FSU Etruscan expert announces historic discovery at ancient site

Digging on a remote hilltop in Italy, a Florida State University classics professor and her students have unearthed artifacts that dramatically reshape our knowledge of the religious practices of an ancient people, the Etruscans.
Nancy de Grummond and Jim Harding, an FSU classics graduate student, lift a large Etruscan storage vessel from the sacrificial pit at Cetamura, and get their first view of the underside of the base of the vessel.

"We are excavating a monumental Etruscan building evidently dating to the final years of Etruscan civilization," said Nancy Thomson de Grummond, the M. Lynette Thompson Professor of Classics at FSU and director of the university's archaeology programs in Italy. Within the building, de Grummond's team located in early June what appears to be a sacrificial pit and a sanctuary—finds remarkable for the wealth of items they are yielding that appear to have been used in religious rituals.