The Freedom of the Etruscans: Etruria Between Hellenization and Orientalization

Abstract

One of the main research questions in Etruscology since the origins of the discipline in the late eighteenth century has concerned the nature and consequences of cultural contact, particularly with the Greek world. Over the course of the twentieth century, acculturation has been the predominant paradigm for explaining cultural change as a consequence of contact whether with the East Mediterranean (Orientalizing), the Greek world (Hellenization) or Rome (Romanization). While the former and latter have been the object of wider debates amongst scholars of cognate disciplines from the latter part of the century, Footnote 1 Hellenization has proven to be challenging to unravel outside English-speaking scholarship Footnote 2 despite earlier calls for a critical understanding of the concept itself. Footnote 3 Classical archaeology’s intellectual genealogy steeped into the paradigm of classicism, on the one hand, and the post-colonial turn promoting the rejection of acculturation paradigms in the broader archaeology of the Mediterranean, Footnote 4 on the other, have produced a widening chasm, between Etruscology and Mediterranean archaeology. This is despite the fundamental advances made, in late twentieth-century Italian Classical archaeology, in understanding the cultural contact between Tyrrhenian Central Italy and the Greek world, in studies of the social context of artistic production and consumption Footnote 5 and in those concerned with iconography and myth inspired by French anthropological approaches to Classical antiquity. Footnote 6 Whether jettisoned Footnote 7 or acknowledged, the Hellenization of Etruria therefore remains an object of debate.

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