Approaches to Ancient Etruria covers a wide range of topics within the legacy of the Etruscans material and immaterial. Through close examination of the visible we gain insight into the questions of social and cultural identities, and broader questions lead to new interpretations and hypotheses. In fifteen articles, scholars from Italy, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Denmark present recent work on a broad range of Etruscan issues. Contributions include a settlement study and a detailed work on architectural mouldings, and they provide insights into religious practices, burial customs, funerary art, portraiture and social relations, deduced from epigraphical testimonia. Several articles deal with imagery in tombs, tomb paintings, bronze reliefs etc. one presenting a new hypothesis on the scenes on the Tragliatella oinochoe, another examining the Magistratensarkophag from Tomba dei Sarcofagi in Cerveteri while others explore space in tombs or invite the reader to experience images of nature or imagine Etruscan music. Two contributions deal with objects in the Etruscan Collection created by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen during his extended sojourn in Rome (17971838). The introduction includes a useful overview of Etruscan studies and Etruscan collections in Denmark.
Mette Moltesen holds an MA in Classical Archaeology from the University of Copenhagen (1973) and was curator of the Greek, Roman and Etruscan collections at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek from 1978 until 2012. Her main fields of interest are ancient sculpture, including the history of sculpture collections and the European trade in ancient sculptures in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but also the marble and techniques of individual sculptures. She is co-author of Catalogue of Copies of Etruscan Tomb Paintings in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (1991) with Cornelia Weber-Lehmann. After retiring, a particular field of interest has been the imperial villa on Lake Nemi.
Annette Rathje is Associate Professor Emerita of Classical Archaeology at the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen. Currently a foreign member of the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Etruschi ed Italici, she has taught Etruscan archaeology among other subjects. Her main subject is encounter archaeology, and much of her work deals with interaction, networks and connectivity in the Mediterranean Area in the 8th6th centuries BC. She has been involved in field work in Etruria and Latium Vetus, and is currently publishing the pre-Republican habitation layers on top of the Sepulcretum in the Forum Romanum. Her current research includes early Etruscan imagery and visual narrative seen from an archaeological point of view.
