This is the second volume in the welcome new Cities of the Etruscans series published by the University of Texas Press. Like its predecessor (N. de Grummond and L. Pieraccini [edd.], Caere [2016]), it is intended to collate and disseminate research on a range of topics pertaining to one city, including unpublished material and items not previously presented in English, in order to offer a holistic reconstruction of the site in question. In this it succeeds admirably.

The book has considerable ground to cover given that Veii was one of the most important settlements in early Italy and has been excavated continuously for longer than any other Etruscan city, and particularly intensively since the launch of the ‘Veii Project’ by La Sapienza University in 1996. It arranges the material into 25 chapters plus a set of maps, an introduction, a conclusion and an appendix that places the historical, cultural and mythical elements mentioned earlier in the text into a brief chronological framework. The first three chapters present an overview of the city's archaeology, including an efficient synthesis of findings from decades of work on Piazza d'Armi (V. Acconcia). Chapters 4–16 give a historical account of Veii from the Bronze Age to the fifth century, although some include later material, and the section also includes chapters on epigraphy and defences. Chapters 17–24 focus on material culture, while stories about Furius Camillus and the fall of the city to Rome are discussed in Chapter 25.

All the chapters are short, punctuated with useful headings and supported by notes and their own bibliographies, which make them useful for assigning to students who need a quick introduction to a select topic. It should be noted that some will be more useful in this capacity than others, however; while the chapters by Tabolli (on Veii and its closest neighbours), D.F. Maras (epigraphy), F. Boitani (wall-painting) and I. van Kampen (stone sculpture) successfully balance primary evidence and interpretation, others do not give sufficient explanations or references for students to understand where hypotheses start and end. The chapter by G. Colonna on the Portonaccio sanctuary is a case in point: this superb summary of the cult place, which sets out the development of the site from the seventh to the fifth centuries bc with impressive coherence, repeatedly states that different elements were produced by kings, tyrants and aristocrats, meaning those new to the subject would benefit from more context or direction towards earlier scholarship setting out the rationales for these assignations. This is not an issue solely with this chapter, and it is mentioned here simply to highlight that the approaches of different authors will work better for some readers than others.

As a whole the volume shows the wide range of studies undertaken at Veii and just how much can be achieved by well-funded excavation projects. Indeed, one of the strengths of the book is how it manages to give a sense of the site as a whole, something that is otherwise difficult to comprehend at times in light of numerous projects and individual areas of scholarship that tend to publish findings separately. Although one could churlishly point to subjects that were not tackled here as extensively as one may have wished, such as water management and analyses of flora and fauna, there are many areas of interest that emerge across reading multiple chapters. Veii's international ties with Greece and the Near East during the eighth century bc prompt revision of the argument that the Orientalising period was the time of transformative new contact. Tantalising information about Veii's relationship with the sea emerges through the combination of finds such as a kantharos from Tomb 3 in the necropolis of via d'Avack, incised with images of two cargo ships (G. Bartoloni and A. De Santis); the observation that the same number of ship representations have been found at Veii as at Vulci and Tarquinia (A. Rathje); and the discovery of East Greek and Attic ‘SOS’ amphoras at Quaranta Rubbie (Boitani). Connections between Veii and Rome are shown as becoming ever more multifaceted, with possible evidence for an Aeneas cult at the sanctuary of Campetti South (Bartoloni and L.M. Michetti, I. Edlund-Berry), similar distinctions between ‘official’ and ‘cursive’ writing systems at Veii and Rome (Maras) and comparable techniques for building fortifications at both cities (L. Pulcinelli). Interconnections between Veii and other Etruscan, Faliscan and Latin cities also come into sharper relief through finds such as the work of the Crane Painter (whose workshop appears to have moved to Veii from Caere) (O. Cerasuolo, Boitani), study of the settlement patterns along the Fosso Galeria valley and the Treja River (Tabolli, Bartoloni and De Santis) and the names of the same donors appearing on vases at Veii, Vulci and Lavinium (Maras).

The wealth and precociousness of Veii in select areas also comes through. Important groups of grave goods from Tomb AA1 in the Quattro Fontanili necropolis, and from Tombs 804, 871 and 1036 at Casale del Fosso, appear in different chapters (A. Piergrossi, Rathje, M. Milletti and L. Drago) that together emphasise that they should be considered alongside the famous Regolini-Galassi tomb from Caere as examples of lavish Etruscan burials during the eighth and seventh centuries bc. Against this comparability, however, Maras notes the important difference that, unlike Caere, Tarquinia and Vulci, the majority of inscriptions at Veii in the seventh and sixth centuries bc come from sanctuary contexts instead of tombs. Suggestions by Colonna and Maras that the Portonaccio sanctuary managed its own scribal school, likely to have been responsible for writing oracular responses and votive dedications for devotees, are not new here, but are presented by Colonna with comments about the use of symbols on the architectural elements of the sanctuary's temple in a way that brings up interesting connections between writing, cult and industry, which invites comparison with practices at sites such as Poggio Civitate, as does the evidence for specialised workshops at the Veintine sanctuaries of Campetti and Macchiagrande set out by B. Belelli Marchesini. It is also useful to remember that the earliest Etruscan wall-paintings currently known come from Veii, in the Tomb of the Roaring Lions, the Tomb of the Ducks and the now badly-compromised Campana Tomb, decorating what may be male and female burials according to Boitani.

As an edited book, written largely by Italian scholars in English, the volume is a good representation of the current state of Etruscan studies. Quite apart from the breadth of research covered, which signifies how far scholarship has come since the days when the Etruscans could be dismissed as ‘mysterious’, the fact that some chapters overlap material, contradict one another and display widely differing opinions on the extent to which later literary sources can be used to interpret early archaeology actually works well as examples of the current state of the discipline. What the editor calls a ‘polyphonic narrative’ in the preface shows the diversity of scholarly approaches and how much remains unsettled. The book, and the series, can be seen as part of a larger, ongoing project to bridge the divide between Italian scholars and non-Italian audiences that has arisen in part over the last half-century. Assembling a set of evidence and arguments such as these in a format that can be used by English-speaking undergraduates is an important effort to secure the discipline's international future.

Another notable strength is the number of illustrations. Key artefacts and sets of grave goods are laid out with useful captions in almost all chapters. The Press is to be congratulated on accepting this number of images, but could benefit from allowing them to be much larger in future volumes, as this reader sometimes struggled to make out details of plans and diagrams. A set of maps at the start are referred to throughout for orientation, although on Map 4 the markers for the points of interest only appear up to the letter K whereas the legend extends to Y. These are small quibbles, though, that should not detract from the value of the book, which certainly belongs in university libraries.