the Etruscans are the indigenous people of Italy whose civilization flourished between 1000 to 350 BCE they occupy the west central part of the Italian peninsula boarded by the Tiber River to the south the Arno to the north they lived in city-states and had contact with larger Mediterranean peoples so let's take a look at the nomenclature here Etruscan refers to the culture group yuria names the region and Tuscany is the name that the region goes by today which is a term I'm sure you've heard in this conversation we would like you to be able to explain why Etruscan grave Goods are essential to our understanding of their culture describe the evidence of a woman's place in a turian society and list the changes in art after the Roman conquest of each Ariya which is an important part of the story so let's take a look at the map of Italy keep in mind that the area that Italy takes up is about the size and width of California so that's a really good reference for us here is the region known as each area and look at how close Rome is the city of Rome at this time of 1000 BCE is a city-state and it is right adjacent to the region that the Etruscans are in as you can see it's very close there and that's an important part of the story and of course as the Roman Empire grows the first thing they're gonna do is bump over into that region the a turian timeline has several breakdown points as you see here and rather than fussing over the dates we're gonna really focus on the villanova n-- period the archaic period and then what happens when the Romans take over but the Etruscans are not a hundred percent gone the Etruscans were a historic culture and we have limited evidence of their writing these are some examples of inscriptions inside incised into some gold plates there was also an example of an Egyptian mummy bundle that was bandaged with textiles that had Etruscan writing on it so they have a rich cultural record the writing part we don't know so much about but it is their grave goods that tells us such an important part of the story so the Etruscans have a couple of different ways of burying people some Etruscans cremate their dead and then some give them a full-body burial below ground so we're gonna see below ground burials at ground burials that manifest in seven several different ways so this is a schematic showing us a villa Noven period burial so here is this little object called a hot urn we're gonna look at that in detail the cremated remains of the deceased goes inside the hut urn and then the hot urn is put inside this ceramic vase and then it's buried in a pit in the ground with other grave goods and so we will see they will do this small cremated remains inside of a container and the buried in the ground now keep your eye on this one because it has not a ceramic container but a container made from a material called tufa T UFA and it is a volcanic stone that's very easy to carve similar to pumice so it's lightweight and it's strong but it's easy to carve so in this structure it's like a funny mushroom doesn't it they have carved out the interior and they place the hutt urn inside that's what's happening here and here is an excavated example that they've put inside a museum they've added the plexiglass so that you can look and see what's going on and then they're just all over the place they're just laying across aside of of this field here now looking in the background these are 20th century structures that have a locked door and a staircase that leads you down to what would have been this kind of a burial and we'll talk about that in a secondary nature so let's focus in on these villa Noven Hut urns these are ceramic and as you can see from my hand they're not you know they're about the size of a half a loaf of bread the ashes go inside and then this is going to get buried and now you notice that there are interested in the doorway and they're interested in the roofline so you can make an educated guess that this is the equivalent of what their housing units look like and they want to have a little miniature house for the remains of their loved ones now there's no active fire going on here but they put a smoke hole in because if you've got a little house with a little fire you need a smoke hole emphasis here on the doorway and decorated with incised lines this example is important because not only does it still have the remains of the individual who was cremated and put in here but they've got these little bumps on the roofline in early Roman architecture and carrying through all the way to the height of a Roman Empire putting sculptures on the roofline is one of the things that separates Greek temples from Roman temples and it dates all the way back to this 1000 BCE we call these a crateria figures and they and they may look just like little bumps to you but they're actually some type of little creature some little bird-like creature and over time those are going to evolve into full-scale or larger-than-life examples of human sculpture let's take a look at another way that these Hut urns manifested and these were made for soldiers so let's go over here and look at what's happening here is a modern-day rendering of the attire and armor that an Etruscan soldier would have so you can see he's got a metal chest plate he's got a nice shield and sword but then look at his helmet all right must have been crazy uncomfortable but whatever so here is how it would have looked when he wore it this is an actual example of a metal soldier's helmet so what are you gonna do with the soldier when he dies you're gonna cremate his remains and you're gonna put them in an urn that has a cap that looks like his helmet we refer to this as a bi conical or two cones because the bottom shape is conical the tops shape is conical so here's an example in a museum setting you can see here that they replicated the design from the helmet so this is the metal helmet this is the clay model and they replicated that sort of a repoussé a technique and then this reminds us of how this would have been put inside a larger ceramic pot and then lowered into the ground