Mapping Power: A Landscape Approach to Etruscan Urbanisation and Territorial Control

Etruscan studies have reached great heights in the accumulation of cultural data. This is particularly true for landscape studies: the second half of the 20th century has been fruitful as it saw a growth in survey projects exploring ancient central Italian landscapes. Survey data indeed have a lot of potential for the study of urbanisation, facilitating the quantification of different patterns to draw comparisons of control strategies enacted by different power places. This paper is a synthesis of the analyses on rural settlement data between the 7th and the 5th centuries BCE, when urbanised institutions and lifestyles consolidated. Four case studies are selected and discussed, representing different types of territorial control: Tuscania, a mid-ranking centre tied to the city of Tarquinia; Chiusi and Cerveteri, both urban central places, with different developments and ways to administer territories; and finally, the palatial site of Murlo, in open conflict with urbanised realities. Site trends, proxies of population change and locational analysis, using GIS, reveal different rural infrastructures sustaining Etruscan central places. These centres adopted different strategies to control their lands and benefit from them. As part of the approach, I will show how structured Etruscan landscapes became, how they were exploited, who lived there, and how relationships with the central place were developed.