Current Issues in Archeology: Invisible Etruscans: A study on rural landscape and settlement organisation during the urbanisation of Etruria (7th—5th centuries BCE)

Camilla Zeviani (University of Cambridge)

Etruscan studies have reached great heights in the accumulation of cultural data. This is particularly true for landscape studies: the second half of the 20th century has been fruitful as it saw a growth in survey projects exploring ancient central Italian landscapes. Survey data have indeed a lot of potential for the study of urbanisation, facilitating the quantification of different patterns to draw comparisons of control strategies enacted by different power places.

This paper focuses on the analysis of rural settlement data between the 7th and the 5th centuries BCE, when urbanised institutions and lifestyles consolidated. Three case studies are selected and discussed, representing different types of territorial control: Tuscania, a mid-ranking centre tied to the city of Tarquinia; Cerveteri, a ‘classic’- Etruscan - urban central place; finally, the palatial site of Murlo, in open conflict with urbanised realities. Site trends, proxies of population change, locational analysis and agricultural suitability, using geographic information systems (GIS) reveal different rural infrastructures sustaining Etruscan central places. I will show how, despite responding to similar stimuli, these centres adopted different strategies to control their lands and benefit from them.

Relatively new social anthropological studies on state formation and urbanisation are applied: more segmented, irregular processes can better explain the variability defining Central Italian urbanisation and countryside organisation, as consequences of dealing with the challenges of rapid settlement aggregation.

This approach combines therefore quantitative approaches and social anthropology theory, providing nuanced examinations of how structured Etruscan landscapes became, how they were exploited, who lived there, and how relationships with the central place were developed, as well as the different decisions and responses of the central places’ leading families to such changes that transformed Etruria into an influential and competing player in the Mediterranean scene.

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