Etruscologia e ideologia nel XX secolo

Abstract

Etruscology developed in the 20th century as a scientific discipline thanks to and against the ideologies of its time. In Italy, between Unification and the March on Rome, Etruscan studies were encouraged by an exacerbated nationalism. Once Unity was achieved, the Italians had to be made, considering the Etruscans the precursors of Rome and the ancestors of the Italians. Then, from 1922 until the end of World War II, Fascism favoured the structuring of Etruscology thanks to the Istituto di Studi Etruschi, which gave the discipline international visibility, but Fascism also oriented a whole series of Italian studies towards the idea of the autochthony of the Etruscans, against that of a heteroctony, promoted by Nazi Germany to identify the Etruscans as oriental individuals of an inferior race. Only slowly did Etruscologists shed the values associated with fascism and turn towards liberalism or communism to renew their conception of the origin, society and art of the Etruscans.