The book is a catalogue and study of the material coming from the excavation of the site of Monte San Paolo near Chiusi. Despite being dominated by funerary remains, our knowledge of Etruscan Chiusi and the growth of its settlement in the Iron Age and Archaic period has been, over the last two decades or so, profoundly altered by recent investigations on the hills located near the main hill where the later city, and now modern town, developed. Thanks to these investigations, we now know that Iron Age and Archaic Chiusi did not consist of a single settlement on this latter hill, but developed on these former hills at least until the sixth century b.c. This has contributed to the abandonment of a monolithic model for Etruscan urbanization, characteristic of the large urban centres of coastal Southern Etruria, which consisted of the occupation of single very large tufa plateaux and the formation of a relatively unified settlement in the early Iron Age. Chiusi represents, in this respect, not an exception to this model, but an example of the variety of occupation patterns which are now recognized in the growth of urban centres across Etruria.

Monte S. Paolo, the highest hill in the hinterland of Chiusi and located near the modern town, was excavated in 2001, although neither systematically nor fully. Earlier investigations had already identified the occupation of Monte S. Paolo in the first phase of the Italian Iron Age, which, in conjunction with evidence from nearby hills, allows us to hypothesize that the development of Chiusi on more than one hill dates back to this period and continued into the Archaic period.

The excavation of 2001 was preceeded by a surface survey, part of a wider study of Archaic Chiusi by the author. The survey identified two areas (MP1 and MP2), respectively 300 and 200 square metres in extent, located near the summit of the hill, characterized by a high concentration of archaeological material, mostly fragments of architectural terracottas, building material and pottery: the material from these two areas formed the basis for the decision to excavate a few test trenches (saggi A–D) in the vicinity. The archaeological stratigraphy of all these trenches was unfortunately found to have been destroyed by modern agricultural and looting activities with the sole exception of Trench C where archaeological deposits with intact stratigraphy were excavated. In this trench, building material probably belonging to a structure located on the hill was found in a large dump pit. The material that forms the catalogue consists of all the artefacts recovered in the excavation of Trench C and from the surface survey of area MP1, which is closest to Trench C, and some other material originating from older survey and chance findings.

After a brief introduction to the site, the history of its discovery and the 2001 excavation, the catalogue is organized according to artefact forms and types: after a brief analysis of the ceramic wares (impasto, red impasto, bucchero, Red Ware and pasta grigia), the catalogue of architectural terracottas is followed by that of pottery vessels divided into forms, mostly pertaining to eating and drinking, and storing liquids and foodstuffs. A chapter is dedicated to the figured cylinder-seal-stamped and stamped decoration of some ceramic fragments: each piece is analysed both stylistically and, where possible, iconographically. The publication ends with concluding remarks; these are preceeded by a chapter that discusses two fragments of decorated architectural elements from area MP2 that are likely to belong to an early fifth-century b.c. cult structure, known from other similar fragments now in the Archaeological Museum of Chiusi. In the concluding chapter, the author assesses the material coming from the dump pit of Trench C to be homogeneous in date and therefore to be evidence of a single act of destruction of a nearby earlier structure: he dates this material between the end of the seventh century and c. 560 b.c. and provides a hypothetical reconstruction of the highly decorated roof of such a structure on the basis of the architectural terracottas and other roof elements found in the pit. The rest of this chapter is dedicated to a contextualization, from the point of view of local Chiusine production and consumption, of the ceramic material, largely consisting of banqueting vessels, and a comparison of these vessels with contemporary or near-contemporary material from other analogous élite domestic contexts in Etruria, most prominently Poggio Civitate. An overall comparison with Poggio Civitate allows us, according to the author, to interpret the hypothetical destroyed building at Monte S. Paolo as an aristocratic residence, the nature of which, domestic or cultic, remains, however, ultimately unknown.

Although this publication appears, at first sight, simply an analytical study of a small and fragmented corpus of material from an unsystematic excavation of an Etruscan Chiusine Archaic site, it is, in fact, a lot more than this: the analytical chapters are particularly valuable for providing a detailed study of a phase, the sixth century b.c., that remains largely known at Chiusi from funerary evidence only.