This new collection presents a rich selection of innovative scholarship on the Etruscans, a vibrant, independent people whose distinct civilization flourished in central Italy for most of the first millennium BCE and whose artistic, social and cultural traditions helped shape the ancient Mediterranean, European, and Classical worlds. * Includes contributions from an international cast of both established and emerging scholars * Offers fresh perspectives on Etruscan art and culture, including analysis of the most up-to-date research and archaeological discoveries * Reassesses and evaluates traditional topics like architecture, wall painting, ceramics, and sculpture as well as new ones such as textile archaeology, while also addressing themes that have yet to be thoroughly investigated in the scholarship, such as the obesus etruscus, the function and use of jewelry at different life stages, Greek and Roman topoi about the Etruscans, the Etruscans' reception of ponderation, and more * Counters the claim that the Etruscans were culturally inferior to the Greeks and Romans by emphasizing fields where the Etruscans were either technological or artistic pioneers and by reframing similarities in style and iconography as examples of Etruscan agency and reception rather than as a deficit of local creativity

Sinclair Bell is Associate Professor of Art History at Northern Illinois University. He is the co-editor of five other books, including New Perspectives on Etruria and Early Rome (2009 with H. Nagy), and is currently the reviews editor of Etruscan Studies: Journal of the Etruscan Foundation. Alexandra A. Carpino is Professor of Art History and Department Chair of Comparative Cultural Studies at Northern Arizona University. The author of Discs of Splendor: The Relief Mirrors of the Etruscans (2003) and several articles on Etruscan portraiture and mirror iconography, Dr. Carpino also served as editor-in-chief of Etruscan Studies: Journal of the Etruscan Foundation from 2012 to 2014.