropolis to the south (Reference Sgubini MorettiSgubini Moretti 1982; Reference WinterWinter 2009: 561–562; Fig. 1.9), where they were scattered about some time after the tombs in question went out of use in the sixth century bc. Probably they had decorated one or more funerary shrines (naiskoi) at the necropolis. They show that Tuscania had wide contacts in this period: several types of antefix and revetment plaque from Ara del Tufo are matched by identical terracottas – from the same moulds, indeed – from the Etruscan settlement at Acquarossa north of Viterbo.

Figure 1.9 Circular tumuli of the Ara del Tufo Etruscan necropolis; looking north, with Tuscania in the distance.

(Photograph: Graeme Barker.)

Settlement at Tuscania in the Hellenistic period is indicated by remains of foundations of Late Republican houses with later black-glazed pottery and associated coarse wares. To the same period, or rather later still, belong the remains of a bath-building in the valley at the bottom of the northern slope of Colle San Pietro, which include walls in opus quadratum and opus reticulatum and traces of black-and-white mosaic (Reference Quilici GigliQuilici Gigli 1970: 163–167). A part of it, set against the foot of the Rivellino hill, is still visible.

When in 89 bc the whole of Etruria was given Roman citizenship, Tuscania (called Tuscana in Roman times) was included in the Roman tribe Stellatina, along with a number of other towns such as Tarquinia and Graviscae (Reference HarrisHarris 1971: 244). In the Roman Imperial period the town had the status of a municipium (Reference Quilici GigliQuilici Gigli 1970: 22, note 11; Pliny 3.5.52). Roman buildings covered much of Colle San Pietro, and a street laid with basalt blocks climbed the northern slope, lined with houses embellished with mosaic floors. However, this part of the hill at least was abandoned by the end of the fourth century ad, and there is no evidence of further occupation here until around three centuries later, when houses of wood were constructed along much the same alignment as previously, later to be rebuilt with stone walls. Yet Tuscania (Medieval Toscanella, a name that persisted until modern times) clearly continued to be a centre of some importance throughout this period, and it was the seat of a bishopric at least from ad 595 until ad 1192 when the latter was transferred to Viterbo, confirming that town’s growing superiority in status in relation to Tuscania (Reference Andrews, Andrews, Osborne and WhitehouseAndrews 1982: 138–139; and see Chapter 8). Around 1200 Colle San Pietro was given a circuit of walls, of which there are today very few traces, though some of the towers which were later built to reinforce it still remain.

The great churches of San Pietro (Fig. 8.2) and Santa Maria Maggiore, the latter in the valley to the north-west of the Colle San Pietro hilltop but still within the early wall circuit (Fig. 1.6), seem to have been first built in the eighth or ninth century ad. Colle San Pietro, with its big towers for defence and habitation, together with smaller houses clustered around, appears to have been densely populated until the fourteenth century, by which time the population had begun to expand to the adjacent Rivellino ridge. Gradually Colle San Pietro was abandoned as a place of settlement, while the enhanced status of the Rivellino, its area considerably greater than that of the neighbouring hill, was confirmed by the final completion in the fifteenth century of the circuit of defensive walls around the present centro storico. Today, Tuscania is one of many small towns in the province of Viterbo, the large and bustling provincial capital. At the time of our survey, it had a paper mill (which closed in 2014) and one or two other small-scale industries, but its economic life was much centred on agriculture, an annual highlight of the entertainment calendar being a tractor race around the streets.

Another feature of the known archaeological record of Tuscania that was important in persuading us to select the territory of the town for our project was the existing archaeological map of the town and the immediately surrounding area compiled by Stefania Quilici Gigli in the Forma Italiae series, published in 1970 (Figs. 2.6 and 7.5). The Forma Italiae is a long-running mapping project by classical archaeologists of the University of Rome, and the basis of each of its surveys is one of the 1:25,000 maps of the modern Italian topographic grid. The mapping exercise is usually undertaken by a classical archaeologist working on their own for a research thesis, who compiles the map by a combination of exhaustive bibliographic research, the study of museum collections, discussions with local museum curators and landowners, and follow-up visits to known or suspected archaeological sites. As a compilation of material collected in different ways by different people at different times, it is akin to what used to be termed the Sites and Monuments Record of an English county.

The best of the Forma Italiae maps, of which the Tuscana map is certainly one, are extremely informative, but the reliance on individual fieldwork and on the assembling of known information inevitably means a bias towards the most highly visible components of the archaeological landscape, Etruscan tombs being a prime example. The special focus of Quilici Gigli’s study was on the Etruscan cemeteries and tombs in the vicinity of Tuscania, which were carefully recorded and illustrated. The resulting map of the area was very informative on the position of these, as well as of the visible cuttings and other traces of ancient roads. There were also references in her commentary to ‘scatters of surface material’, though relatively few had been visited and their spatial characteristics recorded. The study was before knowledge of pottery styles had been refined, especially for later Roman pottery, so the description of most of these scatters was very general, with little attempt at periodization. Nevertheless, the Forma Italiae map gave us reasonable confidence that, fifteen or so years after its compilation, such sites were still going to be well enough preserved in the ploughsoil for us to map them. It also provided an ideal opportunity to compare this kind of archaeological map, compiled over the years by chance discoveries and individual researchers interested in particular topics or classes of material, with the data collected by systematic team-based fieldwork, in which material of all periods would be valued equally. Theoretically, the latter should be more effective than the former as a means of ‘writing archaeological history’, but would the reality on the ground bear this out?

Tuscania’s Neighbours

The second reason for selecting Tuscania was its location in terms of other ancient settlements in the region and its likely communication links with them (Fig. 1.2), given that it could be expected that the history of an ancient town’s relationship with its surrounding countryside would need to be studied in the context of its place within changing networks of power at the regional scale.

Like many other ancient settlements in South Etruria, Tuscania was situated on a promontory flanked on both sides by streams, which at Tuscania run into the river Marta flowing at its foot. Clearly the advantages of the site lay in its proximity to the river and its valley, which from earliest times must have provided a north–south communications route. But there was another important route that crossed here too and led south-east to other Etruscan settlements such as Blera and Norchia. After the whole area became Roman, this road was systematized and properly laid with basalt blocks, perhaps as early as the third century, but in any case not later than 183 bc. Called then the Via Clodia, it ran from a junction of the Via Cassia, where that road was closest to the city of Veii, to the Roman colony of Saturnia (founded in 183 bc) above and to the west of Lake Bolsena. At Tuscania the Via Clodia crossed the river Marta just downstream from the present road-bridge, ran up the left slope of Colle San Pietro and on up the Rivellino hill; a short excavated section is visible here beyond the ruins of the Roman baths (Fig. 1.10).

Figure 1.10 A fragment of the Via Clodia Roman road at Tuscania. Scale: 10 cm.

(Photograph: Tom Rasmussen.)

Etruscan Tuscania lay quite close to a number of other smallish settlements, but these did not all flourish at the same time. To the north was Bisenzio on the edge of Lake Bolsena (Reference Babbi, Delpino and GuarinoBabbi et al. 2019), a site extending to 35 ha over its various phases. Excavations on the hill here had uncovered Late Bronze Age buildings (Reference DelpinoDelpino 1982), while its cemeteries reveal considerable prosperity between the ninth and early seventh centuries bc, the Early Iron Age and early (‘Orientalizing’) Etruscan period. A decline followed, and there is no indication of settlement at all from the fifth century bc until Roman times when, according to literary and inscriptional evidence, there was a town here called Visentium. The decline from the seventh century bc onwards and the growth of Tuscania at the same time may not simply be coincidental.

The closest ancient settlement of any size was situated to the east of Tuscania, at Musarna. This small (4.5 ha) foundation was a late one, laid out in a planned manner at the end of the fourth century bc (Reference de Casanove and Jolivetde Casanove and Jolivet 1983). The habitation site has been under excavation by the École Française de Rome, but from the Hellenistic cemeteries there are ambitious stone sarcophagi that have long been known and now fill up much of the Museo Civico at Viterbo. Musarna continued to support a population, even if a diminished one, through into the Late Roman period.

Still in the east, but further anti-clockwise from Tuscania, lie Castel d’Asso (11 ha) and Norchia (9.5 ha). Like Musarna, they occupy precipitous promontory positions, but on a rather larger scale. The rock-cut necropolises of both have been closely studied, but the settlements themselves have only been surveyed. At Castel d’Asso the town site seems to have been at its maximum extent in the Archaic Etruscan period (Reference Colonna, di Paolo and ColonnaColonna di Paolo and Colonna 1970: 52), but contemporary settlement at Norchia was only small-scale. At both sites, however, the necropolises, as so far explored, belong essentially to the Hellenistic period (after 300 bc), with no evidence of further use after the middle of the first century ad (Colonna di Paolo and Reference ColonnaColonna 1978: 412). This fact in the case of Norchia is especially noteworthy, as the Via Clodia ran right across the settlement plateau.

To the south and west respectively, Tarquinia (220 ha) and Vulci (190 ha) were major Etruscan cities and important centres of settlement from the Early Iron Age until the Roman occupation of 281–280 bc. After the granting of Roman citizenship in 89 bc, both continued as Roman municipia, though their populations must have been much reduced. At Vulci, many of the visible remains on the site are of Roman Imperial date, including a mithraeum that was in use through the third and fourth centuries ad (Reference CarandiniCarandini 1985b: 73). These two cities are equidistant from Tuscania, but the influence of Tarquinia on the development of Etruscan Tuscania and the territory around it was by far the greater. That is not much of a surprise given the topography of the region: the natural lines of communication run northwards along the Marta valley and the plateaus to either side, stretching up as far as Lake Bolsena, whereas communications eastwards from Vulci to Tuscania are across the grain of the country, hampered by numerous obstacles in the form of deep stream gulleys running north to south. Vulci’s line of influence was especially north along the valleys of the Fiora and its tributaries, again reaching as far as Lake Bolsena but from a different direction (Reference RendeliRendeli 1993a: 171). Significantly, the tomb material from the lakeside site of Bisenzio in the eighth century bc has noticeable stylistic similarities with Vulcentine products (Reference DelpinoDelpino 1977: 48; Reference Sprenger and BartoloniSprenger and Bartoloni 1983: 77), while that from Fiora valley settlements such as Castro and Poggio Buco has affinities with Vulci in the Archaic period.

In the Roman period Tarquinia seems to have been the key settlement of the area that includes Tuscania, and its territory, the Ager Tarquiniensis mentioned by Cicero a couple of times, seems to have been very extensive. Pliny (2.95) talks of a Lacus Tarquiniensis, which must refer to Lake Bolsena, for he mentions its two islands, which he describes as floating on the lake. But Tarquinia’s hold on the area was probably strongest in the period from the later fourth to the first centuries bc, when the status of Tuscania would seem to have been very much that of a dependency. Several factors suggest this. The beginning of the period saw the rise of great families such as the Curuna, whose three sarcophagus-filled tombs at Tuscania can be matched with another Curuna tomb at Tarquinia (Reference PallottinoPallottino 1937: 515, 525, 544), from where it is likely that the family originated. In style and subject matter, there is often little to distinguish the carving of stone sarcophagi from Tuscania from those from Tarquinia, and no doubt Tarquinian sculptors were employed at both centres (Reference Barker and RasmussenBarker and Rasmussen 1998: 289). Moreover, Etruscan titles of magistracies found in funerary inscriptions not only at Tuscania but also at neighbouring centres such as Musarna (TLE 169–76) and Norchia may refer to offices with jurisdiction not just over these local communities but over the wider area controlled by Tarquinia.

The river Marta, the only outlet of Lake Bolsena, reaches the sea just north of Tarquinia Lido. Tuscania, rather closer to the lake than to Etruscan Tarquinia, is the only modern settlement of any substance that lies beside the river. In previous times there were no doubt others, but none were of notable size. Perhaps one of the more important was Ancarano, a promontory site midway between Tuscania and Tarquinia, and around 10 km from both, where there are remains of Medieval defensive walls surrounding an inner citadel. There may also have been an Etruscan settlement here, for there are Etruscan tombs in the neighbourhood (Reference PallottinoPallottino 1937: 581). On a spur opposite, across the river, are the ruins of Pian Fasciano, another small defended Medieval site of the thirteenth century and later (Reference DrewsAndrews 1981: 324; Reference MaggioreMaggiore 2012: 230–231).

The Physical Landscape

The third reason for the selection of Tuscania was the character of the surrounding landscape, which was typical of the wider region in its topography and land use, and demonstrably well suited to investigation by field survey.

The geology of the area is discussed in detail in Chapter 3, but its principal characteristic is that it is dominated by volcanic formations. South Etruria consists predominantly of a recently formed volcanic landscape, one of the most extensive in the Mediterranean area, forming an undulating plateau punctuated by a series of crater lakes. The most northerly of the latter is Bolsena, which is also the largest, and was the main source of the lava and ash flows that underlie most of the Tuscania countryside as tuffs (tufo) and ignimbrites. In the survey area, the terrain within a 10 km radius of Tuscania, the plateau shelves gradually from the north-east at about 300 m above sea level to the south-west at around 100 m. Much of the volcanic plateau landscape, including that around Tuscania, looks benignly flat from a distance (Fig. 1.11) but is, in fact, dissected by rivers and streams which at frequent intervals gouge dramatic ravines into the soft tufo, their faces making favoured locations for Etruscan rock-cut tombs (Fig. 1.12). The principal streams in the Tuscania area are the Marta (which flows immediately past Colle San Pietro) and, in the west, the Arrone. The highest areas surround the crater lakes, the highest altitude being east of Viterbo at 1053 m above sea level at Monte Cimino, the summit of the hills forming the northern rim of the Lake Vico crater some 30 km east of Tuscania. Immediately north of the Tuscania Archaeological Survey area, the hills surrounding Lake Bolsena rise to about 600 m above sea level.

Figure 1.11 Looking north across the Tuscania Archaeological Survey area from near its southern boundary. Tuscania is in the distance, at the centre of the image. The land rises slowly behind it towards the hills edging Lake Bolsena.

(Photograph: Graeme Barker.)

Figure 1.12 The Marta valley to the north-east of Tuscania.

(Photograph: Tom Rasmussen.)

The main forested area today is the Monti Cimini around Lake Vico. In the later fourth century bc, these mountains were renowned and feared by the Romans for their deep and impenetrable forests (Livy 9.36). Today there are tracts of tangled wood and macchia especially on the plateau to the east and south-east of Tuscania as well as in the stream and dry-valley gorges, but most of the plateau-land in the environs of the town is open and intensively farmed (Fig. 1.13), so we were not hampered by large areas of woodland inaccessible to field-walking though now amenable to investigation by airborne Lidar survey. Crops include cereals, lucerne, olives, vines and tobacco, but there is also some stock-raising of sheep and cattle (bufalo) especially on outcrops of cretaceous limestone and flysch. Farms and field systems are all the time increasing in size, and large-scale agro-industrial ranches were making their appearance at the time of the fieldwork. Ever larger swathes of the terrain are being farmed for high-output crop management and, as in other parts of central Italy (e.g. Reference BarkerBarker 1995a: 306), year by year the landscape is becoming increasingly eroded and prairie-like. The predominantly open character of the land obviously made it very suitable for investigation by field survey.

Figure 1.13 Simplified patterns of recent land use in South Etruria: 1. drained land; 2. arable; 3. polyculture (cereals, olives, vines); 4. woodland; 5. pasture.

(Adapted from the Carta dell’Utilizzazione del Suolo d’Italia, 1959: sheet 12.)

Archaeologists’ access to land has been relatively easy in Italy with appropriate permission from the town authorities, with which field-walking teams can enter unfenced land as long as they do not cause any damage. Although increasing amounts of land around Tuscania were being fenced in by the big estates during the period of our fieldwork (1986–1990), most of the landscape remained accessible, though part of it north of the town has literally been quarried away for its tufo, which is in high demand as a building material (Fig. 1.14). As for the ploughlands, these are being subjected to an ever greater depth of excavation by ploughs pulled by tractors on caterpillar tracks, which are bulldozing the bedrock and bringing it to the surface (Fig. 1.15). All these factors together made our survey intervention an especially timely one. Far less land would be available to survey now than when we conducted the fieldwork, and it is highly unlikely that the quality of surface finds today would be nearly as good as it was for us.

Figure 1.14 Tufo stone quarry north of Tuscania.

(Photograph: Tom Rasmussen.)

Figure 1.15 Deep-ploughing technology used in the countryside around Tuscania at the time of the fieldwork.

(Photograph: Graeme Barker.)