Free Republic

An archaeological excavation at Poggio Colla, the site of a 2,700-year-old Etruscan settlement in Italy's Mugello Valley, has turned up a surprising and unique find: two images of a woman giving birth to a child. Researchers from the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project, which oversees the Poggio Colla excavation site some 20 miles northeast of Florence, discovered the images on a small fragment from a ceramic vessel that is more than 2,600 years old. The images show the head and shoulders of a baby emerging from a mother represented with her knees raised and her face shown in profile, one arm...

Italian archaeologists have discovered a sacred mountain where ancient Etruscans worshipped gods and burned sacred objects in their honour during the Bronze Age 3000 years ago. Experts from the Archeological Superintendency for southern Etruria and La Sapienza University in Rome found the site at Mount Cimino near Viterbo, 80 km north of Rome. The discovery is considered one of the most important in the early history of Lazio, the region surrounding Rome, with archaeological remnants dating back to 1000 BC. Working on the summit of the 1000-metre high mountain, the team of archaeologists led by Professor Andrea Cardarelli has carried...

They taught the French to make wine and the Romans to build roads, and they introduced writing to Europe, but the Etruscans have long been considered one of antiquity's great enigmas. No one knew exactly where they came from. Their language was alien to their neighbors. Their religion included the practice of divination, performed by priests who examined animals' entrails to predict the future. Much of our knowledge about Etruscan civilization comes from ancient literary sources and from tomb excavations, many of which were carried out decades ago. But all across Italy, archaeologists are now creating a much richer picture...

An ancient Etruscan home dating back more than 2,400 years has been discovered outside Grosseto in central Italy. Hailed as an exceptional find, the luxury home was uncovered at an archeological site at Vetulonia, 200 kilometres north of Rome. Archeologists say it is rare to find an Etruscan home intact and believe the home was built between the 3rd and 1st century BC. Using six Roman and Etruscan coins uncovered at the home, archeologists believe the house collapsed in 79 AD during wars unleashed by Roman general and dictator, Lucio Cornelio Silla. Archeologists have discovered a large quantity of items...

...There are cases, such as the Etruscans, where the migration is clear from the genetics, both human and their domesticates. The peopling of Europe after the last Ice Age is now very much an open question. The likelihood that the present population of India is the product of an ancient hybridization event between an European-like population and an indigenous group with more affinity with eastern, than western, Eurasian groups, is now a rather peculiar prehistoric conundrum. It also seems likely that the spread of rice farming in Japan was concomitant with the expansion of a Korea-derived group, the Yayoi, at...

Archaeologists digging near the central Italian town of Orvieto believe they have discovered the 2 500-year-old ruins of the main sanctuary of the Etruscan federation, a central meeting point where political and religious leaders gathered once a year to discuss important matters. The University of Macerata announced on Friday that the site at the foot of the Umbrian town was probably the location of the Fanum Voltumnae, the federal sanctuary for the 12 Etruscans towns. But the project's lead archaeologist, Simonetta Stopponi, warned that the ultimate confirmation would only come with the discovery of an inscription to the Etruscan god...

"The building has a highly irregular plan, with stone foundations 3 or 4 feet thick," she said. "One wing of the building is about 60 feet long, flanking a space that has walls running at right angles. Some walls run on a diagonal to the grid, or are curved. There are paved areas alternating with beaten earth floors and what I believe to be a large courtyard in the middle. Some of the foundations are so heavy and thick that they could easily have supported multistoried elements. Within the building's courtyard, de Grummond said, is a freestanding sandstone platform that...

Man Leads Archaeologists to Frescoed TombSuspected Tomb Raider Leads Archaeologists to Frescoed Tomb North of Rome; May Be Europe's Oldest.This photo provided by the Italian Ministry of Culture on Friday, June 16, 2006 shows a frescoed burial decorated with migratory birds, in the town of Veio, near Rome. Experts on Friday, June 16, 2006 described the tomb as the oldest known frescoed burial chamber in Europe. It belonged to a warrior prince from the nearby Etruscan town of Veio, and dates back to 690 B.C.(AP Photo/Courtesy of Ministry of Culture, HO) VEIO, Italy Jun 16, 2006 (AP)— A suspected tomb...

Scientific treasure hunters Nov 4th 2004 | CLUSIUM, OR POSSIBLY NOT From The Economist print edition Archaeologists may have found what was once the biggest city in Italy REAL archaeology bears about as much resemblance to an Indiana Jones movie as real spying bears to James Bond. Excavation—at least if it is to be meaningfully different from grave robbing—is a matter of painstaking trowel work, not gung-ho gold-grabbing. But there is still a glimmer of the grave robber in many archaeologists, and the search for a juicy royal tomb can stimulate more than just rational, scientific instincts. Few tombs would...

Over the centuries the belief lingered on that here had been a great, wealthy, powerful commercial city that dominated the mouth of the Po and the shores of the Adriatic, a city of luxury and splendor, a kind of ancestor and predecessor of Venice, founded more than a thousand years later. Classical scholars also knew about Spina, for ancient literary sources indicated that there must once have existed a thriving maritime trading settlement of great economic importance, until the Celtic invasion of the Po valley destroyed it... The final key to its ultimate discovery came from aerial photography. Some...

Yet even the catalog is wary of answering the question central to the "mystery" of the Etruscans: where did they come from? Did they migrate from Greece or beyond? Did they travel down from the Alps? Or, as their pre- Indo-European language might suggest, were they a people indigenous to today's Tuscany who suddenly acquired the tools for rapid development? Such are the pros and cons of each theory, the French historian Dominique Briquel notes in his catalog essay, that "the problem must be held to be unresolved." ...[T]hey spoke the same language, which also existed in a written...