ABSTRACT

Corsica (Fig. 13.1), the fourth largest island in the Mediterranean after Sicily, neighboring Sardinia and Cyprus, is located a short distance from the coast of Etruria, so that it is directly visible from large parts of the northern Tyrrhenian coast. It is therefore natural that the island nations have had, since the early days, preferential relationships with the people of the territories of the future Etruria. However, the rough and mountainous center of Corsica has fostered a certain isolation of the interior from the south-western and eastern coastal regions, the latter, by contrast, fully integrated into the framework of Tyrrhenian trade routes, certainly to an extent greater than what can yet be perceived from the new study of island archaeology. This strong regionalism and the archaeological knowledge of the rather “disorganic” area are certainly at the basis of the significant uncertainties in the periodization of the Bronze and Iron Ages. In particular, the beginning of the latter is placed, depending on the area and the various opinions of scholars, between the late ninth and early seventh century bc; even the canonical subdivision of a First and Second Iron Age, to coincide with the arrival of Phocaean settlers at Aleria around the mid-sixth century bc, does not seem valid if extended to the rest of the island. This results in an objective difficulty in reconstructing a reliable picture of the Corsican civilization and of its contacts with other bordering areas, especially in the centuries between the second and first millennia bc; however, as we shall see, there is concrete evidence of the relationship and common interests which bound Corsica to the territories of the future Etruria, already in the full Bronze Age, and which serve as a prelude to the consolidation of contacts between the two areas that occurred in the following centuries. Corsica is also a meeting place between the main cultural facies of the peninsula and the Nuragic environment; on the other hand, some of the main routes linking Sardinia, a crucial junction of important seaborne Mediterranean trade routes, and the peninsula were to affect the coast of Corsica. The strait that separates the two islands could be crossed either at the Fretum Gallicum (today’s Strait of Bonifacio), still considered dangerous, however, due to strong currents, or by drawing a route between a promontory of northeastern Sardinia and south-east Corsica; it is logical to think that navigation would follow along the eastern coast of Corsica, with some provisioning stations located at the mouths of major rivers, which were to enable connection to the interior of the island, from that of Stabiacco in the Gulf of Porto-Vecchio, through the Solenzara, located slightly farther north, and the Tavignano, in communication with Aleria, up to the mouth of the Golo, the largest river of the island, just south of Bastia. The crossing of the Tyrrhenian should take advantage of the natural bridge formed from the archipelago of Tuscany, which is at least under the control of the emerging city of Populonia (Bartoloni 1991) since the late Bronze Age and the only Etruscan town built on the sea and overlooking the island of Elba, which is reached in a few hours by boat from Poggio del Telegrafo, along with the nearby site of Poggio del Castello, the location of the historic city.