ABSTRACT

Bucchero is the name we apply to a specific type of black pottery produced extensively by the Etruscans. It is sometimes called a “national” pottery or, unfairly, their “only independent invention.”1 The name comes from the Spanish búcaro first applied to South American pottery made from pungent black clay and later imitated by Portuguese potters who called it pocaro.2 Discoveries of black Etruscan pottery reminded early excavators of this New World búcaro and so an Italian variant of the name, bucchero, stuck. The name has remained popular despite its having no direct connection whatsoever to the Etruscans. We have no idea what they called this kind of pottery. The modern study of bucchero is complex and cannot be examined closely here.3