Populonia
Populonia is an ancient town located on the northern coast of Etruria, Italy, characterized by its strategic position on a promontory that served as a defensible acropolis. The area has been inhabited since the Bronze Age and developed into a significant maritime market centered around the harbor of Porto Baratti. By around 800 BC, the town’s necropolis featured elaborate chamber tombs, influenced by Sardinian designs, reflecting the wealth generated from local metal resources such as copper and iron. This wealth facilitated trade with Greek markets, making Populonia a prominent importer of Greek artifacts in northern Etruria.
In the late seventh century, Populonia merged two villages, which led to increased power and the establishment of fortified walls. Initially a dependency of nearby city-states, it eventually gained independence around the fourth century BC, becoming one of the earliest centers in Etruria to mint its own coins. The town thrived, especially in iron-smelting, until the rise of Roman power, maintaining its significance as late as the third century BC. While Populonia faced decline following Sulla's sack in 82 BC, remnants of its rich history, including rock-cut tombs and later Roman graves, continue to testify to its cultural and economic importance in the ancient world.
Subject Terms
Populonia
(the Etruscan Pupluna)
A town on the coast of northern Etruria, located on and around a defensible promontory that was at that time a peninsula and virtually an island, and served as an acropolis. Already inhabited in the Bronze Age, the site came to be occupied by two villages that from early times presided over, or were associated with, a maritime market based on a harbor (Porto Baratti), which, although vulnerable to west winds, possessed a spacious site on an extensive bay.
Imposing chamber tombs of various types, utilizing Sardinian models, made their appearance in c 800 BC, and soon reflected an increasing degree of lavishness, thanks to the enormously rich supplies of metal (copper, iron, lead, tin) available in the nearby hills of the Campigliese and on the adjacent island of Ilva (Aethalia, Elba). Traces of smelting are found at Populonia from at least c 750. These metals attracted the Greek markets of southern Italy (first Pithecusae [Ischia] and Cumae [Cuma]), and it was through the sale or exchange of these valuable products that Populonia soon became the largest importer of Greek artifacts in northern Etruria. Phoenician and other near-eastern objects are found in its tombs, and it is possible that Fufluns, the Etruscan deity after which the place was called, owed his name to the Phoenician city Byblos (Jebeil). These Phoenician influences may have come either indirectly through the Greeks or through direct trading with Phoenicia.
In the later seventh century, the two constituent villages and markets of Populonia amalgamated, inaugurating a new growth in power and prosperity; both the acropolis—where public buildings and other structures have now been found—and the city below were equipped with fortified circuit walls. To judge from a passage of Servius, however, the place did not at once become a city-state on its own account, but remained for a time a dependency of Volaterrae (Volterra)—although this link, for geographical and cultural reasons alike, is improbable, and its master was more probably Vetulonia.
However, Populonia seems to have been one of the very first Etruscan centers to issue coinage, although probably not before 500. Early in the fourth century—escaping the economic recession that afflicted much of Etruria—it seems to have broken away from its suzerain and to have become an independent city-state. By this time, apparently, the Populonians had begun to increase their iron-smelting industry by taking over a large proportion of the activity formerly undertaken at Ilva, where wood coal was no longer available in sufficient quantities. Thus although at Populonia, as elsewhere in Etruria, the Romans increasingly gained control, the city continued to flourish as late as the third century BC. Rock-cut chamber tombs are datable to Hellenistic times, and although there is evidence of subsequent decline—accelerated by Sulla's sack in 82—covered graves of the later Roman period are also to be seen.