ABSTRACT
In the eighth century, the time when Greek society was emerging after the post-Mycenean Dark Age, an elaborate civilisation grew up in western and central Italy. For three hundred years the Etruscans dominated the western Mediterranean. They mined copper, made weapons, utensils and jewellery, developed agriculture, practised engineering, including agricultural irrigation, and traded with the Greeks, Carthaginians, Phoenicians and other members of the international community of the time. Overland, their merchants travelled to Gaul, Germany and the Baltic, trading wine and copper for amber and salt. It is thought that they introduced the two-wheeled war chariot to the Celts of central Europe. Around 545 bce their formidable navy joined that of the Carthaginians to limit Greek power in the western Mediterranean. Their engineering and organisational skills produced the city of Rome in the late seventh century, and two if not three of Rome's early kings were Etruscan. 1
