xcept that they were either an indigenous people whose cultural development depended on contact with Greek traders and others, or they, "or at least a very small number of them, came from West Asia at some time during the disturbances that followed the collapse of the Hittite and Mycenaean empires" (Ogilvie 242). Their culture included direct influences from various West Asian civilizations but the Greek influence eventually dominated by the end of the Archaic period (600-480 BC).
The Etruscans paid special attention to the cult of the dead and their necropolises "constitute the richest of all their surviving remains" (Ogilvie 243). In the early seventh century BC the Etruscans gradually abandoned single tombs (either for funerary urns or single burials) and began to "bury the dead collectively, or in family groups" and this required the construction of chamber tombs (Prayon 174). In the south, where tufa stone was plentiful, builders found that they could easily build tombs that imitated houses. In earlier periods funerary urns had taken the external form of houses and now the Etruscans "were able to leave the deceased with his usual environment, his home, and to furnish him with everything he liked that would be useful for this life after death" (Prayon 180). Furniture, weapons, household implements, and even food were placed in the tombs.
In the sixth century the tombs of wealthy families became more idealized versions of houses which imitated "in an abstract way the central part of contemporary dwelling," the atriums, while "the small rooms in these tombs were reduced to simple niches" for the individual burials (Prayon 185). It was also in the sixth century that the Orientalizing influence in representational art began to decline and the Greek influence dominated. Under this influence "the human theme came into its own, eventually to become the chief purpose of art" (Brendel 113). It was in the early Archaic period ...