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

Description

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.

GRAEME BARKER is Disney Professor of Archaeology Emeritus and a Senior Research Fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge, and a Professorial Fellow at St John's College. He has investigated the archaeology of human landscapes in semi-arid (Italy), arid (Libya, Jordan, Iraq) and tropical rainforest (Borneo) environments. He has published over twenty-five books and edited books and over 350 research papers. Holding Fellowships of the British Academy, Royal Geographical Society and Society of Antiquaries, he was awarded the Dan David Prize for the Past Dimension in 2005 and appointed CBE in the Queen's New Year Honours 2014 for services to archaeology. TOM RASMUSSEN is an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Arts, Languages, and Cultures at the University of Manchester. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the author of Bucchero Pottery from Southern Etruria (1979), co-editor (with Nigel Spivey) of Looking at Greek Vases (1991, Greek translation 1997) and co-author (with Graeme Barker) of The Etruscans (1998, Italian edition Gli Etruschi 2006).