Etruscans Now
Funerary and ritual studies
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Clara Berrendonner - École Française de Rome
The evolution of Etruscan society in the Hellenistic period: problems in the interpretation of the evidence
The society of hellenistic Northern Etruria are known to us from their cemeteries. As B. d'Agostino (DdA, 3, 1985, p. 47-58) has shown, the death is the moment in which the social identity of the dead is expressed ; but the community of the dead is a closed system which metaphorically transposes the organization of the human group. The aim of this paper will be methodological: how are we able to to reconstruct social structures through the epigraphical and the archaeological evidence of the tombs ? What do the systems of representation tell us about the structures of the society which produces them?