Etruscans: "historically and artistically the most important of the indigenous peoples of pre-Roman Italy..." (D. W. Ridgway in the Oxford Classical Dictionary)

• Villanovan (Early Iron Age) Period c. 1000-750 BC: wattle-and daub huts; hut-urns for the burial of the dead; metal artefacts.
• Orientalizing Period c. 750-575 BC: through contact with Phoenician and Greek traders seeking metals (iron, tin, copper), Villanovan sites develop into cities: construction of temples and houses (stone, mud-  brick, timber), paved streets, drainage systems, rock-cut chamber  tombs.
• Adoption of Greek alphabet. Etruscan not an Indo-European   language. Numerous Etruscan inscriptions have survived but no Etruscan literature. (Romans adopted Etruscan alphabet.)
• Independent city-states. League of twelve cities, though no strong  poltical unity.
• Some Etruscan cities: Caere, Tarquinii, Vulci, Populonia,    Volsinii, Clusium, Perusia, Arretium, Volaterrae, Veii.
• originally ruled by kings; kings replaced in the sixth and fifth   centuries by aristocracies whose members served as magistrates.
• Etrusca Disciplina: Etruscan religious practice codified in books.
• Archaic Period (c. 575-490 BC): Etruscan expansion in Italy and spread  of sea power.
• south into Rome (Latium) and Campania (conflict with the Greeks at Cumae).
• north into Po Valley (Celts).
• 500 BC: Etruscan power in decline after a series of defeats.

• advanced urban centers, e.g., Cumae, Tarentum, Croton, Sybaris,  Syracuse.
• independent city states, jealous of one another.
• power of cities in Magna Graecia localized in coastal areas; didn't  penetrate into the peninsula.
• transmitters of the alphabet to Italy and the Etruscans; Greek gods; art  and architecture.

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