Editing Etruscan civilization (section)

====Archeological evidence and modern etruscology====
{{Main|Proto-Villanovan culture|Villanovan culture}}
[[File:Bronze chariot inlaid with ivory MET DP137936.jpg|thumb|[[Monteleone chariot]], one of the world's great archaeological finds, 2nd quarter of the 6th century BC]]
[[File:Putto graziani, con dedica al dio tec sans, da sanguineto al trasimeno, 200-150 ac ca..JPG|thumb|upright=.7|Putto Graziani, hollow-cast bronze on which is engraved the Etruscan inscription "To the god Tec Sans as a gift" (Tec Sans was the protectress of childhood), 3-2nd century BC, [[Rome]], [[Vatican Museums|Museo Gregoriano Etrusco]]]]
[[File:Museo guarnacci, urna degli sposi, I sec. ac. 01.JPG|thumb|right|Sarcophagus of the Spouses, about 1st century BC, [[Volterra]], Museo etrusco Guarnacci]]

The question of the Etruscans' origins has long been a subject of interest and debate among historians. In modern times, all the evidence gathered by prehistoric and protohistoric archaeologists, anthropologists, and etruscologists points to an autochthonous origin of the Etruscans.<ref name=Barker/><ref name=DeGrummond2014/><ref name=Turfa2017/><ref name=Shipley2017/><ref name=Benelli2021/> There is no archaeological or linguistic evidence of a migration of the Lydians or Pelasgians into Etruria.<ref name=Wallace2010>{{cite book |last1=Wallace |first1= Rex E.|author-link1=Rex E. Wallace |year=2010 |chapter=Italy, Languages of |editor1-last=Gagarin |editor1-first=Michael |title=The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome |language=English |location=Oxford, UK |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=97–102 |doi=10.1093/acref/9780195170726.001.0001 |isbn=9780195170726|quote=Etruscan origins lie in the distant past. Despite the claim by Herodotus, who wrote that Etruscans migrated to Italy from Lydia in the eastern Mediterranean, there is no material or linguistic evidence to support this. Etruscan material culture developed in an unbroken chain from Bronze Age antecedents. As for linguistic relationships, Lydian is an Indo-European language. Lemnian, which is attested by a few inscriptions discovered near Kamania on the island of Lemnos, was a dialect of Etruscan introduced to the island by commercial adventurers. Linguistic similarities connecting Etruscan with Raetic, a language spoken in the sub-Alpine regions of northeastern Italy, further militate against the idea of eastern origins. |mode= }}</ref><ref name=Turfa2017/><ref name=DeGrummond2014/><ref name=Shipley2017/><ref name=Benelli2021/> Modern [[etruscology|etruscologists]] and archeologists, such as [[Massimo Pallottino]] (1947), have shown that early historians' assumptions and assertions on the subject were groundless.<ref name=Pallottino1947>{{cite book |last1=Pallottino |first1=Massimo |author-link1=Massimo Pallottino |title=L'origine degli Etruschi |language=it |location= Rome|publisher= Tumminelli |date=1947 }}</ref> In 2000, the etruscologist [[Dominique Briquel]] explained in detail why he believes that ancient Greek narratives on Etruscan origins should not even count as historical documents.<ref name=Briquel2000>{{cite book |last1=Briquel |first1=Dominique |author-link1=Dominique Briquel |year=2000 |chapter=Le origini degli Etruschi: una questione dibattuta sin dall’antichità |editor1-last=Torelli |editor1-first=Mario |editor1-link=Mario Torelli|title= Gli Etruschi|language= it|location=Milan |publisher= Bompiani|pages=43–51 }}</ref> He argues that the ancient story of the Etruscans' 'Lydian origins' was a deliberate, politically motivated fabrication, and that ancient Greeks inferred a connection between the Tyrrhenians and the Pelasgians solely on the basis of certain Greek and local traditions and because there had been trade between the Etruscans and Greeks.<ref name=Hornblower2014>{{cite book |editor1-last=Hornblower |editor1-first=Simon |editor2-last=Spawforth |editor2-first=Antony |editor3-last= Eidinow |editor3-first=Esther |title=The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=0awiBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA292|series=Oxford Companions |language=en |edition=2 |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=2014 |pages=291–292 |isbn=9780191016752 |quote=Briquel's convincing demonstration that the famous story of an exodus, led by Tyrrhenus from Lydia to Italy, was a deliberate political fabrication created in the Hellenized milieu of the court at Sardis in the early 6th cent. BCE. }}</ref><ref name=Briquel2013>{{cite book |last1=Briquel |first1=Dominique |year=2013 |chapter=Etruscan Origins and the Ancient Authors |editor1-last=Turfa |editor1-first= Jean|title= The Etruscan World |language=en |location=London and New York |publisher=Routledge Taylor & Francis Group |pages= 36–56|isbn=978-0-415-67308-2 }}</ref> He noted that, even if these stories include historical facts suggesting contact, such contact is more plausibly traceable to cultural exchange than to migration.<ref name=Briquel1990>{{cite journal |last1=Briquel |first1=Dominique |author-link1=Dominique Briquel |year=1990 |title=Le problème des origines étrusques |journal= Lalies |series=Sessions de linguistique et de littérature |language=fr |location=Paris|publisher= Presses de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure|publication-date=1992 |pages=7–35 }}</ref>

Several archaeologists specializing in [[Prehistory]] and [[Protohistory]] who have analyzed Bronze Age and Iron Age remains that were excavated in the territory of historical Etruria have pointed out that no evidence has been found, related either to [[material culture]] or to [[social practices]], to support a migration theory.<ref name=Bartoloni2014>{{cite book |last1=Bartoloni |first1=Gilda |year=2014 |chapter=Gli artigiani metallurghi e il processo formativo nelle "Origini" degli Etruschi |title=" Origines " : percorsi di ricerca sulle identità etniche nell'Italia antica |series=Mélanges de l'École française de Rome: Antiquité|language=it|volume=126-2 |location=Rome |publisher= École française de Rome|publication-date=2014 |isbn=978-2-7283-1138-5}}</ref> The most marked and radical change that has been archaeologically attested in the area is the adoption, starting in about the 12th century BC, of the funeral rite of incineration in terracotta urns, a Continental European practice derived from the [[Urnfield culture]]; nothing about it suggests an ethnic contribution from [[Asia Minor]] or the [[Near East]].<ref name=Bartoloni2014/>

A 2012 survey of the previous 30 years' archaeological findings based on excavations of the major Etruscan cities showed a continuity of culture from the last phase of the Bronze Age (13th–11th century BC) to the Iron Age (10th–9th century BC). This is evidence that the Etruscan civilization, which emerged around 900 BC, was built by people whose ancestors had inhabited that region for at least the previous 200 years.<ref name=Bagnasco2012>{{cite book |last1=Bagnasco Gianni |first1=Giovanna |chapter=Origine degli Etruschi |editor1-last=Bartoloni |editor1-first=Gilda |title=Introduzione all'Etruscologia |language=it |location=Milan |publisher=Ulrico Hoepli Editore |pages=47–81 }}</ref> Based on this cultural continuity, there is now a consensus among archeologists that Proto-Etruscan culture developed, during the last phase of the Bronze Age, from the indigenous [[Proto-Villanovan culture]] and that the subsequent Iron Age [[Villanovan culture]] is most accurately described as an early phase of the Etruscan civilization.<ref name=Moser1996/> It is possible that there were contacts between northern-central Italy and the [[Mycenaeans|Mycenaean world]] at the end of the Bronze Age, but contacts between the inhabitants of Etruria and inhabitants of [[Greece]], [[Aegean Sea]] Islands, Asia Minor, and the Near East are attested only centuries later, when Etruscan civilization was already flourishing and Etruscan [[ethnogenesis]] was well established. The first of these attested contacts relate to the [[Magna Grecia|Greek colonies in Southern Italy]] and [[Phoenician–Punic Sardinia|Phoenician-Punic]] colonies in [[Sardinia]], and the consequent [[orientalizing period]].<ref name=Stoddart>{{cite book |last1=Stoddart |first1=Simon |author-link1=Simon Stoddart |year=1989 |chapter=Divergent trajectories in central Italy 1200–500 BC |editor1-last=Champion |editor1-first=Timothy C. |title=Centre and Periphery – Comparative Studies in Archaeology |language=en |location= London and New York|publisher=Taylor & Francis |publication-date= 2005|pages=89–102 }}</ref>

One of the most common mistakes for a long time, even among some scholars of the past, has been to associate the later [[Orientalizing period]] of Etruscan civilization with the question of its origins. Orientalization was an artistic and cultural phenomenon that spread among the Greeks themselves and throughout much of the central and western Mediterranean, not only in Etruria.<ref name=Burkert1992>{{cite book |last1=Burkert|first1= Walter |year=1992 |title=The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age |series=Enciclopedia del Mediterraneo |language=English |location=London |publisher=Thames and Hudson}}</ref> The Etruscan orientalizing period was due, as has been amply demonstrated by archeologists, to contacts with the Greeks and the Eastern Mediterranean and not to mass migrations.<ref name=d'agostino2003>{{cite book |last1=d'Agostino|first1= Bruno |year=2003 |chapter=Teorie sull'origine degli Etruschi |title= Gli Etruschi |series=Enciclopedia del Mediterraneo |language=Italian |volume=26 |location=Milan |publisher=Jaca Book |pages=10–19}}</ref> The facial features (the profile, almond-shaped eyes, large nose) in the frescoes and sculptures and the depiction of reddish-brown men and light-skinned women, influenced by archaic Greek art, followed the artistic traditions from the Eastern Mediterranean that had spread even among the Greeks themselves, and to a lesser extent also to several other civilizations in the central and western Mediterranean up to the [[Iberian Peninsula]]. Actually, many of the tombs of the Late Orientalizing and Archaic periods, such as the [[Tomb of the Augurs]], the [[Tomb of the Triclinium]] and the [[Tomb of the Leopards]], as well as other tombs from the archaic period in the [[Monterozzi necropolis]] in [[Tarquinia]], were painted by Greek painters or at least foreign artists. These images have, therefore, a very limited value for a realistic representation of the Etruscan population.<ref name=deGrummond2014>{{cite book |last1=de Grummond |first1=Nancy Thomson |year=2014 |chapter=Ethnicity and the Etruscans |title=Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean |language=en |location=Chichester, Uk |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |pages= 413–414 |quote= The facial features, however, are not likely to constitute a true portrait, but rather partake of a formula for representing the male in Etruria in Archaic art. It has been observed that the formula used—with the face in profile, showing almond-shaped eyes, a large nose, and a domed up profile of the top of the head—has its parallels in images from the eastern Mediterranean. But these features may show only artistic conventions and are therefore of limited value for determining ethnicity. }}</ref> It was only from the end of the 4th century BC that evidence of physiognomic portraits began to be found in Etruscan art and Etruscan portraiture became more realistic.<ref name=Bandinelli1984>{{cite book |last1=Bianchi Bandinelli |first1=Ranuccio |author-link1=Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli |year=1984 |chapter=Il problema del ritratto |title=L'arte classica |language=it |location=Roma |publisher= [[Editori Riuniti]]}}</ref>