Villanovans
and Etruscans
Villanovans,
Part I
The
Iron Age in Greece comes in with a bang, with the catastrophic
destruction of the Mycenaean palatial civilization; in Italy the Iron
Age comes in with a whimper, as the Late Bronze Age (where we left
off in the previous lecture) just fades into the Early Iron Age. The
time frame for this transition coincides with the first century or
two of the new millennium, 1000-900 BC. For a long time it was
fashionable and customary to call all or almost all of the Early Iron
Age people Villanovans, after a culture whose material remains are
known from a site called Villanova, in the Po valley near Bologna. In
one sense this was valid. The people at Villanova were just one of
many settlements of a group who represented some of the first iron
workers in Italy; the distinctive features of their culture include
cremation of the dead and burial in biconical urns. Their main
settlements were in the area west of the Rome-to-Rimini line. The
problem was that as more and more sites were excavated, including
especially those of the late Bronze Age, more and more features of
the "Villanovan" culture kept turning up. The
interpretation of this new evidence tended to take the form of a
debate over the question of at what date the Villanovan culture
began; and the date kept getting pushed back. At length it became
clear that there was, fundamentally, cultural continuity between the
Terramare and Apennine peoples of the Late Bronze Age and the
"Villanovans." So the former group is styled
"proto-Villanovans" and our ability to refer to the latter
group as Villanovans is preserved.
Even
with that cleared up, the Villanovans remain problematic. Some
scholars feel that the differences between late Bronze Age and
Villanovan culture are great enough that the Villanovans must have
come in from outside of Italy, and some put upon them the onus of
having introduced Indo-European to Italy. Some again regard the
Villanovans as an ethnically distinct group; but more now would say
that is impossible, and regard them as essentially an indigenous
group influenced by developments to the north and east. One approach
(which you see in Carey and Scullard) relies on a division between
northern and southern Villanovans, the latter group being
distinguished by the use of burial urns in the shape of huts. In any
case, we will look at the Villanovans as they appear primarily in two
different locations, in Latium and in Etruria. If we admit that there
is essential continuity between Villanovans and what succeeds them in
these places, distinctions among different kinds of Villanovans come
to seem less useful.
Of
the situation elsewhere in Italy in the years 1000-800, in the east
and in the south, there is little to say. The material remains are
plentiful enough but it is almost impossible to trace the process by
which the different regions took on their ethnic characteristics,
except by recklessly projecting back from much later mythologies and
nomenclatures. One anchor in that sea may be the Iapygians, who
pretty clearly push in around this time from Illyria.
Introduction
to Etruscans
When
first we encounter them in Roman history, the Etruscans are a
culturally and ethnically distinct group living in a well-defined
region. Modern Tuscany has natural borders, with the Arno and the
Tiber rivers to the north and south, the Apennine mountains to the
east. The area was sparsely inhabited in the early and middle Bronze
Age, and as elsewhere on the peninsula the Iron Age came in slowly,
with much bronzework continuing to be done. The culture of the
inhabitants of Etruria begins to distinguish itself markedly from the
rest of Italy in the second half of 8th century, around the same time
as cultural influences from Greece and Phoenicia are being felt
throughout the region. To what extent this is a coincidence is
disputed. What is clear is that the Etruscans had a high culture from
the 7th century onwards; it went together with an empire of sorts,
attested by Etruscan colonies or trading posts, such as Capua in
Campania. Neighboring Latium in this period was within the Etruscan
sphere of influence, but in the 5th century the Romans began a series
of wars with their neighbours, including the Etruscans, in which the
Romans eventually prevailed. Etruscan culture continues to show
strongly independent features in the 4th century BC, but gradually
thereafter they become merged with the other peoples of Italy and
Rome, such that by the time of the transition from Republic to Empire
they no longer constitute a distinctive group.
Etruscans,
Part I
According
to Herodotus (1.94), the Etruscans were immigrants from Lydia in Asia
Minor. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, however, was convinced that they
were natives of Italy (1. 26-30), whereas Hellanicus of Lesbos, the
earliest of the Atthidographers or chroniclers of Athens and a
contemporary of Herodotus, claimed them as originally "Pelasgians",
a rubric applied by Greek authors to an ethnically distinct group of
ancestors, but one which is impossible to identify plausibly with any
known civilization or settlement (cf. Hdt. 1. 57-8 on Pelasgians; DH
1.28 for Hellanikos on Etruscans). Most modern scholars believe that
Herodotus is right about the Etruscans, or rather that the Etruscans
as we know them represent a combination of local (i.e. Villanovan)
and Asian elements, with a strong infusion of Greek culture for good
measure. The difference between the Etruscans and what we find in the
rest of Italy at this time is too great for the Etruscans to be
purely a native phenomenon. The linguistic evidence also favors the
immigration hypothesis. A 6th century BC inscription from Lemnos
provides the closest known linguistic parallel to Etruscan. Lemnos is
not Lydia but it is in the eastern Mediterranean, and some Lydians
could have settled there. The alternative to supposing that this
inscription is a trace of the same people who formed the backbone of
Etruscan civilization is to suppose that these are independent
survivals of a pre-Indo-European tongue; that seems far-fetched. But
the tendency now is the regard the question as moot; it is more
enlightening to trace the progress and the different stages of
Etruscan culture than to inquire into their origins.
In
the 9th and 8th centuries the Etruscans are still essentially
Villanovans. They live in small villages, in round or rectangular
huts. They practice cremation and buried their ashes in urnfields.
Already in the 9th century they begin to supply grave goods with the
burials. At first these show no great differentiation in terms of
wealth, age, and gender. The bronzes (especially the fibulae, ancient
safety pins or brooches) show central European influence but also
contacts with other parts of Italy, especially Sicily, Campania, and
Calabria (the toe). In the first half of the 8th century we begin to
see Greek pottery of the late Geometric and then proto-Corinthian
types in Etruria. A few of these are imports, but most are locally
made in imitation of Greek styles.
Greeks
The
western Greeks are important for us as students of Roman History
because they are the vehicle for the transmission of Greek culture
and technology to Italy. Among the debts of the Italians to the Greek
traders and colonists of the second half of the 8th and the 7th
centuries are letters (literacy), viticulture, olives, stone
fortification walls, and the hoplite phalanx.
As
noted before, contact between Greeks and Italians had ceased during
the Greek Dark Ages (c. 1050-800 BC). The colonies of the 8th century
BC, therefore, are not continuations but something new. In the course
of the 8th century, the "Age of Colonization" in Greece,
Greeks virtually took over western Sicily and much of the south of
Italy. Among the most vigorous of the colonizing states were Chalkis
and Eretria, whose foundations included Pithekoussai (on Ischia),
Cymae (an offshoot of Pithekoussai), Zankle, Mylae, Rhegion, Naxos,
Leontinoi, and Katane. The earliest of these, Pithekoussai (founded
around 750 BC) was also the furthest north. It was strategically
positioned to export the mineral resources of Etruria (copper, iron,
tin), and to sell Greek imports (bronzes and fine ware pottery).
The
purpose of some of the other colonies can also be deduced from their
locations. Zankle (Messana) and Rhegion were to guard the passage
through the straights of Messina. Massilia (Marseilles), a later
foundation (c. 600 BC) by the Phokaians (whose home is on the coast
of Asia Minor north of Smyrna), was positioned to trade with Gaul,
especially for tin. Its existence accounts for such discoveries as
this bronze crater, of Laconian manufacture and dating to the sixth
century BC, found at Vix.
Etruscans,
Part 2
To
a lesser extent in the late 8th and 7th centuries the Etruscans were
influenced by the Phoenicians, whose presence in the region centered
around their colony at Carthage in North Africa, and settlements in
western Sicily and on Sardinia. These gold bracelets from Praeneste,
dated to around 675 BC, show Phoenician themes.
Now
too, in the late 8th century, we begin to see greater social
stratification in the grave goods. One example is the type of the
warrior grave, represented by the helmet-topped urn. There are other
indications, too, of the effectiveness of the Etruscans in warfare.
The absence of any Greek or Phoenician colonies in Etruria ought to
mean that the Etruscans were strong enough to prevent them from being
founded. Oddly, there is no evidence for circuit walls around
Etruscan cities earlier than the 6th century BC (at Roselle; the
walls of Veii date to the 5th century). This could mean that Etruscan
naval power was sufficient to keep the cities safe. Certainly ancient
authors preserved a memory of Etruscan naval power (see Ephoros apud
Strabo, 6.2.2; Homeric Hymn to Dionysus, 6-8; DH 1. 25; Pliny, NH
7.56.209).
Finally,
in this period the first signs of synoikism, the consolidation of
villages into urban centers, appear in Etruria. The huts are being
replaced (later 7th) by rectangular houses, with stone foundations
and walls of unfired brick. Urbanization is a major component of the
Etruscan legacy to Rome. In the Etruscan colony at Capua can be seen
one of the the first true examples of the grid system, with the cardo
(running N-S) and decumanus (E-W). Here we will leave the events of
Etruscan history in the late 7th and 6th centuries for next time, as
they become ever more closely entwined with Roman history as it
crosses the line from fiction to fact.
Early
Rome
It
is customary to begin any discussion of Early Rome with a discussion
of the literary tradition. Modern writers on early Rome fall into two
groups, broadly speaking: those who try to interpret the
archaeological record in such a way as to be able to claim that there
are kernels of truth in the annalistic tradition (Ogilvie is among
these), and those who regard that attempt as fruitless and confine
themselves to remarking on the archaeological record, believing in
essence that nothing of what the classical writers have to say about
pre-Republican Rome is true (e.g. Holloway). This whole controversy
is well worth exploring, but in fact it does not even become a
serious issue until we come to the tradition about, and the remains
of, the late sixth century BC. TodayÕs remarks will take us only up
to the 7th.
Whether
we call the inhabitants of Rome and the Alban hills in the early Iron
Age southern Villanovans, or rather follow Holloway and insist that
Latial culture develops directly from proto-Villanovan (that, in
other words, there is no true Villanovan in Latium) is mainly a
matter of terminology. These early Romans lived in circular huts, as
the discovery of these post-holes from the Palatine show. The form of
the huts is known from the hut-urns in which they buried their
cremated dead, and these hut-shaped urns are a distinctive feature of
this proto-Latial culture. The hut urns were found primarily in a
cemetery in the Forum Romanum excavated by the great Italian
archaeologist Boni in the early part of this century. The grave goods
are characterized by miniaturization, as seen in this sketch of Forum
Grave Y; the smaller vessels contained foodstuffs.
From
approximately the same time period, nearby on the Esquiline hill,
there are a number of inhumations a fossa (in trenches, as opposed to
the cremation burials a pozzo, in pits). The Corinthian olpe, dating
to around 720 BC and inscribed with the name of its Greek owner,
Ktektos, comes from one of these graves. The key question for the
history of early Rome is whether the people who bury cremated remains
in urns in the Forum Romanum are the same people as, or ethnically
distinct from, the ones who practiced inhumation in graves on the
Esquiline.
One
approach to this question, still popular today, is to say that the
cremators were Latins, the inhumers Sabines. This argument points out
that there are parallels for the inhumations to the south of Latium,
and that later on in the Forum cemetery we get a combination of
inhumation and cremation burials. This seems to indicate that two
different peoples combined with one another, and recalls what the
Romans believed happened in the time of Romulus, with the rape of the
Sabine women and the subsequent commingling of the two peoples. A
form of this approach appears in Ogilvie.
A
refinement of this hypothesis is given by Torelli (CAH 7.2). He
suggests that after the two types begin to appear together, only
"princes" are being buried in the cremation graves, because
the cremation graves contain primarily the remains of adult males,
with weapons. He also thinks that the hut-urn marks the deceased as a
head of household, a paterfamilias. The burial practice would thus
reflect an increasing degree of social stratification, consistent
with the tradition of the kings. TorelliÕs softer approach is
reasonable. Increasing social stratification appears at the same time
in neighboring Etruria (though not, apparently, in the houses which
continue to be of uniform type into the 6th century), no doubt a
reflection of Greek influence. But the whole idea that we have two
distinct cultures combining in 8th century Rome has been called into
question. The differences between the pottery and other objects in
the graves on the Esquiline and in the Forum are subtle at best. It
may be that they represent different time periods as opposed to
different ethnic groups (see revised chronology). Finally, the
presence of a few early cremations in hut urns on the Esquiline badly
upsets the neatness of the scheme. It stems from the desire to rescue
some shred of truth from the annalistic tradition on early Rome; but
that desire, as we will see more fully next time, is hardly worthy of
being fulfilled.
Sources
R.
Ross Holloway, The Archaeology of Early Rome and Latium (Routledge,
1994).
E.
MacNamara, The Etruscans (British Museum, 1991).
M.
Pallotino, A History of Earliest Italy (U. of Michigan Press, 1991).
D.
Strong, The Early Etruscans (Putnam's 1968).
Source:
Villanovans and Etruscans
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