Metallurgy, environmental pollution and the decline of Etruscan civilisation

Abstract

The Etruscans were justifiably famous in antiquity for their advanced metallurgy and for the rich mineral resources of their region (including La Tolfa, the Colline Metallifere, Mont'Amiata and Elba). We offer a new perspective on certain Iron Age and Archaic (ca. 1,000-480 BC: ) Etruscan industrial and habitation sites, and on the problem of heavy metal poisoning, still being investigated today, coincidentally in some of the same areas that originally saw Etruscan mines and workshops. This study investigates ancient sources, including literature and excavation reports, in the light of modern studies of heavy metal poisoning on human beings, plant and animal life. Furthermore, it is the first to use non-invasive Niton X-ray fluorescence analysis of samples of Etruscan (strictly ethnically Faliscan) hair (c. 350 BCE: ). The findings show the strong likelihood of heavy metal poisoning in areas of Etruscan metallurgical activity with the effects of this being responsible for or contributing to the abandonment of a number of these sites around the 6th century BC: . No thoroughly satisfactory explanation of this phenomenon has previously been offered. However, findings suggest that Faliscan women, represented by sample CG 2004-6-2, were not exposed to high levels of arsenic in life, which is not perhaps surprising for an urban aristocratic woman of the mid-4th century BC: . The reasons for the abandonment of several flourishing settlements are without doubt complex, and include political and social change. We suggest heavy metal contamination as an additional stimulus to the noted phenomenon of the peaceful abandonment, at the beginning, and at the end of the 6th century BC: , of sites in southern and northern Etruria such as Marsiliana d'Albegna (late 7th c.), Lago dell'Accesa, Acquarossa and Poggio Civitate-Murlo (late 6th c.). While the historical truth of the demise of Etruscan civilisation is much more complex, an interim set of related events, the desertion of several important settlements during and at the end of the Archaic period, might actually have been stimulated by the consequences of industrial pollution and arsenic poisoning. We call for archaeologists and curators to test any available human and animal remains in their museums and collections for evidence of heavy metal poisoning, taking due caution and consideration of course to the relevance of the aristocracy, and urge the application of analytical techniques developed in response to this serious modern problem, to provide additional insights into the ancient situation.