The Etruscan Woman: ‘Romanization’ and Funerary Culture

This paper evaluates our knowledge of Etruscan women during the Hellenistic period (c. 325–31 BC). This subject is complex for two main reasons: firstly, the lack of Etruscan literary sources and secondly, the Roman conquest of Etruria. Giving primacy to the role of female material culture, the societal status of the Etruscan woman is scrutinized through analysis of the ratio of male to female names in Etruscan epitaphs. This aspect is diachronically studied for Chiusi, gauging the possible impact of both internal and external developments. This paper explicitly rejects the old paradigm of pervasive ‘Romanization’, by not a priori assuming strong Roman influence in the social sphere. Instead, Etruscan developments within a broader Italic context are seen as the basis for this analysis. Finally, this paper argues that there is no such thing as ‘the Etruscan woman’. Rather, Etruria consisted of many subcultures with their own customs and modes of representation.