The archeologists of Populonia saw in the tombs the structure of a society that looked remarkably like our own. I was curious as to what the relatives felt as they laid their husbands or fathers into the earth. That human dimension is almost impossible to recover. We can project, and speculate. We cannot know.
Human nature is at least as changeable as social systems.
Several times I heard American tourists assert that a visit to a place like Tuscany brings history alive. And driving toward the ancient mining centers of Volterra and Massa Marritima, both perched on a dusty plateaus high above pastoral valleys, you can grasp in geography the continuities of ancient power, the dominance cities had over the surrounding countryside. But you cannot see the sea crash against the walls of Classical Massa Marritima, since it has retreated 19 kilometers to the west since the days of the Romans, and you cannot grasp the magnificence of medieval Volterra, since today's town is but a third of the size of the city in its heyday. Even less can you recover the relief the harried medieval pilgrim felt upon coming within sight of Volterra, after the malarial swamps of the Val di Cornia, or the thieves along the Via Aurelia. You can imagine, and speculate.