Convincing settlement evidence in Rocca Paolozzi and I Forti has been added to sporadic evidence (two violin bow fibulae and another fibula, a one-winged axe) to show that this key Etruscan settlement was already occupied in the Final Bronze Age. Relatively little is known of the layout of the city, but its size (approximately 26 hectares) appears to have been relatively small. More recently, two theories affecting the calculation of its size have developed. The first suggests that the city concentrated on modern Chiusi only late in its development (in the fifth century BC) and that distinct nuclei were maintained on the neighboring hills of Montevenere, Monte San Paolo, and Pianoro Badiola-Petriolo until this date. The second, more improbable, interpretation is that the area between these four locations was continuously occupied as one very large city.
Much more is known of the cemeteries that surrounded the city, many with the distinctive “canopic” urns. The city thus has a distinctive burial sequence that draws on a Villanovan tradition of cremation, with the addition of the broad depiction of the personal identity of the deceased. The most prominent Villanovan cemeteries are Fornace and Fonte all’Aia. A major Villanovan hoard of metal was found at Goluzzo, containing winged axes, chisels, knives, spears, arrowheads, fibulae, and so on, in an ashy deposit. Poggio Renzo is one of the most prominent, longest-lived cemeteries. Artifacts at Poggio Renzo date from the Villanovan period and representative concentrations of later tombs have also been found there. The cemetery is also the location of the famous Scimmia (monkey) tomb, found in 1846 by Alessandro Francois. The most prominent Archaic cemeteries are Bagnolo, Fonterotella (where the Francois vase was found), Marcianella, Martinella, Pellegrina, Romitorio, and Vigna Grande. One of the more systematically dug tombs is at Pania, a tumulus on the road to Cetona, where there was cremation in a bronze dolium, inhumation, and bronze, iron, and ivory objects. There was a period of flourishing activity in the fifth century as demonstrated by the quantity of painted tombs, now paralleled by the definitive nucleation on the site of modern Chiusi. The most prominent painted tombs are Colle Casuccini, Le Case, Montollo, Poggio Montollo, and Poggio Renzo. The city is also renowned in this period for bas-relief limestone (pietra fetida) sculptures of banquets and other scenes. A prominent descent group in the late period of Chiusi was the Satie.
See also DODECAPOLIS.
Historical Dictionary of the Etruscans. Simon K. F. Stoddart.