RHAETI & CO. New scenarios on the Tyrrhenian issue

Alteritas’ new international multidisciplinary miscellany, Rhaeti & Co. New Scenarios on the Tyrrhenian Question., edited by Simona Marchesini, has been published by Alteritas Academy Press as an open-access e-book with ISBN, the articles are “double-blind” and indexed DOI in APA, Vancouver, Harvard, Chicago, MLA and IEEE.

This volume stems from a panel discussion organized in September 2021 by Alteritas and the University of Rome La Sapienza, which brought together scholars from different disciplines to explore the relationship between the Reti, a small Iron Age people, and the other peoples of pre-Roman Italy, with a particular focus on the question of the origin of the Etruscans. The interdisciplinary contributions address linguistic, genetic, archaeological, and historical issues, offering new insights into the population dynamics and cultural evolution of the Tyrrhenian and Alpine areas.

Research has shown significant linguistic affinities between Rhaetic, Etruscan and Lemnian, supplemented with paleogenetic data that place the Etruscans in the Neolithic/Chalcolithic Italian context, ruling out a recent origin from Asia Minor. However, archaeology presents fragmentary documentation, limiting correlations between language and material culture. This volume proposes an integrated approach that highlights the cultural and linguistic hybridization of the Etruscans with Indo-European peoples, without neglecting methodological limitations.

Structured in four disciplinary sections (linguistics, paleogenetics, archaeology, and historical sources). Each section contributes to outlining a complex and multifaceted framework for advancing our understanding of the historical and cultural dynamics of the Tyrrhenian peoples.