“L’Étrurie est à la mode”, French archaeologist Salomon Reinach bluntly stated in 1927. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, Etruria had not only been attracting the attention of archaeologists and specialists of all sorts, but it had also been a fascinating and, in some cases, captivating destination for poets, novelists, painters and sculptors from all over Europe. This volume deals with the impact of the constantly expanding knowledge on the Etruscans and their mysterious civilisation on Italian, French, English, and German literature, arts and culture, with particular regard to the modernist period (1890–1950). The volume brings a distinctive point of view to the subject by approaching it from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective, and by looking at a quite diverse range of topics and artefacts, which includes, but is not limited to, the study of drawings, art works, travel essays, novels, cooking recipes, schoolbooks, photographs, and movies. By exploring a new paradigm to understand ancient cultures, beyond the traditional ideas and models of “reception of the classics”, and by challenging the alleged fracture between the so-called “two cultures” of humanities and natural sciences, Modern Etruscans will be of interest to scholars from various disciplines. Designed as a learning tool for university courses on the interplay between literature and science in the twentieth century, it is suited as recommended reading for students in the humanities.

Now in paperback, a brief introduction to the mysteries of the enigmatic, ancient civilization in the area of modern Italy. The Etruscans were a powerful people, marked by an influential civilization in ancient Italy. But despite their prominence, the Etruscans are often portrayed as mysterious—a strange and unknowable people whose language and culture have largely vanished. Lucy Shipley’s The Etruscans presents a different picture. Shipley writes of a people who traded with Greece and shaped the development of Rome, who inspired Renaissance artists and Romantic firebrands, and whose influence is still felt strongly in the modern world. Covering colonialism and conquest, misogyny and mystique, she weaves Etruscan history with new archaeological evidence to give us a revived picture of the Etruscan people. The book traces trade routes and trains of thought, describing the journey of Etruscan objects from creation to use, loss, rediscovery, and reinvention. From the wrappings of an Egyptian mummy displayed in a fashionable salon to the extra-curricular activities of Bonaparte, from a mass looting craze to a bombed museum in a town marked by massacre, the book is an extraordinary voyage through Etruscan archaeology, which ultimately leads to surprising and intriguing places. In this sharp and groundbreaking book, Shipley gives readers a unique perspective on an enigmatic people, revealing just how much we know about the Etruscans—and just how much still remains undiscovered.

Livy describes the Etruscans as filling the whole of ancient Italy with their power and influence. While Etruscan rule throughout large parts of the Italian peninsula endured for but a few centuries, Etruscan influence was so extensive that in some respects it continues into the present. Outside the Etruscan heartland, Rome itself was perhaps the best preserver of things Etruscan. The fourteen essays comprising this volume explore Etruscan Italy and examine the influence exerted by Etruscan civilization upon the cultures of Italy in Roman and post-Roman times. Represented are contributions from various disciplines which converge to employ multiple methodologies in a comprehensive approach to delineating the enduring themes of Etruscan Italy.

The Etruscans and the History of Dentistry offers a study of the construction and use of gold dental appliances in ancient Etruscan culture, and their place within the framework of a general history of dentistry, with special emphasis on appliances, from Bronze Age Mesopotamia and Egypt to modern Europe and the Americas. Included are many of the ancient literary sources that refer to dentistry - or the lack thereof - in Greece and Rome, as well as the archaeological evidence of ancient dental health. The book challenges many past works in exposing modern scholars’ fallacies about ancient dentistry, while presenting the incontrovertible evidence of the Etruscans’ seemingly modern attitudes to cosmetic dentistry.

The Etruscans can be shown to have made significant, and in some cases perhaps the first, technical advances in the central and northern Mediterranean. To the Etruscan people we can attribute such developments as the tie-beam truss in large wooden structures, surveying and engineering drainage and water tunnels, the development of the foresail for fast long-distance sailing vessels, fine techniques of metal production and other pyrotechnology, post-mortem C-sections in medicine, and more. In art, many technical and iconographic developments, although they certainly happened first in Greece or the Near East, are first seen in extant Etruscan works, preserved in the lavish tombs and goods of Etruscan aristocrats. These include early portraiture, the first full-length painted portrait, the first perspective view of a human figure in monumental art, specialized techniques of bronze-casting, and reduction-fired pottery (the bucchero phenomenon). Etruscan contacts, through trade, treaty and intermarriage, linked their culture with Sardinia, Corsica and Sicily, with the Italic tribes of the peninsula, and with the Near Eastern kingdoms, Greece and the Greek colonial world, Iberia, Gaul and the Punic network of North Africa, and influenced the cultures of northern Europe. In the past fifteen years striking advances have been made in scholarship and research techniques for Etruscan Studies. Archaeological and scientific discoveries have changed our picture of the Etruscans and furnished us with new, specialized information. Thanks to the work of dozens of international scholars, it is now possible to discuss topics of interest that could never before be researched, such as Etruscan mining and metallurgy, textile production, foods and agriculture. In this volume, over 60 experts provide insights into all these aspects of Etruscan culture, and more, with many contributions available in English for the first time to allow the reader access to research that may not otherwise be available to them. Lavishly illustrated, The Etruscan World brings to life the culture and material past of the Etruscans and highlights key points of development in research, making it essential reading for researchers, academics and students of this fascinating civilization.

This well-illustrated volume provides the best collection of Etruscan inscriptions and texts currently in print. A substantial archeological introduction sets language and inscriptions in their historical, geographical, and cultural context. The overview of Etruscan grammar, the glossary, and chapters on mythological figures all incorporate the latest innovative discoveries.

This timely volume embraces and interprets the increasingly broad and deep canon of life narratives by African Americans. The contributors discover and recover neglected lives, texts, and genres, enlarge the wide range of critical methods used by scholars to study these works, and expand the understanding of autobiography to encompass photography, comics, blogs, and other modes of self-expression. This book also examines at length the proliferation of African American autobiography in the twenty-first century, noting the roles of digital genres, remediated lives, celebrity lives, self-help culture, non-Western religious traditions, and the politics of adoption. The life narratives studied range from an eighteenth-century criminal narrative, a 1918 autobiography, and the works of Richard Wright to new media, graphic novels, and a celebrity memoir from Pam Grier."