Luciana Drago Troccoli, a teacher of the Rome University, La Sapienza, has published with the support of the State Poligraphic Institute, a guide of the Etruscan necropolis in Cerveteri, with an educational and spreading objective.
The careful description, through maps and aerial photoes, of the territory concerned with the archeological deposits, that are still being escavated and studied, allows us a virtual immersion in the natural sorroundings.
These, since prehistory until the roman conquest, have witnessed the birth of the first village communities, their transformation, through the Villanovian Culture, into the Etruscan urban agglomeration of Caere, that during the Iron Age represented one of the most important sites, from the cultural, political and commercial point of view, towards both the populations located along the Mediterranean coasts and the city of Rome. With regard to the latter, Caere has always been a good allied and a point of reference, notwithstanding the alterning events of war and peace, that ended with the final romanization, during the III century B.C.
The guide, takes us along the necropolis, located at the sides of the tableland, where the city was born, for a careful and detailed visit that shows us the evolution, during the different periods, of the burial rites, peculiar to each population:
in the most ancient time, the incineration rite, presented equalitary tombs where the bones were gathered into coarse clay bowls having a biconic format and sometimes an impressed or scratched decoration, and with a layout of very few items.
Afterwards the inhumation burial provided symbolic layout with items identifying the rhole of the dead within the community.
Finally the impressive tumulus with tombs pertaining to important families, showing architectures, sometimes similar to their houses, decorated with paintings and riliefs of fine feature and rich layout with items of bronze, gold and silver and precious works comparable to those of the rich oriental tombs, considered by Etruscan people the utmost level to be reached.