This course would be a survey of the cultural relationship between the Etruscan and Roman people from the Villanovan Iron Age to the Augustan Period (800 BC-14AD). It would introduce students to the myriad ways neighboring people interact: through commerce, religion, warfare and custom. Principally, we will use methodologies developed in Archaeology, Ancient History, Linguistics and Architectural History to understand and reconstruct the diverse contexts in which these two groups interacted. Our objective will be to study this reciprocal relationship from the rise of Etruscan power and its domination of the city of Rome to its eclipse under Roman expansion during the Republic by drawing on different information sources such as ancient texts, funerary monuments, inscriptions, monumental architecture and pottery styles. This would facilitate a multi-disciplinary examination not only of the different aspects of cultural contact but more importantly would help us to conceptualize the trends in Roman culture which ultimately led to the demise of the Etruscan way of life.