The question of early Italy. How did the Etruscans emerge? Is one that has been the special study of doctor Emma Blake at the University of Arizona. And she's become internationally renowned for her studies of the Etruscans and their predecessors going back to the Bronze Age in the early Iron Age in Italy. And trying to figure out using her own special social network theory systems how this all occurred. Let's take a listen to what, Emma seems to be uncovering. Because it's quite remarkable. >> I'm Dr. Emma Blake and I'm an associate professor in the School of Anthropology here at the University of Arizona. And I am an archaeologist. My work focuses on the regional groups who occupied the peninsula of Italy in the period before the Roman takeover of Italy. When the Romans conquered Italy. It was a very impressive feat. But, it was made a lot easier by the fact that the Italian peninsula was entirely fragmented into different regional groups. And these groups couldn't coordinate and build a unified front against the threat of this one city of Rome. And so the Romans were able to go in and pick off these groups one at a time. This question of where these regional groups came from and how they arose has been a very, an ongoing interest to classical historians studying early Italy. And the job of identifying the origins of these groups is not an easy one. These groups had names that had been given to them by the Greek colonists who had come and settled in the Western Mediterranean several centuries earlier. And some of them had their own languages, and they had their own identities. We know of the big successful ones like the Etruscans, the Latins, the Venite are well recorded. But there were other, smaller groups as well that probably weren't even really ethnic groups. They were just tribal groups, and little clans who managed to remain independent up until the time of the Roman conquest. So I've been very interested in this question of where. How did these groups come about? Because if you go back far enough in time. You cannot see them in the archaeological record. The artifacts that people used. The pottery that they made. The houses that they built. Several hundred years before he Roman Conquest. All looked very homogeneous across the entire peninsula. And so, there has been a tendency in the scholarship recently to say that these groups are artificial constructions. That they came about, the Greeks gave these peoples names. And the Romans helped cement their separate identity. Really just in opposition to the threat of the Romans. I'm taking a different tack in my research, which is to say there has to be some core of truth. In the sense there must be more to these groups than just an artificial construction imposed by an outsiders. They must have had a sense of self-identity. So I'm looking for those groups far back in the archaeological record. That is far back in the past, 1,000 years before Rome conquers them and effectively wipes them out. And I'm looking for them just using the materials that they left behind. Because there are no texts in this period that I look for them in, which is the Bronze Age. So to do this, I recorded all these what I'm calling exotica, these foreign objects that have entered Italy, in this critical period of a few hundred years in the late Bronze Age. And I map out their distributions. I was able using social network analysis to reconstruct based on these distributions of these luxury goods regional groupings that you cannot see in any other aspect of the archaeology. But you can see it in the movement of these goods. And so, on the maps I've identified these regional groups, which when placed against the later named ethnic groups at the time of the Roman conquest. Some can be matched up very neatly indeed. So, my argument is that 1,000 years before the Roman conquest. There were already in Italy communities of people who felt that they belonged together, and recognized each other as such. And it's out of those communities in certain regions that come the named ethnic groups that the Romans faced much later. It's a process that is called path dependence. Where you feel a connection to a particular group of people. So you keep interacting with them over and over, and over again. And that intensifies your sense of affiliation and connection and eventually we're talking about an ethnic group. A group that people always are curious about is the Etruscans because their origins remain a great mystery to a lot of scholars. But I think that I can see, at least back in the late Bronze Age. The presence, towards the end of the Bronze Age, 1200 to 1000 BC. The emergence of a group in the region that will become the heartland of the Etruscans. And, it's a, so in the, when I'm detecting it. I would not call it an ethnic group. I'm seeing a network of interaction in place in Southern Italy. That is, doesn't encompass what later will be the entire Etruscan homeland. But I think is the kernel of what will eventually become the Etruscans. So where does that group come from? I think it's indigenous. I think it's locally derived. But it is heavily influenced by groups in the north that had existed in the centuries just prior to that. And there was a very big, powerful group in the recent, in the 1300s in Northern Italy that broke apart quite dramatically around 1200 BCE. And we're not exactly sure why. But it may be environmental reasons, or overpopulation. And that what we're seeing in Aturia in the final Bronze Age is the vestiges of either the Northern populations, or the vestiges of a larger network that had existed before. And breaks apart and remains intact in Aturia. In the territory along the banks of the Po River in Northern Italy there was a group in the Middle Bronze Age. And what's called in Italy the recent Bronze Age. So the middle part of the second millennium BCE. There was a group called the Terramare culture. They didn't call themselves that. That's what we as archaeologists call them. And they were pretty remarkable for their time. They had very organized settlements, quite large settlements for that time in Italy. And they traded extensively, and engaged in a lot of craft production. And they were sort of the economic powerhouse of pretty much all of Italy for several centuries. And beyond simply the core of the Terramare culture. Was what I identify as a sort of a halo of groups. That were participating in on the margins of this very powerful economic nexus. And my claim is I can see in those early centuries that Atria. Some groups in Atria are participating in these much larger networks. And then something terrible happens to the Terramare peoples. And we're not, that's a big that's another question that I'm not gonna tackle today. It's probably some sort of environmental collapse brought on by overpopulation. Whatever it was they disintegrate quite dramatically. But the groups that had been on the margins of that economic whirlwind. They actually care, they survive, they withstand this collapse of the center. And seem to become independent at that point and pick up their own, maintain their own local ties that they had established with the Terramare group. But, and carry on independently. And I think it's out of that what had already became a habit of trade and interaction on the margins of that group in a tree. That we see the rise of a unique, distinct group that will become the Etruscans many centuries later. Back in the recent Bronze Age when the Terramare group is flourishing in 1350 to 1200 BCE. You can see on a map when I place the networks. That I was able to construct using my methodology onto a map. You can see that there are many sites packed up in Northern Italy. And then a string of sights, smaller groupings that extend down the peninsula. Actually as far as the heel of the boot. But then also into what I'm talking about now. Particularly interesting, into what is West Central Italy and where later the Etruscans will arise. And it's in that tale, extending into West Central Italy, that I recognize the earliest traces of a group in what will become Atruria. That's in the recent Bronze Age. Skip ahead a couple centuries to what's called the final Bronze Age. The Terramare culture is gone. That network has disappeared because of, as I mentioned, it had been destroyed. And its place, we see the peninsula a whole series of smaller groupings down in Southern Italy, up in the North in the Veneto, in the East Coast of Italy bordering the Adriatic. And then in the West as well in Atruria. We see networks there as well. And it's at that point that we can really look and identify from those regional groupings. The ethnic groups that are visible and will be named and will be actively fighting against Rome in the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE. So the kinds of artifacts that I used in my study include things like Mycenean pottery. This is pottery made by the Mycenean Greeks on the Greek mainland that was shipped in considerable quantities. All around the Eastern Mediterranean and in lesser quantities. But still notable, amounts to as far as Italy, and even a few pieces have gone as far as Spain. But, for our purposes what's interesting is where those Mycenean pots end up in Italy. Because the Greeks who brought them would almost certainly have just left them at the along the coast. So they would have come by boat and deposited them there. So any pieces that reach inland have traveled over land almost certainly by local Italians not by Greeks. Other objects I'm interested in, that I used in my study is amber. Amber can be traced to the Balkans. And would have been brought down through very complex roots of trade all through the bronze age, amber was a prized material. And it turns up on sites in Italy in the form of beads. Many of these beads cannot be dated because they're so plain. But there are certain kind of beads that are very distinct in form that we can say very precisely when they date to. Likewise, bronze as the material. The most desired material for weapons, and tools in the Bronze Age, hence, the name for the age. Circulated, we have brooches, knives, daggers, all kinds of equipment that was being produced probably elsewhere in Europe. And in some cases in Italy but in limited quantities as that was circulating. A prerequisite for a group to form and be cohesive is interaction with each other. That is a necessary component of any group is that you interact with each other. Whether the group is a church group, or an ethnic group, or a national identity. You need to interact with each other to maintain that group's integrity. And so, scholars have increasingly recognized that and realized that there's a lot to be learned from. Sometimes we can get at these groups through the patterns of interaction more effectively than we can identify them in other ways. So for archaeologists, looking at the degree of intensity of interactions between villages for example. Can tell us whether those groups had a common ethnic bond. [MUSIC]
