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Home > New Etruscan Lectureship
New Etruscan LectureshipThe University of Oxford, a leading centre for ancient Mediterranean archaeology, proposes to establish a new University lectureship devoted to the rich and influential material cultures of Etruria and pre-Roman Italy. This will create something new and unique in a UK university, and bring an important west-Mediterranean perspective to the archaeology of the first Millennium B.C. At Oxford and elsewhere in Britain, as well as in North America, Etruscan studies have been regarded as a sideline to Greek and Roman archaeology. To place Etruscan culture at the centre of its own specific field of study, the University of Oxford is seeking private gift support to create a new post, dedicated to researching and teaching this subject in its own right. A trust fund for this purpose was established by a donation made by Dr. Sybille Haynes to the Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford, and a further pledge of £500,000 has been received towards the goal of £2.5 million. It is hoped by the donor and the University that others might also make gifts to the fund to increase its capital over time. From the 9th century B.C. onwards the culture of the expanding Etruscan settlements in Central Italy, which eventually developed into powerful city states, was dominant in creating trade links with Phoenician and Greek sailors and prospectors in search of the rich mineral resources of Etruria and the islands of Elba and Sardinia. These early contacts with the Eastern Mediterranean led to complex and dynamic cultural and economic links of Etruscan aristocratic clans with Greek, Near Eastern and Egyptian interlocutors. Amongst the most seminal cultural acquisitions for Italy (and eventually Europe) was the adaptation of the Euboean Greek alphabet by the Etruscans for their own use and the dissemination of the art of writing to the rest of the surrounding Italic populations, including the Romans. Eventually, variations of this alphabet passed, via Venetic writing, across the Alps. Powerful Etruscan elite families, enriched by ship-borne trade in metals and agricultural products such as oil and wine, created during the 7th century a dominance of Mediterranean sea routes that rivalled that of the Greeks and Carthaginians. The wealth and material culture of Etruscan aristocratic society is represented by extensive remains of huge cemeteries of rock carved or dry stone walled underground tomb chambers, imitating the houses of the living and covered by large tumuli. The rich grave goods deposited in these tombs tell us a great deal about the possessions of the deceased and their social standing, as well as their foreign contacts and the mastery of the local artisans. Beside excellent Etruscan bronze work, such as armour, weapons, household utensils and sets of vessels for banqueting and ceremonial wine drinking, there were imported Eastern luxury objects of carved ivory, precious metal and faience, as well as ever increasing quantities of fine Greek pottery, that seems to have held a special appeal for Etruscan society. Local potters developed their own black pottery, known as bucchero, which was widely exported throughout the Mediterranean, and they proceeded to produce painted pottery based on Greek prototypes. Soon Etruscan jewellers fashioned gold ornaments, rings, earrings, bracelets, necklaces, and fibulae, using the complex techniques of embossing, granulation and filigree that rivalled in beauty anything created in the Near East and Greece. From the 7th century onwards, and particularly during the 6th, 5th and 4th centuries, large scale wall paintings decorated the underground tomb chambers and panels of aristocratic residences and temple interiors, depicting lively scenes of life, afterlife, and mythology, a practice unparalleled in the contemporary Mediterranean world. Beside certain religious practices and instruments of cults, as well as symbols of power, the Etruscans passed to the Romans the use of the purple mantle of their rulers, the fasces (the axe bound with a bundle of rods) and the sella curulis, the ivory seat of the magistrates. An Etruscan dynasty, the Tarquins, ruled Rome for much of the 6th century and transformed it from a collection of villages into a city with large temples with terracotta decoration, sophisticated drainage, roads and arts and crafts inspired by Etruscan and Greek models. Etruscan actors were the first to perform in Rome, and the Latin word for stage players, histrio, and persona go back to Etruscan words. The vast cultural, architectural and engineering contributions Etruria made to Rome (and thus indirectly to Europe) were obscured by the gradual subjugation of the Etruscan cities by the expanding Rome and their absorption by the conqueror with the ensuing loss of the Etruscan language. Greek and Latin became the object of academic study and formed the basis of archaeological research in the Anglo-Saxon world, side-lining Etruscan completely. By creating a new lectureship in Etruscan and Italic archaeology, the University of Oxford aims at a fresh perspective on the classical world in which the historical and cultural development of pre-Roman Italy will take its proper place beside that of the great civilisations of Greece and Rome that have hitherto dominated the field of Classics exclusively. © C@O 2010: Classics at Oxford, Faculty of Classics. 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August 25, 2010
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