Veii

Description

Reputed to be the richest city of Etruria, Veii was one of the most important cities in the ancient Mediterranean world. It was located ten miles northwest of Rome, and the two cities were alternately allied and at war for over three hundred years until Veii fell to Rome in 396 BCE, although the city continued to be inhabited until the Middle Ages. Rediscovered in the seventeenth century, Veii has undergone the longest continuous excavation of any of the Etruscan cities.

The most complete volume on the city in English, Veii presents the research and interpretations of multiple generations of Etruscan scholars who are at the forefront of the discipline. Their essays are grouped into four parts. The first provides a general overview of archaeological excavation at Veii and discusses the different types of methodologies employed over the years. The second part narrates the history of Etruscan occupation of the city and its role in the greater Mediterranean world. The third section examines the surviving material culture of Veii, including pottery, painting, sculpture, metalworking, and architectural terracottas. Finally, the legacy of Veii is discussed, and a chronology of the site is presented. This pioneering research offers all students of the ancient Mediterranean a new understanding of the development of Veii and its territory from the late Bronze Age to the Roman conquest, as well as of the interactions of Veii with nearby sites and territories in central Tyrrhenian Italy.

Jacopo Tabolli holds a postdoctoral fellowship at Trinity College Dublin. Founder of the Museo Civico Archeologico-Virtuale di Narce (MAVNA) in Mazzano Romano and editor of Officina Etruscologia, he has excavated at Veii and Narce for several years.

List of Illustrations

Preface (Jacopo Tabolli)

List of Abbreviations

Album of Maps

Introduction: Exploring Veii (Gilda Bartoloni, Jacopo Tabolli, and Orlando Cerasuolo)

Part I. Archaeology of the City

1. Veii, the Stratigraphy of an Ancient Town: A Case Study of Piazza d’Armi (Valeria Acconcia)

2. City and Landscape: The Survey (Roberta Cascino)

3. The Emptyscapes Project: Filling Gaps in Space and Time at Veii (Stefano Campana)

Part II. History of the City

4. Toward Veii: The Bronze Age (Francesco di Gennaro)

5. Veii and Its Territory from the Final Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age (Folco Biagi)

6. Veii in the Eighth Century BCE (Alessandra Piergrossi)

7. Veii and the Others: Closest Neighbors (Jacopo Tabolli)

8. The Orientalizing Period (Orlando Cerasuolo)

9. Veii during the Seventh and Sixth Centuries BCE: Political Structure and Organization of the Territory (Gilda Bartoloni and Anna De Santis)

10. Veii and the Greeks (Francesca Boitani)

11. Veii and the Near East (Annette Rathje)

12. Veii during the Archaic Period (Sixth and Fifth Centuries BCE) (Gilda Bartoloni and Laura M. Michetti)

13. The Sanctuary of Portonaccio (Giovanni Colonna)

14. Cult Evidence from the Urban Sanctuaries at Veii (Ingrid Edlund-Berry)

15. The Epigraphical Evidence (Daniele Federico Maras)

16. The Defensive System (Luca Pulcinelli)

Part III. Material Culture of the City

17. Early Iron Age Pottery (Sara Neri)

18. Orientalizing Pottery (Silvia ten Kortenaar)

19. Archaic, Late Archaic, and Classical Pottery (Maria Teresa Di Sarcina and Federica Pitzalis)

20. Metal Production (Matteo Milletti and Luciana Drago)

21. Wall Painting (Francesca Boitani)

22. Stone Sculpture (Iefke van Kampen)

23. Kilns and Evidence of Ceramic Production (Barbara Belelli Marchesini)

24. Architectural Terracottas (Nancy A. Winter and Claudia Carlucci)

Part IV. Legacy of the City

25. Furius Camillus and Veii (Christopher Smith)

Conclusions (Jacopo Tabolli and Orlando Cerasuolo)

Appendix. A Chronology of Veii

Index of Names

An important addition to the corpus of Etruscan studies. Not only does it bring considerable research to English readers that would otherwise be unavailable, but its chapters include insightful new thoughts on their relative topics by a stellar cast of authors.
This volume will be especially useful to advanced students and scholars of Etruscan history and archaeology and of Italian urbanism. The information is comprehensive, the bibliographies current, and the methodology consistent with the current direction of Etruscan studies…It will likely be a first point of reference for those studying the Etruscan city.
[Veii] manages to give a sense of the site as a whole, something that is otherwise difficult to comprehend at times in light of numerous projects and individual areas of scholarship that tend to publish findings separately…the volume is a good representation of the current state of Etruscan studies… Assembling a set of evidence and arguments such as these in a format that can be used by English-speaking undergraduates is an important effort to secure the discipline’s international future.
This volume dismantles any lingering Rome-centric appraisals of this preeminent Etruscan city to evaluate the unique status and cultural identity of Veii on its own terms, as one of the most important cities in the ancient Mediterranean…There is much to be appreciated in this volume by scholars and students alike, as it provides a well-assembled, comprehensive and foundational look at this city…This volume will be the reference point for Veii studies for many years to come.
A book on Veii is long overdue, and this one will make a great deal of valuable information (and references for obtaining more) available to a wide audience. It is written by the current, undisputed experts on Veii, very often the excavators themselves, so the data could not be fresher or more pertinent. The chapters on artifacts and production, construction, and settlement dynamics are excellent and unlike any that most general readers will have read. There is no comparable book on this subject.
An outstanding book that presents impressive results from a major project of intensive study and excavation of this very important site, one of the largest in Etruria and—in terms of material culture—one of the most important cities of the Mediterranean of its time.

Additional information

Dimensions	1 × 9 × 11 in