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Wall text panel written for the Italic Cultures exhibit case of the Greek and Roman Galleries of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art.
The geography of Italy, with its mountain ranges, hills, and river-lined plains, created natural divisions among its many peoples. Though they interacted, the different Italic cultures developed independently and created their own unique artistic traditions. These traditions were influenced to a greater and lesser extent by the Etruscans of central Italy, the most powerful and best known of the pre-Roman Italic cultures, and by the Greek colonists in Southern Italy and Sicily.
The geography and cultural remains of the Villanovans show them to be the precursors to the Etruscan civilization. The Umbrians lived in an area of shifting boundaries east of Rome, and, according to the historian Pliny, never had more than a tenuous grasp on their independence. Praenestine cultural was rich in religious architecture and musical art. The Faliscans were the nearest neighbors of the Etruscans. Gathered together in this case are examples of work created by these Italic cultures: Villanovan bronze equipment, bronze figures from Sardinia and Umbria, Faliscan ceramics, and bronze containers from Bologna, Praeneste, and Campania.