Review of: Barker, Graeme and Tom Rasmussen. 2023. In the Footsteps of the Etruscans: Changing Landscapes around Tuscania from Prehistory to Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 978-1-009-23002-5 hardback £100.

Witcher, Robert

Abstract

The small town of Tuscania lies approximately 80 km north-west of Rome and 25 km inland from the Tyrrhenian coast. Emerging as a central place during the late Bronze Age, the site has remained a focal point for the surrounding territory through to the present day. The volume under review presents the results of a field survey of Tuscania’s hinterland. Part of an innovative ‘New Wave’ of Mediterranean surveys (Bintliff 1994: 7), the fieldwork was undertaken between 1986 and 1990. This marked a major methodological advance on earlier projects in the region, fully embracing probabilistic sampling, systematic quantification and off-site archaeology. Several interim articles have outlined the primary findings (e.g. Barker 1988; Rasmussen 1991); the current volume brings the results to full and final publication. Appearing some four decades after the project was originally conceived, In the Footsteps of the Etruscans inevitably arrives in a much-changed research landscape; moreover, as the various chapters have been prepared at different points over the intervening years, there is some unevenness in the degree to which subsequent developments are integrated into the text. Such a long gap between fieldwork and publication is not unknown, however, and the book joins a group of other recently published volumes on landscape projects undertaken in Italy several decades ago (e.g. Small and Small 2022). Among these is the restudy (Patterson et al. 2020) of the pioneering South Etruria survey; the latter, undertaken in the 1950s and 1960s in the region between Tuscania and Rome, serves as a repeated point of reference throughout the current volume.

Citation

Witcher, R. (2025). Review of: Barker, Graeme and Tom Rasmussen. 2023. In the Footsteps of the Etruscans: Changing Landscapes around Tuscania from Prehistory to Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 978-1-009-23002-5 hardback £100. Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal, 8(1), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.16995/traj.23558

• Journal Article Type: Book Review
• Acceptance Date: Apr 29, 2025
• Online Publication Date: May 16, 2025
• Publication Date: May 16, 2025
• Deposit Date: May 27, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: May 28, 2025
• Journal: Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal
• Electronic ISSN: 2515-2289
• Publisher: Open Library of Humanities
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-9
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/traj.23558
• Keywords: Etruscan urbanism; Roman Italy; landscape archaeology; Mediterranean archaeology; regional field survey
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3964208