the usual motive for digging in the eighteenth century (Cristofani 1983; Giuliani 1987). Gori recorded in great and objective detail the finds of ash urns and pottery and included plans, elevations, and a topographical map of the location of the urns. Gori also initiated the publication of comprehensive works of Etruscan antiquities in collections.

The famous painted tombs of Tarquinia came under serious study in the eighteenth century with the activities of the English artist, dealer, and banker Thomas Jenkins (Haynes 2000). A member of the society of antiquaries of london, he reported to that body on his investigation of Etruscan tombs at Tarquinia made in 1761 and provided illustrations that were published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1763. Jenkins was followed by the Scottish dealer, scholar, and guide James Byres (Ridgway 1989), for whom the Polish artist Franciszek Smuglewicz prepared illustrations of tombs Byres visited at Tarquinia in the 1760s. Like his countryman Dempster, Byres did not live to see his work published, for it did not appear until 1842, under the title Hypogaei; Or, Sepulchral Caverns of Tarquinia, the Capital of Antient Etruria.

Also in the eighteenth century, scholars began to pay increasing attention to pre-Roman Italy in general and to sort out the relationships between the Etruscans and their contemporaries. The ceramic vases found in Etruria in great numbers were now recognized as Greek, first by sir william hamilton, who collected such vases excavated on the Bay of Naples outside of Etruria proper, and later by Luigi Lanzi, who denied that the vases were Etruscan when he realized that their inscriptions were in Greek. Lanzi published a study of the Etruscan language in which he made comparisons with the languages of neighboring peoples such as Greeks, Oscans, Umbrians, and Romans.

The heroic age of the discovery of Etruscan tombs came in the first half of the nineteenth century (Les étrusques et l’Europe 1992, 322–337, 414–431). Between 1828 and 1833, some ten new painted tombs were identified in the Monterozzi necropolis at Tarquinia. Artists took great pains to record the paintings, with varying success in accuracy. Carlo Ruspi conceived the idea of making tracings as preparatory drawings for full-scale facsimiles, which he created for the new Museo Gregoriano Etrusco at the Vatican (founded 1837) and for the Pinakothek in Munich. In this same period were discovered “the Tut’s tomb” of Etruscan archaeology, the spectacular Regolini-Galassi Tomb at Cerveteri (1836), which was named after its discoverers, a priest and a soldier, respectively. The finds from this seventh-century tomb group went to the new Vatican museum along with a nearly life-sized figure, identified as Mars, found at Todi in Umbria in 1835.

Also at Cerveteri, Marchese Giovanni Pietro Campana unearthed the richly sculptured Tomb of the Reliefs (1846–1847), and at Veii, he found the seventh-century Tomba Campana (1842– 1843). The Hellenistic Tomb of the Volumnii, with its handsomely carved ash urns, was discovered at Perugia by G.B. Vermiglioli in 1840. A bit later (1857), Alessandro François and A. Noel des Vergers found the marvelous painted sepulcher at Vulci that became known as the François Tomb. Though most sites were funerary, Marzabotto near Bologna, excavated by G. Gozzadini in 1862–1863, was soon thought to be a habitation site with evidence of town planning.

These dramatic new finds were of interest to a widening circle of scholars and public alike. Especially active was a group of young men from northern Europe known as the Hyperboreans. The noblemen August Kestner and Otto Magnus von Steckelberg went out to Tarquinia to investigate painted tombs (the famous Archaic Tomb of the Baron is named for Kestner) and joined with Eduard Gerhard in planning Etruscan publications. Their association evolved into the international Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica (established in 1829), which became the German Archaeological Institute in Rome in 1871. This body was of the greatest importance because of its publications, such as the Bullettino; the Monumenti inediti, which was richly illustrated with the latest discoveries; and the Annali. Etruscan antiquities were frequently reported in these pages, and Gerhard also initiated systematic corpora such as the famous five-volume work on Etruscan mirrors, Etruskische Spiegel (1840–1897).