The Etruscan World Edited by Jean MacIntosh Turfa Published June
17th 2013 by Routledge – 1,216 pages Series: Routledge Worlds
The Etruscans can be shown to have made significant, and in some
cases perhaps the first, technical advances in the central and
northern Mediterranean. To the Etruscan people we can attribute
such developments as the tie-beam truss in large wooden
structures, surveying and engineering drainage and water
tunnels, the development of the foresail for fast long-distance
sailing vessels, fine techniques of metal production and other
pyrotechnology, post-mortem C-sections in medicine, and more. In
art, many technical and iconographic developments, although they
certainly happened first in Greece or the Near East, are first
seen in extant Etruscan works, preserved in the lavish tombs and
goods of Etruscan aristocrats. These include early portraiture,
the first full-length painted portrait, the first perspective
view of a human figure in monumental art, specialized techniques
of bronze-castin