ABSTRACT
The beginning of the cultural processes that would be concluded in the early Iron Age by the concentration of settlements at the sites of future Etruscan cities, in all likelihood is to be recognized in the Late Bronze Age, that is, in the second half of the second millennium bc. After a period of general cultural uniformity in ancient Italy, in the course of the tenth century bc there began to appear well-delineated areas equivalent to the large regions or territories that, in historic times, would correspond to well-defined ethnè: the Veneti, Etruscans, Latins, Sabines. The culture associated with the territory ultimately occupied by the Etruscans is defined as “Villanovan.” Villanovan is understood as a system of customs, a typical expression of material civilization of the zone that would be historically Etruscan, namely that large area that diagonally crosses Italy, from the eastern basin of the Po to the central Tyrrhenian and finally to the Tiber, and which from there expanded into Campania.
