FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN THE LATE IRON AGE-ARCHAIC PERIOD

During the ninth-eighth centuries, Villanovan bronzes were offered in the great international sanctuaries at Olympia, Delphi, Dodona and Samos. Fibulae (brooches) prob-ably accompanied gifts of clothing, much of it female (Gras 1985: 651-701; von Hase 1997); arms and armour might be trophies taken by Greeks, or gifts of Italian travellers and diplomats (H.

Towards the end of the eighth century, a flood of imported valuables, especially gold jewellery, brought figural art and the iconography of Near Eastern cults, with images of a potnia theron (“mistress of wild beasts”, cf. de Grummond 2006c: 99-101). Archaic iconography, such as the Cannicella goddess (see below) may have been influenced by such images and their explication by alien visitors to Etruria. The physical evidence of liver models suggests a distinct influence from Mesopotamian divination (van der Meer 1987: 153-64), and the Brontoscopic Calendar, accepted as genuine Etruscan by late Republican scholars, has clear Mesopotamian antecedents (Turfa 2012: 241-77). The mechanisms for such borrowing have yet to be elaborated, but the transfer occurred during the Iron Age, when foreign contact was intense and divination texts would have enhanced the urbanization and governance of the new cities of Etruria.