The presence of the Etruscan people in Etruria is attested by their own inscriptions, dated about 700 BCE (Before Common Era); it is widely believed, however, that the Etruscans were present in Italy before this time and that the prehistoric Iron Age culture called "Villanovan" (9th-8th century BCE) is actually an early phase of Etruscan civilization. The Early Iron Age culture in Italy, was named after the village of Villanova, near Bologna, where in 1853 the first of the characteristic cemeteries was found. The Villanovan people branched from the cremating Urnfield cultures of eastern Europe and appeared in Italy in the 10th or 9th century BCE.

The Iron Age people of the Villanovan period, the proto-Etruscans, lived in small villages of wattle-and-daub huts, often clustered on hills and other easily defensible positions. Regional differences existed, but the culture was fairly homogeneous and egalitarian in nature. Burials, for instance, showed no great distinction based on social rank or wealth. The dead were usually cremated, their ashes placed in an impasto (unrefined clay pottery) or terra-cotta urn (decorated clay pottery ossuary of a biconical, or two-storied form and covered with a bowl) which was buried in a circular pit. The lid of the urn was sometimes a pottery imitation of a helmet, either the knobbed bell helmet of eastern central Europe or the crested helmet of northern Europe, the Villanovan helmet par excellence.

The Villanovans living in Tuscany also used the terra-cotta hut urn, which imitated a hut of wattle and daub on a frame of poles (left). The hut urn is characteristic of northern European urn fields, whereas the two-storied urn may be related to similar urns from Hungary and Romania.

The Villanovans controlled the rich copper and iron mines of Tuscany and were accomplished metalworkers. In the second half of the 8th century the Villanovans of Tuscany were influenced artistically by Greece; also, inhumation became the predominant burial rite, as it did during the same period in Greece.

During the first quarter of the 7th century an Orientalizing civilization, presumably introduced by Etruscans, was superimposed on the Villanovan in Tuscany. The northern Villanovans of the Po Valley, however, continued to produce a geometric art as late as the last quarter of the 6th century, when Etruscan expansion obliterated their culture.

Made rich by trade, the Etruscan cities flourished in the seventh century. Despite a shared culture and history, however, they composed not a country but a loose confederation of city-states, each ruled by its own government. Their inhabitants were master seafarers, who ruled the Tyrrhenian Sea and protected Etruscan shores and interests.

Etruscan minerals, so scarce elsewhere in the Mediterranean, were traded for luxury goods from Egypt, the Levant, Syria, Asia Minor, and Greece. Local art assumed Oriental, or Middle Eastern, motifs (many borrowed from the Greeks), but skilled Etruscan artisans were never mere imitators. They developed a high-quality black pottery called bucchero, for instance, and used it to make objects traditionally done in metal (left).

The Greeks brought the alphabet to Etruria before 700 BCE. By the end of the seventh century, Etruscans had adopted Greek mythology and were fortifying their cities with cut stone walls as the Greeks did. Aristocratic banqueting, hunting, and ceremonial games were based on Greek models as well.

Meanwhile, the Etruscans' influence began to spread south, near the Greek colonies. In 616 BCE, the Etruscan Lucius Tarquinius Priscus became ruler of Rome.

The Etruscans reached their zenith in the sixth century BCE, expanding north across the Apennines. The Etruscan rulers of the Tarquin dynasty transformed Rome into an urban center, building monumental structures, paving the Forum, and installing a sewer system.

Etruscan art, often inspired by Greek work, thrived, particularly in architecture, sculpture, and painting. Colorful and lively painted figures (left) filled the walls of monumental tombs.

Outside the art world, the Etruscans and Greeks battled for supremacy. Etruscans allied themselves with the Carthaginians to protect against the threat of Greek expansion. When Greeks from Phocaea settled on the island of Corsica, the allies were undoubtedly alarmed. Around 535 BCE they fought a fierce naval battle with the Phocaeans, who won a narrow victory. The Phocaeans lost so many ships, however, that they were forced to abandon the colony. A decade later, a large Etruscan army near the Greek colony of Cumae, in Campania, fell to a much smaller Greek force.

In 509 BCE the Tarquin dynasty came to an end when the people of Rome threw out Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, establishing a republic and changing forever the city-states' relationship to Rome.

Enemies threatened the Etruscans at every turn. Near Cumae, in 474 BCE, Etruscans lost a sea battle to a Greek fleet from Syracuse. An emboldened Syracusan fleet then raided Etruscan sites on Elba and Corsica. In the north, the Gauls continued to attack Etruscans in the Po Valley, as they had since the previous century. Rome and the city-state of Veii began an intermittent conflict around 485 that would not be resolved until 396 BCE, when Veii fell. In Campania, a force including Samnite tribes from central Italy attacked the now-isolated Etruscan colonies, capturing Capua in 423 BCE.

Embattled on all sides, trade disrupted, southern Etruscan cities experienced a recession. Artisanship declined. Fortunately, the fourth century BCE brought an economic and artistic revival. Greek style again influenced Etruscan art, as evidenced above by classical horses from Tarquinia.

The battles, however, continued. The Gauls moved south across the Apennines. From 358 to 351 BCE, Tarquinia fought almost continuously with Rome, until the Etruscans were forced to sue for peace. Around 311 BCE, the Etruscan city-states did what they had rarely done before: They united to fight an enemy. They laid siege to a Roman settlement, Sutri, but had to flee north when defeated.

Roman armies marched at will across Italy by the third century BCE. Still defiant, some Etruscans united with the Samnites and Umbrians of central Italy and the Gauls on the other side of the Alps to challenge Rome. The republic crushed the combined army at Sentinum, in Umbria, in 295 BCE. A decade later, Etruscans and Gauls battled Rome near lake Vadimo, only to fall again to Roman might. By 280 the Etruscan city-states had become subject-allies of the Roman Republic, even supporting Rome when it waged war against the Carthaginians and the Gauls at the end of the century.

The continual wars and economic hardships created social problems, erupting in Volsinii around 265 BCE as a struggle between serfs and aristocrats. Rome razed the city. The Romans also quickly suppressed an Etruscan slave uprising in 196 BCE. In 89 BCE, Rome conferred citizenship on the Etruscans, one of the final steps taken toward their complete Romanization.

Greek Hellenistic artistic styles, including sculpture, could be found in Etruria around 300 BCE (left). In this period and soon after, however, Etruscan art converged with Roman.

Inasmuch as no Etruscan literary works have survived, the chronology of Etruscan history and civilization has been constructed on the basis of evidence, both archaeological and literary, from the better-known civilizations of Greece and Rome as well as from those of Egypt and the Middle East. Contact with Greece began around the time that the first Greek colony in Italy was founded (c. 775-750 BCE), when Greeks from the island of Euboea settled at Pithekoussai in the Bay of Naples. Thereafter, numerous Greek and Middle Eastern objects were imported into Etruria, and these items, together with Etruscan artifacts and works of art displaying Greek or Oriental influence, have been used to generate relatively precise dates along with more general ones. In fact, the basic nomenclature for the historical periods in Etruria is borrowed from corresponding periods in Greece; the assigned dates are usually (though perhaps erroneously) conceived of as being slightly later than their Greek counterparts to allow for cultural "time lag." Thus the Etruscan Orientalizing period belongs to the 7th century BCE (700-600 BCE); the Archaic period to the 6th and first half of the 5th century BCE (600-480 BCE); the Classical period to the second half of the 5th and the 4th century BCE (480-300 BCE); and the Hellenistic period to the 3rd to 1st centuries BCE (300-89 BCE). Etruscan culture became absorbed into Roman civilization during the 1st century BCE and thereafter disappeared as a recognizable entity.