In the Footsteps of the Etruscans
Changing Landscapes around Tuscania from Prehistory to Modernity

Explores the 7500-year history of the area around Tuscania near Rome using the results of an extended archaeological investigation.

Graeme Barker (Author), Tom Rasmussen (Author)

9781009230025, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 October 2023

404 pages, 130 b/w illus. 2 colour illus. 24 maps 48 tables
28.9 x 22.4 x 2.7 cm, 1.24 kg

'[A] true benchmark in terms of methodological rigor and intellectual honesty.' Elena Pontelli, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

In the Footsteps of the Etruscans describes the archaeology of the countryside within a ten km radius of the small town of Tuscania near Rome, throwing light on the unrecorded lives of the generations of farmers and shepherds who have lived there. What was the character of prehistoric settlement prior to Etruscan urbanization? How did urbanization shape the lives of the 'ordinary Etruscans' working the land, hardly ever addressed in Etruscan archaeology? What was the impact on these people of being absorbed into the expanding Roman empire and its globalised economic structures? How did the empire's collapse and the subsequent emergence of the nucleated medieval village affect Tuscania's rural population? The project's 7500-year 'archaeological history', from the first farmers to those grappling with globalisation today, contributes eloquently to our understanding of how Mediterranean peoples have constantly shaped their landscape, and been shaped by it.

1. The Tuscania archaeological survey: rationale, aims and objectives Graeme Barker and Tom Rasmussen
2. Methodologies Graeme Barker, Tom Rasmussen, Alison MacDonald, Annie Grant and Nicoletta Vullo
3. The natural landscape and its evolution Antony Brown, Claire Ellis and Edward Rhodes
4. Prehistoric landscapes Graeme Barker, Francesco di Gennaro and Tim Reynolds
5. Etruscan urbanization c.700–300 BC Tom Rasmussen, Marco Rendeli and Graeme Barker
6. 'Romanization': the Roman republican period, c.300–30 BC Alison MacDonald, Jeremy Taylor and Annie Grant
7. The roman imperial and late antique periods, 30 BC– c.AD 700 Alison MacDonald and Annie Grant
8. Incastellamento and its aftermath: Medieval and post-medieval landscapes c.AD 700 to the present Helen Patterson, Graeme Barker and Tom Rasmussen
9. A Mediterranean landscape from prehistory to modernity Graeme Barker, Tom Rasmussen and Nicoletta Vullo
Appendix one: the Tuscania Survey Etruscan coarse wares Tom Rasmussen and Marco Rendeli
Appendix two: the Tuscania Survey Gazetteer Tom Rasmussen, Graeme Barker, Alison MacDonald, Annie Grant and Nicoletta Vullo
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Classical Greek & Roman archaeology [HDDK]