The Etruscans /
Graeme Barker and Tom Rasmussen.
- Oxford : Blackwell, 2000, 1998.
- xii, 379 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.
- Peoples of Europe
Bibliography: p. [329]-366. - Includes index.
"The Etruscans are one of history's more extraordinary casualties. For many centuries their communities flourished exuberantly in central Italy, only to be completely absorbed into the growing Roman state. Their power, at its height, extended well beyond their borders: they were known and feared by Romans and Greeks alike. Their arresting visual culture was second to none in the peninsula, embracing complex funerary, religious and domestic architecture, painted tomb interiors, narrative imagery, and jewellery of great refinement. Their cities grew to notable size and sophistication. In reconstructing Etruscan society this book focuses on the extremely rich archaeological data, the accounts of Greek and Roman writers, and the inscriptions on Etruscan monuments, and attempts to relate the Etruscans both to ancient Mediterranean society as a whole and to the physical landscape that sustained them. Chapters on recent findings from landscape and settlement archaeology are balanced by sections on material and visual culture, and particular care is taken to direct the reader to sites both famous and little known and to many of the local museums."-- Publisher's description.