Etruria, the Most Enduring Network of Cities

Writing about the origins of Rome, Arnaldo Momigliano, in his inimitable style, touched on the heart of a problem still debated around the Early Iron Age in Etruria, also known as Villanovan period: how did Etruscan centres become cities of such a complex type and in such a swift fashion?

Momigliano's scepticism as to our ability to understand the problem is surely shared by some still today and is mainly motivated by the virtual absence of Etruscan written sources. This is a remarkable and certainly frustrating, if not unique, state of affairs: it prevents us from accessing a richness of information that only textual evidence can provide and prevents us from perusing some aspects – the mentalité, the imaginary, above all, the sociopolitical institutions – of a civilisation, the Etruscans, that was as sophisticated as Greece and Rome.