CHAPTER 10
Etruscan Domestic Architecture, Hydraulic Engineering, and Water Management Technologies
Innovations and Legacy to Rome

Claudio Bizzarri and David Soren

1. Introduction

As a reult of new excavations and recent reconsiderations about Etruscan architecture, along with the adoption of more holistic anthropological, art historical, and philological approaches, a clearer picture about Etruscan contributions to and innovations within the area of architectural technology has emerged. Despite the scant traces of original buildings – due to their construction primarily with materials such as terracotta, mudbrick and wood (e.g., oak, elm and hornbeam) – many of their technological innovations can be understood. As a result, the Etruscans are now viewed as dynamic innovators in the fields of architecture and engineering rather than as mere copiers of the Greeks who used low-quality materials to build houses, water channels (cuniculi), dams and pools.

In the past, the study of Etruscan architecture was limited by the paucity of sites apart from necropoleis (see further, Chapter 11). Sequential phases of Etruscan sites have been particularly elusive and when houses were uncovered, they were often not well published. In addition, the very idea of an “Etruscan” architecture may be disputed, given the highly individualized nature of their major urban centers and the regional characteristic of some of their artistic traditions.

This chapter explores the ways in which Etruscan architects refined and blended technologies from Near Eastern and Greek cultures, as well as the Romans, and applied them to their own constructions. It traces the impact of the Etruscans not only in private architecture (e.g., the house plan), but also at southern Tuscan sites such as Mezzomiglio (locality of Chianciano Terme) where an ancient spa demonstrates that their ability to innovate and adjust outside influences to their own needs continued well into Roman times.

2. Domestic Architecture

Villanovan Huts

During the Iron Age (1000–700 BCE), the inhabitants of central Italy lived in huts either dug down into bedrock or given a foundation of rubble stones on which were built walls featuring a series of posts linked by wattle and daub with clay packing. Over the walls were hip roofs that sloped down on all four sides, sometimes pierced with a smoke hole in the front or center so that cooking stands or a hearth might be used inside. Reproductions of these dwellings appear in the terracotta or bronze cinerary hut urns from southern Etruria and Latium, which show the detailed structure of the roof and beams with the characteristic shape known as the “solar boat” decoration (e.g., two duck heads facing alternately left and right) placed on top of the roof (Dolfini 2004).

In earlier scholarship, these oval, square or rectangular huts, which measured about 10 square meters, were considered by scholars individually and thought always to house entire families. Ethnographic comparisons and new evidence, however, tell a different story. The huts are now seen as part of a complex belonging to one family group or a small clan whereby individuals or several people might live in one hut while adjacent ones were used to store food or as cooking places. There were also animal pens and perhaps a cactus fence around the complex, delineating a nuclear family or clan settlement. Therefore the former “one hut, one family” idea seems not always to have been true in Etruria (see further, Colantoni 2012).

Satricum

At Satricum, 37 miles southeast of Rome in Latium, Etruscologists have had the rare opportunity to observe Villanovan and Etruscan architecture over many years and several phases of construction. During the seventh century BCE, huts evolved into more substantial structures (Maaskant-Kleibrink 1987, 1991: 73–93; Gnade 2010; Colantoni 2012: 25–6), each with its own specific functions. The site, uncovered in the Dutch excavations of the 1970s and 1980s, displays three important phases. 47 huts belonging to Period 1 – most of the eighth century BCE – have been found; their functions range from dwellings to cooking sheds. The latter were identified from cooking ware recovered along with ash and animal bones. In Period 2, which continued into the seventh century, the size of the huts increased significantly, reaching 30 square meters of total area compared to only 10 in Period 1.

No palaces or structures to suggest sharp demarcation between ruler and ruled in Periods 1 and 2 have been found at Satricum. By comparison with contemporary civilizations in the Near East and Egypt, the settlers on the Palatine Hill in Rome or at San Giovenale (see further, below), Satricum could be considered architecturally primitive (Balland 1984: 57–80; Angelelli and Falzone 1999: 5–32; Carandini and Cappelli 2000).

During Period 3 (the sixth century BCE), the traditional hut complexes of the first two periods were replaced by houses situated on firm stone foundations which were grouped into several pairs and arranged to form two courtyard areas, along with several smaller houses nearby (Maaskant-Kleibrink 1987, 1991; Colantoni 2012: 24–26). These structures appeared to be evolved, redesigned, and more sophisticated versions of the areas of the Iron Age huts of periods 1 and 2. All were also grouped around a major water basin.

The evolution at Satricum from open areas between huts to courtyard plans linking together the long rectangular house complexes suggests that the possible next step architecturally was the atrium house form later found at sites such as Pompeii, Stabiae, and Herculaneum in the Roman period. There, the central courtyard was enclosed within the house and reduced in size so that it contained a rectangular opening in the ceiling and roof (compluvium) to admit rainwater into a sunken water-gathering mini-pool (impluvium) so that it could be stored in a cistern below. Such house forms are known to have evolved by the sixth century BCE because of early finds at the eastern end of the Roman Forum on the slope of the Palatine as well as at the site of Roselle near Grosseto in Tuscany (see further, below).

Above all, the Satricum excavations demonstrate that Villanovan and early Etruscan huts often had varying functions and could be part of an entire area of huts within an enclosure. These simple forms of construction had a long life in Etruria, and examples continued well into the Roman Imperial period. The Augustan writer Vitruvius (2.8.20), for example, cautioned against using wattle and daub due to the constant risk of fire and buildings going up like a torch. He also connected the hut structure to an ancient architectural typology:

From such specimens [i.e., the hut of Romulus on the Palatine and the thatched roofs of temples which survived in the time of Vitruvius] we can draw our inferences with regard to the devices used in the buildings of antiquity and conclude that they (the old structures) were similar (Ita his signis de antiques inuentionibus aedificiorum sic ea fuisse ratiocinantes possumus iudicare)
(Vitruvius 2.1.6; translated by M. H. Morgan 1960).

San Giovenale

The Swedish excavations at San Giovenale, near Blera to the northwest of Rome, have revealed several early Iron Age building types, one with low rubble walls linking timber poles which reinforced the walls of interwoven branches coated with clay mixed with straw. Hip roofs of thatch completed the structure. Another type of house at San Giovenale featured channels dug down into the volcanic tufa to support the wattle and daub walls. In a later phase, postholes appeared inside the house as well as around the perimeter. The walls had windows and the roof had a smoke hole for the interior hearth. Often, there was also a front porch (Iaia and Mandolesi 1993; Karlsson 2006).

Fidene

At Fidene (about five miles north of Rome on the Via Salaria), a rectangular hut was destroyed by fire around 800 BCE (Martinelli 2004). The blaze preserved many of the contents of the fairly large structure (6.2 × 5.2 meters in size, or just over 30 square meters, the size of the biggest huts at Satricum). Postholes secured walls that were composed of molded bricks made of clay, crushed-up ceramic and straw. The hip roof had support from four internal posts.

Inside, clay andirons flanked a hearth near the center. Rather than have a variety of huts for different purposes, this one large structure was divided up into sections for various activities, so that the interior functioned as a work area and, possibly, as a sleeping space. The northern wall was lined with four dolia (large storage jars) partially sunken into the clay floor (De Santis, Merlo, and De Grossi Mazzorin 1998). The eastern area seemed to contain poorly preserved elm furniture, possibly for chairs and/or beds. In the southeast corner lay the remains of the oldest preserved cat ever found in Italy. Another storage area in the southwest corner appeared to be built of piled stones. Finally, a simple portico shaded the entry to the west.

Domestic architecture at other sites

During the seventh century BCE, two- or three-room houses built with mudbrick walls within a wooden framework linked by postholes appeared at a number of sites, including Accesa / Massa Marittima (a lakefront area near Grosseto), San Giovenale and Veii (Camporeale 1997; Camporeale and Giuntoli 2000). Generally, the Orientalizing period marks the time of the transition from hut architecture to the small rectangular house (Donati 1994: 2000). The only structures to maintain the hut or capanna look were older sacred buildings, which, when necessary, were rebuilt numerous times in traditional materials. Examples include the so-called Casa Romuli or House of Romulus on the Palatine Hill in Rome, the structure on the acropolis at Satricum, and the capanna buildings discovered in the recent excavations in the chora of Adria in northeastern Italy, which were found to continue into later periods (Harari and Paltineri 2000: 65–74).

House construction techniques could be variable but were always simple due to the lack of fine stone. Stone foundations with strong wooden posts linked by earth walls comprised of mud and intervening branches or wattles and straw were popular from the Early Iron Age into the Roman period, as we have seen. Walls linking the posts or built on their own might be made of unfired bricks (mudbrick) or they could be constructed in the pisé technique whereby a damp mixture of earth, gravel or small stones, along with sand and clay, was placed inside an externally supported frame of interlinked twigs and branches and left to dry; it was often lime-washed later for added protection.

About 650 BCE, pan and cover tiles relating to Laconian or Corinthian types began to be used, and the houses were often given a portico on the long side at the entry. The diminutive size of the houses suggests that many activities still continued outside and that the major change to large structures with more daily living occurring inside happened only in the early Archaic period. The exception to this in the Orientalizing period could have been the homes of the elite who built monumental tombs at sites such as Cerveteri, but, to date, such structures have not been identified with certainty. It is unlikely that these aristocrats would have lived in simple dwellings while having such remarkable tombs, and it is for that reason that structures such as those found at Poggio Civitate near Murlo are usually identified as elite dwellings (see further, below). However, it may be that during the Orientalizing period the emphasis was on the tomb and the afterlife more than on the private dwelling. If the monumental buildings at Murlo and Acquarossa were not elite homes but rather community centers, then we are left only with the giant tumuli as the architectural evidence of their wealth.

It may, therefore, not be until the Archaic period that the houses of the rich became more elaborate in Etruria, no doubt influenced by increasing contact with the Greek world. Apparently for the Etruscan elite with pretensions of grandeur, Greece, in particular, meant monumentality, status, elitism, beauty, worldliness, and a sense of high aesthetics. In this period, the simple truss is used in building construction and in at least one instance (e.g., the Mengarelli Tumulus in the Nuovo Recinto of the Banditaccia cemetery of Cerveteri), a truss is actually shown in relief in the tomb (Marini 2010: 12). Here it is also possible to see the transition from the round hut plan to the idea of the long-house model. The increasing sophistication of the aristocratic house may also be seen in the Tomb of the Shields and Chairs from Cerveteri (c.600 BCE) (Figure 10.1), which features a dromos leading down to a central atrium, and three rooms opening off at the back, two side rooms and a series of couches. The shields shown in relief suggest the power and military connections of the family and the chairs take the form of thrones with footstools that also emphasize the regal nature of the deceased family members.

Image described by caption and surrounding text. — **Figure 10.1** Tomb of the Shields and Chairs, interior, early sixth century BCE. From Caere.
Photo: The Art Archive/Gianni Dagli Orti.

Poggio Civitate

Of particular importance to any discussion of Etruscan domestic architecture is the remarkable and controversial “Palace” of Murlo, at Poggio Civitate, built in its first form in the seventh century BCE, perhaps between 675 and 650 BCE, and then destroyed by accidental (?) burning around 610 BCE (Nielsen and Tuck 2001; Tuck 2006: 130–135; see also Chapter 8). The site’s monumental Orientalizing buildings included two structures plus a separate portico, the latter containing a workshop filled with spindle whorls for weaving, pottery and roof tiles (see Figure 8.1). Tiles appear to have been made on the premises, and the fire seems to have taken the residents by surprise since a drying tile contains a footprint, possibly of someone fleeing from the structure. The domestic structure may have been what Ingrid Edlund-Berry has termed “ritually dismantled”; that is, taken apart for ritual reasons, an Etruscan practice that might occur after the gods had ordered it (Edlund-Berry 1994: 16–28). Opinions vary, however, regarding the reason for its destruction, while more recent excavation of the site suggests more widespread destruction in the later Archaic period rather than just the intentional ritual dismantlement of one building.

During the sixth century, the original monumental building was replaced by a larger and more sophisticated version (Tuck 2010: 93–104). In fact, the second structure, whatever its function, is one of the largest buildings known in the Mediterranean from the Archaic period (see Figure 8.2). The new building featured a secondary courtyard to the south, possibly for work activities. The central courtyard of the main structure was surrounded by a series of rooms that did not appear to link with one another. The northeastern-most two rooms have been identified as a possible watchtower.

The purpose of Poggio Civitate’s monumental building and its predecessor remains a mystery, but some scholars consider it a palace, taking into consideration the fictile decorations which present scenes of elite banqueting, elegant ladies with parasols and fans, and fine hunting dogs. Also suggestive is its sheer size: at 60 × 61.85 meters, it covered almost 3800 square meters. But the original excavator, Kyle Phillips, believed that it more closely resembled a large meeting hall which might form the headquarters of a local Etruscan league of communities (Phillips 1993). Nearby was found a well which provided water for the structure, and there were also iron ore roasting ovens, adding fuel to the argument that this may have been a monumental community center. The roof, moreover, contained striking acroteria, including the so-called Murlo “cowboys” with wide-brimmed hats (see Figure 8.3) that have parallels in figures from Capestrano.

Acquarossa

Smaller than the Archaic complex at Poggio Civitate is a similar, contemporary construction at Acquarossa near Viterbo, dating to c.600 BCE (Östenberg 1975; Rysted 2001: 23–27; Meyers 2010: 2–5). There, Swedish excavations have unearthed several buildings placed at right angles, thus creating a courtyard. Building A is c.10 meters long and Building C is 25 meters; smaller structures are located nearby. The same questions have been asked about this smaller complex as at Murlo, especially since both sites feature decorative simas, frieze plaques, antefixes, and acroteria. Again the question of palace or community center arises.

Roselle and Marzabotto

At Roselle (Rusellae), an important house, perhaps datable to the first half of the sixth century BCE, was uncovered in the 1980s by the University of Florence: the House of the Impluvium (Casa dell’Impluvium) (Donati 1994). It was entered through a portico along the front featuring four wooden posts. This led into a large space or reception area that resembled the tablinum normally found at the rear of Roman houses just behind the atrium. Turning right from this room, a large central atrium of c.300 square meters in size appears. It resembles an atrium in a typical Pompeian house in that it has both a compluvium and impluvium. The opening in the roof was supported by four posts, resembling the tetrastyle atrium house described by Vitruvius (6.3.1) as the atrium tuscanicum, indicating that it was an Etruscan invention. The cistern at one end of the courtyard contained a decorative aedicula above it. Opening off of the tablinum area were two rooms to the left that contained small hearths; the right-hand one also included a raised area that likely served as a thalamos or bedchamber. Finally, two additional larger rooms opened directly onto the atrium. These may have been the triclinium (dining room) and a kitchen to serve it.

The large house at Roselle is but one of a number of structures with atria dating to the later Archaic period, among them a house on the slopes of the Palatine Hill (the so-called Domus 3) constructed during the Etruscan occupation of Rome (Holloway 1994: 63, 67). In a large complex at Gonfienti, near Prato in Tuscany, another atrium cum impluvium arrangement has been noted (Cifani 2008: 275), while still others are known at Marzabotto, a working-class Etruscan town in what is now the province of Bologna, the Etruscan Felsina (Govi 2007; 2008: 137–146). At the latter site, for example, the houses are of good size, but not palaces, and seem stamped out as if from a cookie-cutter, with slight variations. They have tile roofs, and stone foundations on which were set mudbrick or opus craticium walls. Each house was almost 800 square meters in size, and featured an atrium that was likely testudinate or fully roofed over, so that the beams rested directly onto the walls and there were no interior columns. They also included small rooms that appeared to function as toilets, with an open channel leading out to the sewer system, paralleling the northern Greek town of Olynthos. Thus, by the Classical period, the atrium house form as known later at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae was well-established in central Italy, functioning as one of the Etruscans’ most important innovations and legacies to Rome.

Spina and Adria

At Spina and Adria, Etruscan houses were adapted to rest on wooden posts that reached down into the water and enabled housing systems that are the predecessors of contemporary Venetian ones; they also spring from a long line of ancient structures adapted to marshy, watery sites (Torelli 1993: 53–70; Bonomi 1991). This is the stilt or Palafitte-style house form, dating back to the later Neolithic period in Italy and consisting of piles of timber driven into the ground, above which the house was built, significantly above the water level and thus protected from flooding.

Excavations at Adria, inland from the port area in an agrarian chora region at San Cassiano di Crespino 10 miles to the southwest on the northern bank of the Po delta, have revealed traces of Etruscan-style non-Palafitte dwellings built with foundations made of an igneous local stone called trachyte and featuring walls of clay mixed with straw (Harari and Paltineri 2000: 65–73: Robino, Paltineri, and Smoquina 2009). These Archaic structures have early Corinthian-style tiled roofs. Excavations by the University of Pavia have also uncovered the trachyte quarry nearby.

The site, destroyed by fire, has preserved many features of the original structures, including clay bricks used in the wall construction, the local straw mixed in with it, and the beaten-earth flooring of clay mixed with straw or chaff. It has been disputed for many years as to whether the area was a Greek or Etruscan settlement or both, established for the purposes of promoting the large trade between Etruria and Greece through the only major harbor areas along the northeastern area of the Italian coast. The excavations at Atria therefore demonstrate a strong Etruscan presence in the later Archaic period even though the area is known for a local group, the Veneti.

Vetulonia

Much is now being learned about Etruscan domestic architecture of the Hellenistic period, the time of Etruria’s precipitous decline. New excavations at Vetulonia 120 miles north of Rome have revealed an area of houses dating to the third century BCE with many of their contents intact due to their destruction by fire (Neri 2013). For the first time, significant examples of well-preserved domestic architecture, albeit from a time later than Etruria’s glory days, have been found. The houses rest on stone foundations and have walls for their ground floor; a second story built in the traditional mudbrick or opus craticium style has been found collapsed into the first floor. That the disaster occurred well into the third century BCE is attested by the finding of Roman coins. The site is still at the beginning of excavation and has only uncovered storerooms, but its enthusiastic excavator, Simona Rafanelli, hopes for a “Pompeii of ancient Etruria” (Lorenzi 2012).

Cetamura del Chianti

Not every Etruscan community was a major center with beautiful architecture for the elite or even formulaic housing for workers. The excavation of Cetamura del Chianti, located to the east of Volterra, the south of Florence, the west of Arezzo and to the north of Siena, illustrates the features of a rustic settlement (de Grummond 2000, 2009, 2014). Here, rural artisans made most of the materials needed for survival and dedicated modest offerings at a nearby sanctuary to little-known Etruscan divinities. Cetamura is easily overlooked because it showed how the other half lived in Etruria between 300 and 75 BCE. A simple artisan’s quarter also provides evidence of pottery kilns, cisterns for water storage, a weaving shed, and evidence of iron production.

In Zone II, a slope located below the site’s acropolis (Zone I), remains dating back to the Archaic period have been located, but the main phase is the Hellenistic one, divided into two subphases: 300–150 BCE and 150 to the first century BCE. In both of these phases, local sandstone was primarily used for the construction of wall foundations. During the first phase, stones of homogeneous size were carefully selected, while in the later period, larger blocks alternated with smaller-sized rocks. The upper parts of the walls are not preserved but may have been in opus craticium, clay bricks, wood posts linked with mudbrick or in some cases made with small or large stones, depending on whether or not a second floor was required.

There are no structures that dazzle the eye and little in the way of artifacts of aesthetic delight at this rural Etruscan site. The excavators have reconstructed a vision of the life of the non-elites of the area and their transitory wood constructions of oak, hornbeam, and beech, always threatened by fire, along with structures featuring local sandstone. Although the diet of the villagers was surprisingly varied, there is little to suggest that Cetamura was anything more than a modest Etruscan village. Nevertheless, its chronology is complex and traces the community from its beginnings during the Archaic period to its eventual transformation into a Roman villa and finally to a medieval fort.

3. Hydraulics and Water Management

The Roman Forum and the Cloaca Maxima

The acts of draining Rome’s forum area at the end of the seventh century BCE and, 100 years later, constructing the Temple of Jupiter, which gave the city a colossal architectural symbol visible from below at a great distance, were the two most significant events that differentiated Rome from the modest town it was during the Iron Age. In particular, the forum drainage allowed the city to spread out and grow, and thereby become one of the most important in Italy.

Both Etruscan and Greek technological innovations played a major role when the Tarquins arrived in Rome and set about developing and transforming the city. The Etruscan communities, in general, had particular connections to the architecture on the east Greek island of Samos (Hopkins 2010: 121). One of these includes the use of water channels (cuniculi) which soon became a hallmark of Etruscan hydraulics, an area that had been widely pursued in the east Greek world and for which the tyrant Polycrates of Samos (ruling 538–522 BCE) was particularly known. He constructed the Tunnel of Eupalinos, named for a renowned engineer from Megara, as part of an aqueduct system, creating the first known tunnel to have been dug out from both ends simultaneously, using principles of basic geometry established by Euclid to create one of the wonders of ancient Greek civilization (it was 3399 feet long) (Kienast 1995; Olson 2012: 25–34). To ensure that he did not miscalculate, Eupalinos angled his first tunnel slightly so that the second one would meet it.

It is impossible for us to know at present who was responsible for the visionary, society-changing programs and constructions in Etruria and Latium from the seventh century on. We know from Vitruvius (10.2.11) that the sixth century BCE was the time of the development of the crane driven by a large rotating wheel with men inside to turn it, an invention refined by Chersiphron and Metagenes of Crete who worked on the enormous Artemis Temple at Ephesos in western Anatolia. Thus the mega-temple was made possible by technological developments of Greeks in the Archaic period (Coulton 1974) and the Etruscans took advantage of this in their construction of the enormous Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.

Meeting centers such as the Fanum Voltumnae (at Campo della Fiera outside of modern Orvieto; see further, Chapter 9) allowed the various Etruscan communities to share information, and these may have included architectural projects and engineering technologies (Stopponi 2002– 2003: 109–18). In addition, both Greek and Near Eastern connections, along with a desire to harness the abundant streams and springs of Etruria, led to increasing sophistication in the Etruscan knowledge of hydraulics and waterworks from the Archaic period onwards (Cascianelli 1991: 43–76).

At the end of the Orientalizing period, the new Etruscan rulers of Rome took over what was an architectural backwater and realized that they needed to provide extensive drainage for the swampy area that later became the forum. Suitable only as a necropolis or for the construction of impermanent huts, the pre-forum area was a valley between hills subject to periodic flooding from the Tiber River. The project of filling in and raising the level of the forum, as described by Albert Ammerman (1990), reflects a visionary program of urban development. By harnessing the streams flowing into the forum (such as the Velabrum) and providing a drainage system (still in part used today) known as the Cloaca Maxima, the Etruscans made it possible for the great buildings of the forum to exist and be maintained over the centuries. The Cloaca was such an important structural element that near the Comitium are the remains of the temple of Cloacina, a small circular building dedicated to the goddess Venus in one of her many aspects (Pliny Natural History 15.36; Livy History of Rome 3.48).

The Pool in the Portonaccio Sanctuary of Menerva at Veii

The draining and elevation of Rome’s forum and its rescue from the vagaries of the Tiber, combined with the channeling of hillside streams into a sewer system, was one of many contributions of the Etruscans to architecture involving water. At Veii just north of Rome, the principal sanctuary developed in the seventh century BCE was extensively remodeled in the later sixth century BCE, at which time the well-known Temple of Menerva was erected (d’Aversa 1991: 45, 46). The sacred area is located near a regional locality known as Portonaccio, hence the common referral to the Portonaccio Temple of Veii. There, a sacred spring flowed just outside of the city wall.

The great pool associated with the temple was carefully built in ashlar blocks of tufa tightly fit together and then given a layer of impermeable clay on the outside to prevent leakage. It was able to hold 180 cubic meters of water that would have permitted total body immersions, if indeed this was part of the ritual associated with this sacred space. It was filled by a series of conduits running for more than 100 meters, connected with the sacred spring. The spring water itself is sulfurous and rich in iron; it is drinkable and was believed to contain therapeutic properties. A cistern (also lined with clay) and three wells were also uncovered in the sanctuary; these would have served the needs of the temple priests and worshippers who needed fresh water.

It appears that the complex terracotta decoration of the temple and its pool were also connected with oracular prophecies, healing, and purification rituals. Votive offerings found include images of Menerva, Athena Hygeia and Minerva Medica, suggesting that the water was consumed to restore or maintain health. The pool is paralleled in the Falerii temple of Lo Scasato (Carlucci and De Lucia 1998: 55; Harari 2010: 83–103). There, the cistern is sacred to Apollo Manticus, the prophetic Apollo, and associated with rituals involving an haruspex (priest diviner). At Veii, the spring carried such power that even after the Roman destruction of the city, it continued to be used into in the second century CE.

Crater Lakes: Albano and Nemi

The Etruscan water-management abilities in the Archaic period may also be noted in their remarkable handling of the crater lakes of Albano and Nemi (Ward-Perkins and Boethius 1962: 1642–1643; Cascianelli 1991: 49–53). Beneath and around Lake Albano is a drainage tunnel 1200 meters long, while a tunnel at Lake Nemi may exceed 1600 meters. Each was designed to manage the lakes like a gigantic bathtub, with inserted overflow drains to take the excess water and channel it onto the territory nearby where it could be used for irrigation. As in the Roman forum area, this treatment reduced the possibility of flooding and protected nearby communities by insuring regulation of the volcanic basins. All of this was laid out with the use of a simple surveying instrument known as a groma.

Drainage Systems in Orvieto

A similar and noteworthy handling of drainage is also evident at Orvieto, ancient Velzna (Bizzarri 1998: 99; Bizzarri 2007: 317–350). In the Archaic period, apart from the precise grid that composes the Crocifisso del Tufo cemetery, there was also orthogonal planning reflected in the organization of water management for the town. The paucity of remains of the upper city do not allow for a complete reconstruction of its organizational layout, but remains of drainage channels under the city’s streets and buildings indicate that the system was precise in its format. Since the upper city was probably extensively reorganized during the sixth century, this necessitated an extensive drainage system below, which dealt with the disposal of water overflow from cisterns in the atria of houses as well as from the houses’ drains.

A complex underground infrastructure led to a series of channels disgorging water into main drains which deposited it outside the cliffs of Orvieto. Although localized changes in the gridded drain network would have resulted from topographical necessities within the hilltop, the overall regular pattern has been traced through the area of the ancient town. Additionally, a significant number of vertical shafts, probably from the sixth century BCE, were carefully dug into the rock, reaching down to the water table underneath the volcanic deposit. Cisterns were also built of tufa blocks with curved interiors, fitted together using a clay-rich mortar and surrounded by pure clay for impermeabilization.

For the inhabitants of ancient Orvieto the impressive number and size of underground structures designed to preserve water were of crucial importance. In fact, due to the geological structure of the Orvieto mesa, there are no sources of water in the upper inhabited area; hence the incredible naturally fortified plateau was useless against a prolonged siege. Nonetheless, when the Romans besieged Velzna in 264 BCE, it took two years before the inhabitants were starved and had to surrender. This is because the main source of water came from vertical shafts and cisterns which the Romans were unable to suppress; the last cisterns were already improved with a thick layer of cocciopesto, a hydraulic mortar that the Romans themselves eventually used for their numerous water-related structures.

Chianciano Terme

An important site that affords a rare opportunity to view how Hellenistic Etruria interfaced with Roman technology is the locality of Mezzomiglio, in the heart of the town of Chianciano Terme, very close to Fucoli. Its Etruscan occupants had been aware of the medicinal values of their sacred spring from at least the second century BCE and probably from considerably earlier due to the presence of an enormous retaining wall of ashlar blocks which may be as early as the fourth or third century BCE. The Mezzomiglio sacred spring area reached its peak in a large complex constructed for visitors by the Roman emperor Trajan in approximately 114 CE, as the numerous stamped tiles used for both roofing and paving suggest. This site, developed fully after the region was under Roman control, nevertheless, represents a fascinating final phase in Etruscan architectural innovations and engineering and their legacy to Rome (Soren 2006, 2010).

The spa included a series of buildings gradually installed around a sacred spring that dispensed water with a high laxative value when imbibed. It remains the largest cold water spring ever found in Italy and, as such, is probably to be associated with the famed fontes clusini or the springs of Chiusi praised by Horace for curing the stomach woes of the emperor Augustus in 15 BCE, a feat so admired by the emperor that he made his own doctor, Antonius Musa, and all future Roman doctors exempt from taxes.

The divinity to whom the site’s sacred spring was dedicated is not known. Nearby, at another thermal location dedicated to Sillene, offerings are believed to have been made to Artemis / Selene (Paolucci 1997: 19–20). As at Veii, a small though poorly preserved shrine is associated with the Mezzomiglio spring. It jutted out into a large colonnaded pool that was provided with a ramp at the southeast corner for unwell visitors to wade down into the sacred water and enjoy total body immersion. Another gradual ramp led out of the pool to the northeast. This sacellum was located exactly over the spot where the sorgente (spring water) entered the pool, which was surrounded on all four sides by colonnades. The pool itself was only deep enough for one adult to stand up in, yet the complex measured c.18 meters per side and easily accommodated dozens of bathers at once, allowing each a wide area for total body immersion such as was described by Horace. The entries to the great pool were built up from rough-hewn stones, giving the effect that one was entering a magical cave or grotto, and then suddenly the vast pool and colonnade would appear. As visitors entered this “grotto,” they would have no doubt heard the sounds in the distance of bathers and the in-rushing and out-pouring spring water, all of which added to its dramatic effects and further enticed worshippers to go inside.

In a manner similar to the Etruscan harnessing of the volcanic lakes of Nemi and Albano, the huge pool functioned as a colossal bathtub, with a drain at the bottommost area of the pool, opposite the spring, which carried water off to the east through a large drainage channel and out of the site. If the spring entered the site with too much force, the overspill would be taken up in an overflow pipe 91 centimeters above the lower drain and linked to the drainage system. In this manner, a constant flow of spring water was assured, a constant water height for aged bathers was maintained, and drainage occurred in the manner utilized by the Etruscans since at least the Archaic period. Thus, at the Mezzomiglio spa, traditional Etruscan technology was readily on display well into the Roman era.

The site was rustic in the manner of numerous other Etruscan sites, with springs and sacred pools including, for example, Pasticcetto di Magione and Colle Arsiccio in the Perugia area (Gasperini 1988; Calapa 2006; Giontella 2011). But, instead of using concrete or mortar, which had already been developed and was in widespread use in Rome in the second and first centuries BCE, the Mezzomiglio architects confined the spring water by using the area’s natural kaolinitic clay. It is likely that the Etruscans selected the site not only for its spring but also because of its virgin soil. This clay could not only be used to create architecture but it appears to have been ritually important as well, imbued with curative powers (a view still supported by many contemporary inhabitants of the area). In spas throughout this region, even today, the clay is heated to about 45° centigrade and applied to the area of the human liver for 15 to 20 minutes at a time, intending to aid the biliary tract as part of a regimen of diet, exercise, and fango (mud) baths. Such therapeutic mud was also found in proximity to an Etruscan temple at Stigliano, 30 miles west of Rome (Gasperini 1988: 32), while Aelius Aristeides, in his Sacred Orations 2 (24: 484–486), described in the second century CE the importance of healing mud used in conjunction with a sacred spring at Pergamon.

As an architectural binding agent, kaolinitic clay was used to treat the supporting walls for several phases of the colonnaded area around the sacred pool (Figure 10.2). Here, due to the volatile nature of the spring, frequent subsidences and even sinkholes developed, requiring multiple phases of walling. In the earliest ones, an opus incertum arrangement of stones which resembles walling in Rome from the second century BCE appears, but with the local clay used instead of concrete as the setting for the stones. As more wall repairs were done, continuing into the first century BCE, the walls changed to opus reticulatum cubilia (pyramidal shaped stones of smaller size set in a diagonal, net-like arrangement) and, once again, kaolinitic clay served as the binding agent. In this way, the Etruscan architects demonstrate how they absorbed the latest in Roman technology for wall construction while still adapting it and creating their own style from it. As we have seen, this was a typical Etruscan response to outside stimuli from the earliest times of their architecture. Despite the fact that sophisticated advances in technology were increasingly common and visible in Rome, this large sanctuary remained conservative, with most buildings constructed as much as possible in the old ways and traditions, perhaps because of their ritual functions, until its demise in the third century CE. In the early second century CE one bath building at the site appears to have been built of typical Roman brickwork until one gets close to it and realizes the building has been faced with tabulate local stones chosen for their reddish hue which were cut to resemble Roman bricks.

The excavations at Mezzomiglio also show that while the Etruscans were hydrologically sophisticated, they did not keep pace with the Roman development of concrete and vaulting, and the laying of strong walls in opus incertum technique. The Etruscans of Mezzomiglio did not match Roman ingenuity in the evolution of architecture, but chose to fuse their traditional technology with the new influences to create a hybrid local architecture, even well into the Imperial period.

4. The Manufacturing of Architectural Elements

In surveying the innovations of Etruscan architecture, we cannot overlook the fact that the Etruscans were major processors of bronze and iron which were exported beyond Etruria throughout Italy and the entire Mediterranean. This was especially important for the manufacturing and distribution of architectural elements such as brackets and nails needed for the type of architecture in their cities and villages which was dependent upon timbers and wooden structures. These products required special officinae or workshops, elaborate organization to mine and refine the raw materials, and a sizeable work force. In the region of Piombino and Baratti in northwest Tuscany, at Populonia and Elba, the remains of one of the largest metal-gathering complexes in the entire ancient Mediterranean has been discovered (De Tommaso 2003; Cambi, Cavari, and Mascione 2009). Here one can visit open-cast mines where iron which lay close to the surface was extracted, from as early as the Villanovan period in the ninth and eighth century BCE, the earliest date from which remains of slag have been found on the beach.

5. Conclusions

This survey of some of the latest work in Etruscan architecture leads to a number of conclusions. The Etruscans were clearly not copiers or mere second-rate purveyors of Greek architecture. Rather, they were the most technically advanced local culture in the Italian peninsula in their era, developing a type of domestic dwelling (e.g., the atrium tuscanicum) that was not only well-suited to their climate and cultural traditions but also one of their most important legacies to Rome. Because of their water-rich landscape and their contacts with Greek and Near Eastern cultures, they also became superb at water management at a very early date. With it they made possible the drainage of the Roman forum, enabling the expansion of the city of Rome. Using their hydraulic technology, they built dams, irrigated agricultural areas, created cuniculi, developed sacred pools, and established associations between deities and natural springs. With waterproof clay abundantly available, moreover, there was no need to rely on mortars. Etruscan architects continued to innovate even in their latest phases as they reacted to architectural and engineering developments in Roman Republican and even Imperial architecture. They syncretized or blended technology from other Mediterranean cultures and adapted it to their own specific ritual and physical requirements. Despite the lack of fine marble in their own region, they created monumental architecture using stone, timber and clay, thereby demonstrating a comparable level of technology with Greece. For these reasons, Etruscan architecture remains a fascinating study of innovation and imagination, a significant contribution not only to ancient technology as a whole but also to the Romans and all later occupants of the Italian peninsula.

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GUIDE TO FURTHER READING

While the book on Etruscan technology and innovation has still to be written, there are a number of works which have begun to address the subject. A good deal of information is available from the study of the site reports indicated within this chapter, many of which attempt to extrapolate the microcosm of the individual site into a macrocosm of general trends across Etruria. One of the most insightful works to establish the innovativeness of the Etruscans in combining influences from the Greek and Near Eastern worlds with their own ritual needs is Hopkins’s study (2010) of the Capitoline Temple in Rome which illustrates both the influences which impacted the construction of that temple and the enormous influence that the temple itself had on later Roman architecture through its commanding presence and its architectural uniqueness.

With regard to hydraulics and general water management, important studies by Bergamini (1991), Cascianelli (1991) and Bizzarri (2007) point out the close bond that the Etruscans had with water sources as a lifeblood for their crops, their religious needs in the form of ritual springs and pools and for the development of their cities in the form of wells and cisterns and extraordinarily elaborate drainage systems. These authors detail the kinds of innovations that resulted when the Etruscans took knowledge from the Greeks and adapted it to their own social and religious needs. The Etruscan influence in water management on the initial development of Rome has been detailed particularly in the seminal work by Ammerman (1990).

The evolution of the Villanovan house from a simple hut or series of huts into the Etruscan home is documented in Colantoni (2012) as well as in articles by Donati (1994, 2000), which also discuss the emergence of the atrium house form. To these can be added Vincent Jolivet’s exhaustively researched monograph (2011) on the indebtedness of the morphology of the “Roman” house to Etruscan influences. More information about later Etruscan housing will no doubt be forthcoming once the critical new excavations at Vetulonia are completed and published, offering the first opportunity to understand a late Etruscan complex with its original (non-perishable) internal contents preserved through fire. This critical site will also provide dramatic information about the survival of Etruscan life into the period of Roman conquest in the second century BCE.

One area of considerable interest which has only been summarily investigated is the point of Etruscan–Roman interface and how the Etruscans chose to adapt Roman techniques to their own needs. This includes the reaction of the Etruscans to the introduction of actual bricks as well as their adaptation of kaolinitic clay to meet the challenge of Roman concrete which was not widely used by them (even though at Orvieto a hard early mortar appears to have been pressed into use before the mid third century BCE). Another factor which may have inhibited the widespread development of new technology in Etruria was the apparent ritual need to continue “the old ways” even into Roman times, a topic discussed by Soren (2006, 2010).