ABSTRACT
The world of the Etruscans has expanded greatly in recent years: in depth, due to new scientific areas of research such as archaeological biochemistry, DNA analysis, and materials science that can tell us more than we could fathom about the physical composition of their goods and their very bodies (on the DNA issue, see Chapters 3 and 4). We have also seen expanded the scope of Etruscan interaction in the Mediterranean and beyond, a field significantly broadened by analysis of archaeological finds of imports, exports, and details of interaction (travel, diplomacy, marriage, colonization) found in settlements, tombs, and underwater shipwrecks of the Mediterranean, North Africa, and Europe. Fresh scholarship enabled by the publication of corpora of Etruscan art (the CSE, CVA, LIMC, ThesCRA,1 and catalogues of exhibitions, museums, and collections) is enhancing our perspective on works in many media; access to the panorama of Etruscan inscriptions and documents2 is supporting new research into the personalities, lives, and society of the Etruscan-speakers of the first millennium bc (of all walks of life: see, for instance, Chapter 21).
