Living here for more than a week, and having been here before, I am taking advantage of my time to see things that I would never before have imagined visiting (let alone finding in my guidebooks). One such site is the Etruscan Necropolis in Baratti. The Etruscan settlement here dates back to at least 900 bce. This is long before there was anything called Italy, or even a Roman Empire.
The most striking feature of the necropolis is the tumulous tomb. From the outside, it merely looks like a big mound of dirt, and I wouldn't have even thought twice when passing. However, because earthen mounds like this are found all over the world, educated archeologists are keen to discover if some mound of earth is actually a tomb of some sort. So, having found this one in the 1960s, they discovered a basic circular foundation made with stone that makes a long path leading to the central tomb, after passing several side rooms used to store treasure.
This reminded me of the ancient Mycenean tomb that I visited in Greece several years ago. The shape of the stones, and the domed central room were very similar, and it is my guess that these Etruscans had contact with the Myceneans, and were influenced in several ways.
A bit further on in the plain, there was also a later necropolis, from about 500 bce, that was clearly influenced by Greek contact, and it is one of the few places in Etruscan excavations where there is the remnants of a Greek-style temple shrunk down to the size of a tomb.
One last curious fact was that these sites were used through the ages to dump excesses of iron ore production, and so when the site was excavated in the 1960s, they had to dig down past seven meters of iron waste before discovering these ancient ruins.
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