Feeding the Etruscans - An Archaeobotanical study of Etruscan Agriculture

The 1st millennium BCE marks the era in which the central and western Mediterranean was increasingly integrated into the seaborne interaction sphere that was established in the east already during the Bronze Age. Commodities, technologies, people, and ideas moved throughout the region and enabled sociopolitical realities and economic opportunities that encouraged the rise of societies organised in the earliest cities of Europe. A major participant in these dynamics was the Etruscans of central Italy. Here centralisation processes at the beginning of the millennium gave birth to urban centres that ultimately developed into city states from which not only vast hinterlands, but also maritime exchange were controlled. Towards the later centuries of the millennium, they became gradually defeated in ongoing conflicts with their competitor Rome and were finally absorbed into the expanding Republic. Agricultural reorganisation is commonly accepted as both a preconditions and economic force behind these processes, as both a growing population, an emerging non-producing sector, and possibly exchange markets needed to be supplied – or in other words, fewer farmers needed to produce an increasing surplus. How exactly this step from household-centred to community-centred production was achieved has, though, so far only been inadequately approached within Etruscan studies. This study offers the first high-resolution archaeobotanical study of a principal Etruscan city, namely Tarquinia, and aims to explore the pressing questions related to developments of crop husbandry. Macrobotanical sampling had been conducted sporadically since the 1980s but has intensified substantially in the last 3 years under the management of the Cambridge partnered Science@Tarqunia project, producing an assemblage of over 30.000 vegetal remains. Well-sequenced samples, however, cover principally only the 10th to 7th century BCE, i.e. the period of nucleation and urbanisation, while later horizons are significantly affected by residuality. The central part of the study forms the reconstruction of cereal husbandry, both because of their high visibility in the charred record, but also, and more importantly, as a result of their crucial importance to past subsistence, which makes them an ideal candidate to observe trajectories of a primary food resource. The study identifies high continuity in crop selection and husbandry regimes within the period in question, which implies that a sustainable system already was in place before the formation of the city. Evidence from grains show a principal reliance on barley, emmer, and fava bean, while all other grain crops can merely be regarded as minor supplements. Evidence from the weedy flora related to cereals signify an exclusive focus on local wetlands in which low-input winter cropping was practised. This evidence highlights a system in which key environments were continuously targeted that provided productive and easy to work substrates that enabled the implementation of extensive farming, while concentrating bulk labour on a few, but intensive, seasons. While such a system likely required the mobilisation of additional work forces during peak seasons, it may at the same time have encouraged the process of diversifying and intensifying arboriculture and extricating people from farming during off-season. The latter allowed the pursuit of alternative ventures, such as exchange, crafts, and arts – which were core specialisations of the urban centres in Etruria where such occupational differentiation became gradually visible during the 7th century BCE. As of yet the results from Tarquinia stand isolated within the Etruscan context and offer a local rather than structural model for early Etruscan crop husbandry - but they form an important first baseline that has the power to formulate relevant and focused questions in a future, when hopefully more data become available.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Schmidt, Ann Frijda

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Stoddart, Simon

• Archaeobotany
• Etruscans
• Central Italy
• Archaeology
• Agriculture
• Crop husbandry
• Ecology

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/227a25cb-77e4-4024-924e-2307424540bd/download
• http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.124513

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/394644