ETRUSCOLOGIST

   The translation of the Italian term etruscologo, whose usage dates from the time of the influential scholar Massimo Pallottino. He successfully devised a separate study of the Etruscans, Etruscologia, in contradistinction to other major, state-organized societies of the first millennium BC. His concept was of a rounded scholar, equally at ease with philology, art history, and monumental excavation. Etruscologists have generally emphasized art historical approaches (often in the Giovanni Morelli tradition) and given primacy to the written sources studying Etruscan origins, placing less explicit emphasis on theory (although in actual fact strongly driven by a particular theoretical approach). This explicit separation from traditional approaches to Etruscology has been difficult to maintain following the deaths of Massimo Pallottino in 1995 and Mauro Cristofani in 1997, two scholars who concentrated their work on the Etruscans and yet combined the elements of language study, art history, and excavation that Massimo Pallottino defined as important. The work of Giovanni Colonna is probably the most representative of the approach today, since other influential scholars such as Torelli do not so exclusively concentrate their attention on the Etruscans.