An ancient question
The origin of the Etruscans
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20045865 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Christoph Ulf (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Pages | 11-34 |
| Publication date | 2017-09-25 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Etruscology (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | De Gruyter (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/9781934078495-002 |
| OpenAlex | W2763842280 |
| ISBN | 9781934078495 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
In the ancient written sources contradicting views are held as to who the Etruscans were and from where they originated. Modem scholarship has been content to pick out one of the ancient concepts and to support it with historical, archaeological or linguistic arguments. As a result, there is still no consensus in this matter. An important reason for this is that the opinions held in modem scholarship are also closely linked to the ideological environments in which they are set. In an attempt to render these correlations as transparent as possible, this chapter attaches more importance to contextualizing the ancient written sources and the positions taken by modem scholarship than to mentioning and describing them as "exhaustively" as possible. The chapter also draws attention to the interferences between the ancient written sources, the hypotheses regarding the Etruscan language and the interpretations of archaeological findings. To avoid the circular reasoning so frequent in academic debates, it is argued, one must follow the fundamental call in the methodological debate in archaeology to contextualize and interpret archaeological findings initially on their own. The archaeological settings, local and trans-regional correlations between findings can only be given meaning in a scientifically transparent manner, where specifically defined and clearly described analogical cases from the fields of anthropology and history are used. This, in fact, forms the basis for the more recent reflections on the possible internal structures of the settlements and cities and the connections between them. These reflections become all the more cornpelling, the less they depend upon the alleged knowledge of the "Etruscans" in the ancient written sources
Archaeology · Epistemology · Human settlement · Ideology · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Computer Science · Historical and Archaeological Studies · History · Law · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2020 - 2025 (6) |
| Highly cited | No |