Italy. This observation gave rise to the popular notion, now often repeated, that the Etruscans were “mysterious.”

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Sketch illustrating the use of an automatic camera for photographing the inside of an unexplored tomb

(Courtesy of the New York Graphic Society)

The debates over the origin and mystery of the Etruscans long ago turned sterile. Pallottino cleared the air in his Etruscologia (1st ed., 1952; 1st English ed., The Etruscans, 1955), in which he noted that the problem of Etruscan origin should not be focused on provenance but rather on the process of ethnic formation. Most other archaeologists have followed his lead and now study the Villanovan period as an early phase of