Italian Police Thwart “Tomb Raiders” at Etruscan Burial Site

A pair of tomb raiders, whom Italian authorities are calling “clumsy and amateurish,” were foiled after looting millions of dollars worth of ancient Etruscan artifacts from a necropolis and attempting to sell them online. It is against the law to excavate or remove artifacts from such burial grounds in Italy.

The Carabinieri Cultural Heritage Protection Unit, a branch of Italy’s national police, was tipped off by suspicious photographs earlier this year. The images showed looted Etruscan artifacts intended for sale on the black market, as well as an in-progress excavation. They were allegedly posted online by the so-called “tomb raiders.” Investigators located the illegal dig site in Citta della Pieve, about 90 miles north of Rome, using a combination of aerial drone photography and phone tapping.

The Etruscan artifacts were unlawfully excavated from Etruscan burial chambers on land owned by the thieves, said Perugia Chief Prosecutor Raffaele Cantone during a press conference on Tuesday, November 19. In a statement, the Carabinieri elaborated, “Two people were identified as responsible, against whom [charges are being brought] for the crimes of theft and receiving cultural goods: eight Etruscan stone urns, two sarcophagi, and related funerary items from the Hellenistic period, dating from the third century BCE, were seized.”

Looted Etruscan Artifacts Depict Ancient Princesses

The eight urns and two sarcophagi looted from a hypogeum, or underground tomb, belonged to an influential Etruscan family who lived between 300 BCE and 100 BCE. The thieves also stole several funerary objects from the burial site. According to the Italian Ministry of Culture, many of the artifacts depict Etruscan princesses for whom the sarcophagi were likely created. One sarcophagus contained the full skeleton of a woman in her 40s, as well as a funerary trousseau of objects meant to accompany the deceased to the afterlife.

“The funerary trousseau is particularly rich, consisting of both earthenware and metal furnishings and pottery,” said the Carabinieri. The recovered contents include “four bronze mirrors, one of which [bears] the ancient she-wolf suckling Romulus, a balsamarium [bottle] still containing traces of perfume used in antiquity, a bone comb, and oenochoe [wine jugs] commonly used by Etruscan women during banquets and symposia.”

Between the 8th and 3rd centuries BCE, Etruscan civilization flourished in central Italy—including present-day Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio—until it was eventually assimilated into Rome. The Etruscans were renowned in antiquity for their access to mineral resources. Their achievements in agriculture, metalworking, architecture, and art made them one of the most sophisticated societies of the Iron Age. They also developed their own system of writing that is only partly understood today, making our contemporary understanding of their ancient society and culture especially dependent on surviving Etruscan artifacts like those looted in Citta della Pieve.