Many years ago, my best friend moved to the south of Tuscany. I have visited that area every year since. To me, its landscapes are as synonymous with Italian history as any Roman ruin or Renaissance sculpture. And there, halfway between the historical epicentres of those two periods, lie the remnants of the Etruscan civilisation.
Very little remains of the Etruscans: their language all but disappeared and is now indecipherable, their people got absorbed into the budding Roman civilisation, and…