Replies

Thanks, and thanks to Blam. I'm sure there are plenty more of these around, untouched, but most will alas be from the same general era. The biggest and richest burials were a couple centuries earlier, and drew a lot of attention back then. :')

Clusium
LoveToKnow 1911 Online Encyclopedia
It was according to Roman tradition one of the oldest cities of Etruria and indeed of all Italy, and, if Camars (the original name of the town, according to Livy) is rightly connected with the Camertes Umbri, its foundation would go back to pre-Etruscan times... The chief interest of the place lies in its extensive necropolis, which surrounds the city on all sides... The most remarkable group of tombs is, however, that of Poggio Gaiella, 3 m. to the N., where the hill is honeycombed with chambers in three storeys (now, however, much ruined and inaccessible), partly connected by a system of passages, and supported at the base by a stone wall which forms a circle and not a squarea fact which renders impossible its identification with the tomb of Porsena, the description of which Pliny (Hist. Nat. xxxvi. 91) has copied from Varro... A conception of the size of the whole necropolis may be gathered from the fact that nearly three thousand Etruscan inscriptions have come to light from Clusium and its district alone, while the part of Etruria north of it as far as the Arno has produced barely five hundred. Among the later tombs bilingual inscriptions are by no means rare, and both Etruscan and Latin inscriptions are often found in the same cemeteries, showing that the use of the Etruscan language only died out gradually.
Dig Like a Surgeon
by Anna Maria Esposito
Photographs by Giovanni Lattanzi
February 22, 1999
Burial G was one of a small group, probably belonging to members of a single family, atop the hill of Casa Nocera, outside the modern town of Casale Marittimo. In the center we found the earliest sepulchre, dating from the eighth century B.C., that of the clan's progenitor, who was cremated and buried in a chest made of stone slabs. Within the chest was a large terra-cotta vessel known as a dolium, covered with an embossed bronze shield. Inside the dolium was a bronze cinerary urn containing the burnt bones wrapped in a linen cloth; silver items including a bowl and dragon fibula (garment pin); and small objects of ivory and amber. Outside the dolium were a banquet service consisting of a small bronze and iron table, ribbed bronze phialai (libation bowls), and other vessels; an ax, lance, helmet, and scepter; and the iron fittings of a two-wheeled chariot.