these ‘Etruscan places’, to borrow Lawrence’s title, were influential, rich and well connected in a way that far outstripped Rome. They had active trading links across the Mediterranean and beyond, as we can see in archaeological finds of amber, ivory and even an ostrich egg on one site, as well as in all the finely decorated classical Athenian pots that have come from Etruscan tombs – far more of these found in Etruria than in Greece itself.
