Description: This is the first full account of the Etruscan peoples and the society that fluorished in Italy before the rise of the Roman Republic.

This book incorporates the findings of recent extensive archaeological investigations by Italian, Swedish and British archaeologists. This research, combined with a clearer understanding of Etruscan inscriptions, has now made possible this full and vibrant overview of the Etruscans, their economy, society and culture.

The city states of the Etruscan civilization were based in west-central Italy, in an area roughly covering modern Tuscany. Sophisticated and innovative, the Etruscans dominated the region from around the eighth century to the fourth century BC, when they were conquered and absorbed by the emergent state of Rome. Shortly thereafter their language and the meaning of the characters in which it was expressed were lost, and were not properly understood until the second half of the twentieth century. In the intervening period the nature of Etruscan society could only be guessed from the tantalizingly vivid pictures on the pottery that survived them.

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