334

American A nthropologisl

[61, 19593

ARCHEOLOGY

The Etruscans. RAYXOND

BLOCR.(Ancient Peoples and Places.) New York: Frederick
A. Praeger, 1958. 260 pp., frontispiece, 38 line drawings, 79 photographs, 3 maps.
$5.00.

Reviewed by J. LAWRENCE
ANGEL,University Museum, PhiludelphM

This volume replaces Randall-MacIvers popular summary of 1927 and is both more
vivid and faster-paced than Pallotinos book (1942-54, translated 1955), with a more
revealing selection of photographs. I n contrast to Pallotinos preference for a local
pre-Indo-European ethnolinguistic origin (cf. the Basques), Bloch lists high position of
women, a trinity in a revealed religion pivoting on divination (especially hepatoscopy) ,
gold granulation technique, corbelled tomb domes, and other traits as indications of
Near Eastern late 8th century B.C. sources for Etruscan immigrant aristocrats. This
is conventional. But Bloch is properly careful to state only the evidence and to leave
this, the linguistic a 5 i t i e s (closest with Lemnian), Tuscanys biological distinctiveness, and the reasons for the Etruscans historyless downfall (coastal malaria unmentioned) as open questions. He handles the Villanovans cursorily and leaves out the
problems of Italys Bronze-Iron Age transition, but stresses ecology and the vital
Etruscan roles as metallurgists for the West and as wide-trading rivals of the
Phoenicians, Greeks, and Kelts. He emphasizes the mixture of ethnic and cultural
forces (e.g. Greek trade-objects and artisans) which shaped Etruscan culture and had
its pungent effect on the Roman mind. It is precisely in his light but deft analyses of
Etruscan thalassocratic politics, art, architecture, and especially religion, and their
effects on Rome and on Renaissance Italy, that Bloch paints the sharpest pictures.
His discussion of the peculiar but complementary blends of practical versus mystical
elements in the two ancient cultures helps to explain how such traits as action based on
omens, mortal gladiatorial combats, immoderate banqueting, character-searching individual portraits, chessboard land-surveying and many others were taken over as part
of the orderly Roman tradition.
The authors key is his careful history of Etruscology over the past two centuries
from pot-hunting up to modern air photography, electric potentiometry of soil, periscopic photography, and so on. As an unusually competent archeologist, a Frenchman
working in a neighboring country to further mutual understanding, he is as appreciative of past technical carelessness as of modern advances, and illuminates , . . the
gradual emergence, thanks chiefly to the work of the prehistorians, of the fundamental
principles of archaeological research. . . . The only major misprint, 200 and 100 instead of 2000 and 1000 B.C. on p. 61, corrects itself from the context. This is a book
to stimulate students, to use as a takeoff for research, or to skim for ideas.
AsMn Perspectives. [Bulletin of the Far-Eastern Prehistory Association (American
Branch).] (Vol. I, No. 1-2.) Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1957. ix, 208 pp.,
n.p.

Reviewed by H.

L. MOVIUS,JR., Hamrd University

In 1953 the Far Eastern Prehistory Association (FEPA), dormant for 15 years
because of the world situation, held its fourth meeting in Manila conjointly with the
8th Pacific Science Congress. There it was decided to organize a series of national
branches of the FEPA. Asian Perspectives constitutes the 0 5 c h l organ of the American
branch. At the outset, one should state that the successful achievement of the first