ANTHONY TUCK
Anthony Tuck is Professor and Chair of the Department of Classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has worked at Poggio Civitate since 1989 and assumed the responsibilities of directing the excavation program in 2006. He is interested in the various ways the archaeological record can illuminate the lived experiences of people traditional excluded from the historical record, especially through the material lens of industrial and economic behaviors. In addition to his work on the archaeology of central Italy, he also researches the interrelationship of performed mnemonic devices and central Asian textile production and writes children fiction.
Poggio Civitate: Elite Overproduction and the Crisis of the 6th Century
Abstract: Since the beginning of excavations in 1966, Poggio Civitate has provided archaeologists with one of the most robust bodies of data concerning urban and political development of the Etruscan urbanizing period. Not only does the site preserve a remarkable array of materials related to the iconography and social posture of aristocratic elites and the surrounding community, it also sheds light on the economic systems supported by these complex communities. One of Poggio Civitate’s many enduring questions concerns the manner of the site’s ultimate ritualized destruction and abandonment in the mid to late 6th century BCE. Recently recovered archaeological evidence from the site coupled with novel theoretical approaches (drawn from entomology of all places!) suggest that Poggio Civitate’s demise was the result of a range of factors, many of which contributed to the subsequent rise of larger, regional urban centers such as Rome itself.
PEPPERDINE LECTURE SERIES POSTERS
