Recent announcements proclaiming major discoveries of ‘Etruscan DNA’ have prompted re-examination of the issue of Etruscan origins, an issue attributable in its origins to Herodotus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and other Greek and Roman — never Etruscan — authors. Today a gap persists between archaeological, epigraphic and linguistic evidence and the ancient texts. Still we are tempted to believe there must be a germ of truth behind the tales — Pallottino looked to the Eneolithic Rinaldone culture for the beginnings of Etruscan identity.
A University of Palermo seminar held in Agrigento (9 February 2011) responded to recent controversies in proceedings augmented by a dozen articles covering wide geographic and chronological ranges; they do not claim to present a consensus or even a thorough ‘answer’ to the conundrum.
A compendium of relevant data should be accessible to those in need of a dose of reality to counterbalance the literary sources, especially classicists and ancient historians, not to mention journalists… This volume rather will be of use, for bibliography and nuggets of new material, to archaeologists, but will probably be passed over by others not prepared to negotiate its specialist jargon. Site names and details of chronological schemes will be unfamiliar and off-putting for those who attempt the Italian and French texts. (I found the two-column format and font a bit distracting, and wished there had been firmer editing, both to deal with discrepancies between articles and to update some references.)
Dominique Briquel's analyses of the literary sources have shown that politics really drove the ancient theories, shifting between pro-Greek and anti-Greek or pro-Italian interests over the centuries; here (279–93) he explores the concept of ‘the Pelasgians’ as an intermittent device for negotiating changing sympathies (see also Briquel's chapter in J. M. Turfa (ed.), The Etruscan World (2013), 36–55). Andrea Ercolani explores the myth of Agrios and Latinos, suggesting its dissemination following the foundation of Cumae.
Surveys cover material evidence (Vincenzo Bellelli), literary sources (Roberto Sammartano, see his comprehensive table at 71–5), and the development of physical anthropological studies (Giandonato Tartarelli). For an additional perspective, see M. J. Becker, ‘Etruscan skeletal biology and Etruscan origins’, in A. Carpino and S. Bell (eds), A Companion to the Etruscans (2014).
Sites offering clues to identity and possible external influences, none really illustrative of population changes, are presented by Barbara Barbaro, Marco Bettelli, Isabella Damiani, Daniela De Angelis, Claudia Minniti and Flavia Trucco: Frattesina (Upper Adriatic), proto-historic cult sites (Sparne di Poggio Buco, Banditella, Monte Cimino) and Vaccina, one of several settlements with Bronze Age occupation and late Helladic IIIC-related sherds. Reappraisals of structures at Luni sul Mignone, San Giovenale and Monte Rovello add to the late Bronze and early Iron Age picture.
Alessandro Zanini indicates that the Tolfa and Allumiere cultures of southern Etruria demonstrate distinct continuity from Final Bronze to Iron Age of recognizable, regionally-flavoured material cultures for each historical ethnic group or future Etruscan city. Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri offers a speculative scenario for the formation of Villanovan poleis in eastern Lombardy/Veneto and southern Etruria. Final Bronze funerary sites in Istria (Nesazio, Limska Gradina), discussed by Kristina Mihovilić, show the sharp change in funerary ideology with the distinctive urns and metalwork that will characterize Protovillanovan Italy — Istria, lacking natural resources, was strategic for interaction between the peninsula and the European Urnfield culture.
Luciano Agostiniani's re-examination of epigraphic evidence from Lemnos includes the perplexing funerary stele of Holaie plus fifteen short graffiti on sixth-century vases, a loom-weight and one stone base. He notes the lack of Etruscan material culture in settlement and sanctuary, and the dissimilarity with Etruscan scripts; a much older common source must account for the few linguistic similarities. (Bellelli's speculative appendix at 30–7 suggests the Kaminia stele is a fragment of an elogium-type monumental frieze.)
Carlo De Simone offers an intense linguistic consideration of the Lydian origin theory, noting that the earliest attestation of Rasenna, the Etruscans’ name for themselves, so unlike the Greek or Latin terms, may be ‘Rasunie’ recently identified at Pontecagnano (seventh century b.c.). Alessandro Naso re-evaluates, with impressive bibliography, the evidence for Near Eastern influences on (not migration into) ancient Etruria and its implications. Dimitris Paleothodoros asks why so many (mostly Attic) vases depicting ‘Dionysus and the Tyrrhenian Pirates’ were acquired by Etruscans if they thought they were being portrayed as pirates? (The Etruscan Black Figure hydria illustrated as ‘Toledo Museum of Art 82.134’ (459–60) was repatriated to Italy on 8 January 2013.)
Massimo Cultraro analyses Egyptian and Hittite evidence for the twelfth-century Teresh ‘Sea People’: we can link them to Anatolia, but not directly to Italy (as noted by Lucia Vagnetti, ‘Western Mediterranean overview: peninsular Italy, Sicily and Sardinia at the time of the Sea Peoples’, in E. D. Oren (ed.), The Sea Peoples and Their World: A Reassessment (2000), 305–26). Luca Sineo considers DNA and theoretical technique; and Luca Cerchiai addresses the process of self-identification with reference to Italic situations and the Greek barbarian-Hellene dichotomy.
Two fascinating ‘reception’ studies offer invaluable references. Politics still drive acceptance of theory. Stefano Bruni begins with eighteenth-century antiquarian literature, noting how then-contemporary discovery of Phoenician and Punic culture informed the debate on Etruscans. Marie-Laurence Haack examines the fluctuating fortunes of theories between the two wars with racist propaganda on the ‘Aryan-ness’ of the Etruscans that has not been treated in much past scholarship. In the end, we may form perceptions of identity, but the issue of ‘origins’ has no simple answers.
