Environmental approaches to Etruscan studies: re-visiting Negri 1927 almost one hundred years later

This chapter presents the state of the art and future directions of the palynological investigations in the ancient Etruria. Pollen studies have revealed that environment and vegetation in the Etruscan period were quite different from those of the present day because of the richer flora and the scant presence of olive trees. In general, pollen diagrams of the Etruscan period are characterized by anthropogenic pollen indicators that demonstrate their skilled ability to manage their local landscapes. As already inferred by Negri (1927), the wild status of wooded areas and open lands have been heavily altered by people throughout millennia. In future research, it is important to be careful with how pollen sampling is employed as it is crucial to the interpretation of reliable palaeoenvironmental reconstructions; one must remember that the set of microscopic evidence is quite complex and must be considered carefully in relation to the many variables of each environmental and cultural context.