Etruscan Civilization
by Sybille Haynes
Hardcover, 432 p., November
2000,
British Museum Press, with 4 maps, 84 color and 246 b/w illustrations.
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Sybille Haynes' cultural history of the Etruscan
Civilization sums up our knowledge about this civilization from its
origins in the Villanovan Iron Age in the ninth century B.C. to its
absorption by the Roman Empire in the first century B.C. Haynes is a
leading authority on the subject. Her previous publications include Etruscan
Bronze Utensil (1965), Etruscan Sculpture (1971), Etruscan
Bronzes (1985) and a historical novel, The Augur's Daughter: A
Story of Etruscan Life (1987).
Etruscan Civilization combines
well-known aspects with insights gained from recent discoveries. Haynes
has not only many years working with the Etruscan
collections in the British Museum - largely a result of 19th century
excavations - but she has also kept close contact with ongoing excavations in
Italy where she is a frequent scholar in residence.
Since the last important exhibitions and
their catalogues, Les Etrusques et L'Europe in Paris in 1992 and Die
Etrusker in Europa in Berlin in 1993, new finds and the reexamination
of the material in museums have led to an even better understanding of the
Etruscans. Haynes pays special attention to the previously somewhat
neglected subject of the role of women in Etruscan society. Among the
colleagues to whom she is indebted, there is a remarkably high percentage
of women. Haynes' analysis of historical sources, archaeological evidence,
architecture, tombs, pottery, works of art, trade and social structure is
a reference work. Haynes contrasts the Etruscans
with both the Greeks and the Romans. The Greeks stimulated the Etruscan art whereas
the Romans absorbed many elements of Etruscan culture as it declined
before they defeated the Etruscans and ended their independence as a
people.
Haynes is well aware of the difficulties
and uncertainties of her enterprise. There is the scarcity of ancient
written sources. No Etruscan literature or written history has survived.
Texts by the later Greek or Roman writers are "often impaired by
strong anti-Etruscan bias and inevitably affected by the spirit of their
own times." Furthermore, "surviving documents in Etruscan are
mainly short funerary or votive inscriptions or fragmentary ritual texts
that provide only scant information about the people's social and
political institutions and cult practices. The archeological material is largely
provided from grave contexts and therefore reflects more on death
than on life. The majority of the tombs belong of course to the
aristocratic and wealthy Etruscans whereas the poor have left little
trace. However, fortifications, roads, ports, cities, farms and
settlements have been increasingly explored in recent years. Therefore,
knowledge of secular Etruscan life has increased. Haynes' precious study contains a detailed index as well as a topical
bibliography which facilitates further study.
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Map of Etruria. Photograph copyright: Sybille Haynes.
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