Etruscan Identity

Introduction The question, ‘Who were the Etruscans? ’ has long been a knotty problem. From Herodotus to the present day it has been debated (Aigner Foresti, 1974). Putting aside for now romantic notions of ‘mysterious Etruscans’, in recent decades the academic debate has been largely settled. Since Massimo Pallottino (1947), redefined the question, a convincing academic consensus has been built that defines the Etruscans as an autochthonous, non-Indo-European speaking people, with roots that can be traced back to at least the Late Bronze Age in Italy. So much so that the label ‘Villanovan’ given to their predecessors is now, gradually giving way to the pseudoevolutionary title Proto-Etruscan (Ward-Perkins 1959, 11), emphasising the continuity of population in Etruria between the Prehistoric Iron Age and the slightly more historical Etruscan period. The situation is summed up by Sybille Haynes: ‘The Early Iron Age civilization of the villages from which the later Etruscan communities developed in an unbroken sequence is known as the Villanovan . ’ (Haynes 2000, 4, my emphasis). Any academic opinion that diverges from this orthodoxy is generally automatically viewed as illconsidered and outside of the mainstream of Etruscology. It therefore came as something of a surprise in early 2007 to read in the world’s media that we are all wrong. The story was scooped by the Turkish Daily News: ‘DNA shows Etruscans come from Anatolia’ (9th February 2007); followed by the New Scientist reporting ‘On the origin of the Etruscan Civilisation’ (14th February 2007); Economist.com ‘The origins of the Etruscans. Cowabunga’ (15 February 2007); Telegraph.co.uk ‘Genes prove Herodotus right about the Etruscans’ (18 February 2007); The New York Times ‘DNA Boosts Herodotus’ Account of Etruscans as Migrants to Italy’ (3 April 2007); and finally Guardian Unlimited ‘The enigma of Italy’s ancient Etruscans is finally unravelled’ (18 June 2007). Clearly the media thought a scientific breakthrough had occurred. This essay investigates the matter and explores the recent contributions of molecular biology to Etruscology. The root of the stories lies in two academic articles: Achilli et al. (2007) ‘Mitochondrial DNA Variation of Modern Tuscans Supports the Near Eastern Origin of Etruscans’ published in The American Journal of Human Genetics, and Pellecchia et al. (2007) ‘The mystery of Etruscan origins: novel clues from Bos taurus mitochondrial DNA’ published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. These two articles are in authoritative and respected scientific journals but they are not widely read by Etruscologists, hence the media stories were surprising. The titles of the articles provided the inspiration for the headlines: a heady mix of ancient mystery and 21st-century science. The articles themselves directly challenge a widely held consensus in Etruscan studies, and what is more, they were both written as the latest episode in a growing body of new scientific studies of Etruscan origins that challenge the consensus. The challenge was first met in late 2006, by Jean MacIntosh Turfa, before the two latest articles appeared, who concluded ‘Certainly, in the light of current expertise on DNA, there is no more reason to believe Herodotus now than there ever was’ (Turfa 2006, 5). We will return to the detailed consideration of the scientific articles, but first of all it is important to examine the current archaeological consensus and consider why the academic world, outside of molecular biology, is so convinced that it has already solved the problems of defining the Etruscans through the study of their origins. Even before studying the consensus, it is useful to ask why we are at all interested in the origins of the Etruscans, apart from natural human curiosity, after all, as David Ridgway observed ‘Not many authors of general books about the Romans feel bound to discuss the alleged Trojan ancestry of their subject’ (1993, 109). The clearest answer to the question comes from ancient words: the words of the Etruscans themselves, and the words of the Greeks and Romans who wrote about them, often much later. It is widely believed that the Etruscans wrote, and so spoke, a non-Indo-European language (see Penney this vol.). This would seem to mark them out as different from all of their neighbours, who did speak Indo-European languages. The frequent rôle of language as an indicator of ethnic identity reinforces the suggestion that the use of the Etruscan language might distinguish a distinct ethnic group. This language difference demands an explanation, and one possible answer is that the Etruscan speakers were migrants to prehistoric Italy from elsewhere, where people used a now lost, precursor of the Etruscan language. This explanation gains support from Herodotus (I, 94): the ‘Father of History’ says the Etruscans came to Italy from Lydia, now in South Western Turkey. He wrote this explanation in the mid-5th century bc, and it was repeated by all but one ancient source. This version of Etruscan ethnogenesis was, as far as can be told, believed in the ancient world and continued to be the accepted consensus up until the mid-twentieth century. The Herodotean consensus was not however unchallenged: several competing explanations emerged. One, first put forward by Nicolas Fréret in ad 1741, suggested an origin in Germanic areas North of the Alps (Stenger 1994: Pallottino 1985, 86). An apparent support for this theory is shared elements of material culture that are found in the Iron Age Urnfield Cultures of circum-Alpine areas that extend as far south as central Italy. These connections certainly exist, for example Gabriele Zipf has recently examined the similarities – and differences – in figurative decoration of artefacts in France and Italy between the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages (Zipf 2004). Another study of Italian metalwork has identified connections, particularly in DNA and Etruscan Identity