Though not prolific, our prehistoric material both significantly amplifies our knowledge of the prehistory of the study area and informs on wider debates about settlement trends prior to Etruscan urbanization.Palaeolithic finds were very sparse, but the area was occasionally visited by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in the Early Holocene (9700-6200 BC) even though its volcanic soils were heavily wooded. The first farming communities (Earlier Neolithic, c.5500-4500 BC: 10 sites) consisted of small residential units of one or two households. The Later Neolithic (4500-3500 BC: 15 sites) data fit the regional evidence of increasing complexity and social inequality.Site numbers doubled in the Copper Age (3500-2200 BC: 30 sites) and doubled again in the Earlier Bronze Age (2200-1400 BC: 62 sites) but these societies remained small scale, living as individual households or in small clusters. The same rural structure continued into the Later Bronze Age (1400-950 BC: 53 sites) but above it Tuscania’s Colle San Pietro acropolis developed as a nucleated and probably defended hilltop community.The process of nucleation accelerated in the Iron Age (950-700 BC: 16 sites). Tuscania was probably in a subordinate relationship to Tarquinia, one of five ‘super-centres’ that developed into the major Etruscan cities of South Etruria.

Before our project Etruscan Tuscania was best known for its great family tombs with inscribed sarcophagi of the 4th-2nd centuries BC, but the survey evidence shows that the Etruscan landscape was most densely settled in the 6th century BC (219 sites), coincident with the process of urbanization. The frequency of ‘off-site’ material indicates that Etruscan agricultural activity extended over the greater part of the surveyed area. Little survives of the remains of the Etruscan town, but the richness of Etruscan material immediately south of the city walls indicates a suburban extension of it. The development of Tuscania implies that the control of minor centres by major centres (or rather, the control of less powerful by more powerful families as social and economic inequalities became increasingly marked) was one of the earliest features of Etruscan urbanization. The Archaic Etruscan phase was followed by a marked, though not dramatic, population decline in the Later Etruscan phase (129 sites), the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Activities at Guidocinto, a small but long-lived Etruscan farm we excavated near Tuscania, included the production and processing of oil, wine, and wool, products that enhanced elite lifestyles and provided them with valuable resources for exchange and trade.

From about 550 to 510 BCE, Etruscan terracotta roofs display many innovations linked to terracotta roofs in Anatolia stratigraphically datable between 585 and 560/550 BCE: decorative motifs including double volutes and scrolls, lotuses, star-flowers, meanders, birds, landscape elements, centaurs, and animal battles; chariot race scenes with dogs and hares running below the horses, and particular horse trappings; painted motifs, without relief; a new polychrome palette of brown, gold, blue, and green; a white background and black outlines; L-shaped simas with an overlapping flange system; and high-relief pedimental sculpture. These features are documented pre-550 BCE at the sites of Larisa on the Hermus; Phocaea and Sardis in Anatolia; and post-550 BCE at Tarquinia, Veii, and Cerveteri (ancient Caere) in Etruria. The correspondences are so close as to indicate that artisans from Anatolia were active in Etruscan terracotta workshops for one generation after 550/540 BCE, recalling Herodotus’ stories of refugees fleeing west from Anatolia when the Persian king Cyrus began advancing into the area around 560 BCE and of Phocaean captives taken to Caere after the Battle of Alalia in 540 BCE.

Earlier studies have examined manifold connections between the city of Tarquinia and other parts of Italy and the Mediterranean. This chapter adds to these with a rich holistic analysis of the ‘monumental complex’ and the Ara della Regina sanctuaries, drawing out the cultural and religious attitudes of the community at Tarquinia that may have shaped their adoption and adaptation of external stimuli. Connections between the buildings on the plateau, the city they served, and the natural world around them are explored in ways that yield new potential insights into Etruscan rituals and the buildings that supported them. In arguing for the embeddedness of architecture in local and religious contexts, the chapter emphasizes the importance of returning to the lived experience of buildings, and in so doing raises important issues concerning the interplay between the local and the international in architectural design.