Villanovan and Etruscan Mining and Metallurgy

Etruria is rightly considered one of the main metallurgical centers of the ancient world. Its fame is due both to the rich metal ore deposits throughout the Tyrrhenian region and to the abundance of metallic objects that were recovered from burial grounds, from hoards and from settlements, from the end of the Bronze Age onward. Etruscan craftsmanship enjoyed a high reputation in antiquity. Despite this, research on aspects of production, such as the exploitation of mines, ore smelting and manufacturing of metal items was largely neglected until recently by concerted archaeological research. The paper shows that both the ancient sources and the archaeological data agree in stressing how metallurgy constituted one of the main economical and cultural engines of the Etruscan centers ever since the proto-historic period. It analyzes the new data coming from old and recent research; a special interest is dedicated to the analytical data coming from the study of archaeological materials dating from the Villanovan period to the Etruscan times: in fact the contribution of archaeometallurgy is essential to understand the economic and socio-cultural dynamics of a people so deeply bound to the exploitation and processing of metals, as the Etruscans certainly were.