The Villanovan and Etruscan collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts not only represent an important source of Classical Antiquity in the United States, but also serve as a historical model of how such artifacts were acquired by large American museums from the late-nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries. These collections provide museum visitors, scholars, and students with an indepth view into one of antiquity's most fascinating peoples, the Etruscans and their predecessors. The wide-ranging collections contain artifacts from every aspect of Etruscan life such as utilitarian tools and weapons, objects for personal adornment, votive statuettes, and cinerary urns to house the dead. One statuette, the Detroit Rider, is considered to be among the finest surviving examples of Etruscan small sculpture. The catalogue brings together all of these pieces for the first time with photographs and relevant bibliographic sources on their cultural and religious functions in antiquity.

The Villanovan and Etruscan collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts not only represent an important source of Classical Antiquity in the United States, but also serve as a historical model of how such artifacts were acquired by large American museums from the late-nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries. These collections provide museum visitors, scholars, and students with an indepth view into one of antiquity's most fascinating peoples, the Etruscans and their predecessors. The wide-ranging collections contain artifacts from every aspect of Etruscan life such as utilitarian tools and weapons, objects for personal adornment, votive statuettes, and cinerary urns to house the dead. One statuette, the Detroit Rider, is considered to be among the finest surviving examples of Etruscan small sculpture. The catalogue brings together all of these pieces for the first time with photographs and relevant bibliographic sources on their cultural and religious functions in antiquity.

This new collection presents a rich selection of innovative scholarship on the Etruscans, a vibrant, independent people whose distinct civilization flourished in central Italy for most of the first millennium BCE and whose artistic, social and cultural traditions helped shape the ancient Mediterranean, European, and Classical worlds. Includes contributions from an international cast of both established and emerging scholars Offers fresh perspectives on Etruscan art and culture, including analysis of the most up-to-date research and archaeological discoveries Reassesses and evaluates traditional topics like architecture, wall painting, ceramics, and sculpture as well as new ones such as textile archaeology, while also addressing themes that have yet to be thoroughly investigated in the scholarship, such as the obesus etruscus, the function and use of jewelry at different life stages, Greek and Roman topoi about the Etruscans, the Etruscans’ reception of ponderation, and more Counters the claim that the Etruscans were culturally inferior to the Greeks and Romans by emphasizing fields where the Etruscans were either technological or artistic pioneers and by reframing similarities in style and iconography as examples of Etruscan agency and reception rather than as a deficit of local creativity

This volume--the first serious book in English on Etruscan art--was hailed for its broad scope, thorough knowledge, and clear exposition when it was published almost twenty years ago. Now brought back into print with an updated bibliography and bibliographical essay by Francesca R. Serra Ridgway, it remains an essential introduction for anyone interested in ancient art, history, and civilization. Otto Brendel's exploration of the art, culture, and society of Etruria takes us through its four main periods of creativity: the Villanovan and Orientalizing era, the Archaic era, the Classical era, and the Hellenistic era, when Etruscan art became extinct. According to Brendel, the Etruscans were deeply influenced by Greek styles but used Greek forms and concepts to further their own purposes. Etruscan art is a private art, aristocratic and luxurious but centered in the life of the family and a continuing life in the tomb. Many of the art forms and objects discussed--ceramics, metalware, jewelry, sculpture, and wall painting--are known to us through the discovery of tombs. Most of these objects had a clearly defined function but were also designed, with a high degree of quality and craftsmanship, to be decorative. The beautiful art of the Etruscans, illustrated and explained in this book, sheds much light on a people about whom we know little.

Annual bulletin of classical archaeology.

This study in environmental anthropology explores the physical geography and sailing conditions of ancient Greece and the Mediterranean region, the seafaring practices of the ancient Greeks, and, more generally, the interrelationships between human activity, technology and the physical environment.