Ethnic Roots, Female Descent, Family Strategies: Volterra, an Etruscan Community in the Roman World (cent. 3rd BC-5th AD)

Limina, Valentina [UCL]

The paper aims to reassess the role of local elites in the broader debate about Integration into the Roman world. One of the crucial issues about kinship in the past was defining the structures generated by genealogical relationships. The words clan, genos, gens, and familia convey different meanings, excluding or including specific ties between group members. When Rome integrated populations, many possible social structures coexisted between the subjugated groups. For the Etruscans, family identity, female descent, and ethnic roots had a pivotal cultural role. Thus, the Etruscan integration into the Roman world reveals new insights when analyzed through a flexible approach to kinship and integrating archaeological materials, historical sources, epigraphy, toponymy, and prosopography. As the case study of Volterra, one of the oldest Etruscan cities, proves, it is impossible to deeply understand the city integration process into the Roman world without analyzing its local elites. Thanks to extended networks of kinship, friendship, and clientship, the local elites progressively structured and modified their power bases to benefit private interests. Epigraphy proved that a solid local power base was fundamental to support policies and patrimony. Marriages were crucial to strengthen alliances, and the phenomena of bordering estates owned by relatives are attested by toponymy and archaeology. As literary sources confirm, the contemporary adoption of opposite political positions within branches of the same family ensured its survival, whatever the results of political struggles would have been. The period 3rd BC-5th AD is crucial to understand the development of long-term family strategies from the beginning of the integration process until the end of the Western Roman Empire. Thus, reconstructing strategies of power in some key groups, the paper provides a new understanding of a community in transition to the Roman world and stresses the pivotal role of women in conducting strategies supporting their families.