In memoriam, Giovannangelo Camporeale

Abstract

Giovannangelo Camporeale, Honorary Member of the Advisory Board of Etruscan Studies and Professor Emeritus of Etruscology and Italic Antiquity at the University of Florence, passed away at the age of 83 on July 2, 2017, at his house in Florence. The world of Etruscology has lost one of its leaders, a master teacher and scholar. Camporeale taught in Florence from 1962 to 2004 and trained an entire generation of archaeologists. He was an academic leader as well, serving as President of the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Etruschi, Lucumone of the Etruscan Academy of Cortona, Vice President of the Accademia Toscana “La Colombaria,” a fellow of the Accademia dei Lincei, and as a founding member of the board of the Lexicon IconographicumMythologiae Classicae. Camporeale authored over 300 publications. His scholarship was always firmly grounded in careful attention to material culture and archaeological context. Major publications include La tomba del Duce (Florence 1967), I commerci di Vetulonia in età orientalizzante (Florence 1969), La Collezione Alla Querce. Materiali archeologici orvietani (Florence 1970), Buccheri a cilindretto di fabbrica orvietana (Florence 1972), and La caccia in Etruria (Rome 1984). Recent publications were broader and synthetic in nature: Gli Etruschi. Storia e civiltà (Turin 2000/2004/ 2015), which has been translated into German, and Gli Etruschi fuori d’Etruria (Verona 2001), translated into English and issued as The Etruscans Outside Etruria (Los Angeles 2004). Camporeale directed the excavations at Massa Marittima, an Etruscan settlement of the Orientalizing and Archaic periods, which owed its existence to its proximity to the rich mineral resources of the Colline Metallifere. The results of those excavations were published in L’Etruria mineraria (Florence-Milan 1985), L’abitato etrusco dell’Accesa (Rome 1997), and in Il parco archeologico dell’Accesa a Massa Marittima (Follonica 2000). The research was important and timely because of its interrogation of settlements connected to the complex economic forces that transformed early Etruscan culture. The finds from those excavations greatly expanded the holdings of the Museo Civico in Massa Marittima, and in 2014 Camporeale was awarded honorary citizenship of that city. In 2017 he was made an honorary citizen of Cortona.