ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Etruscan commercial landscapes by asking questions about markets, their location, their periodicity, and their regulation. Etruscan markets operated on different temporal cycles, with ancient sources providing testimony about both periodic and annual markets (i.e., interregional festivals). Opportunities for more regular, even daily, transactions also occurred in certain contexts. The Etruscan systems of weights and measures will also be assessed to help flesh out these markets and the mechanics of quotidian operations. Assembling literary, epigraphic, and archaeological testimony for Etruscan markets makes it possible to consider what is understood about the Etruscan commercial sphere, specifically organised marketplaces, with an aim to learning more about the means and mechanisms by which the average Etruscan satisfied their need for goods and foodstuffs that they did not produce themselves. There has been relatively little synthetic treatment of these topics in Etruria heretofore, so the exposition of the mechanisms of Etruscan marketplaces is revealing in that it does not just suggest what is being bought and sold but also illuminates other aspects of Etruscan sociopolitical daily life. The myriad interactions facilitated by Etruscan markets demonstrate that in the mundane activities of provisioning lies evidence about both economic activities and the political and cultural framework within which they operate.
