What are some of the Intricacies of the Etruscan people or any interesting articles about them? I've been fascinated by their culture for awhile but don't know where to find out more about them.
A whole lot! Tarquinian kings ruled Rome until 509 BCE, so much of early Roman culture was derived from the Etruscans. Etruscan art became highly sophisticated during the Orientalizing period (c. 700-570 BCE), and Etruscan bucchero pottery exhibited particularly fine craftsmanship for its era that was later imitated by Roman potters. The Tuscan temple plan was originally an Etruscan invention, as were burial urns, tumulus tombs, and corbel arches, to name a few. There aren't many things the Etruscans did that weren't later surpassed by the Romans (the invention of the true arch, for example), but many elements of Roman culture were Etruscan in origin.
I just finished a term studying Classical Art and Archaeology in Rome and visited several significant Etruscan sites (Veii, Sutri, Falerii, Volsinii, Chiusi, Arezzo, Volterra, Populonia, Roselle, Cosa, Tarquinia, and Cerveteri), so hopefully I can be of some help if you have any more questions.
While it was the Pheonicians that most likley invented the script that would later become the Latin alphabet, it changed hands through different cultures and langauges before it got to Rome. The Greeks picked up the Pheonician script, where it was changed to better fit their langauge and then spread to their colonies across the Mediterrean. The Etruscans probably picked up this alphabet from Greek colonists in Southern Italy and were using it by the 7th century B.C.
Etruscan is not an Indo-European language, and it lacked many sounds found in Greek and Latin, like the /g/ sound, as in gate. The third letter of the Greek alphabet Γ, represented this unused sound. The Etruscans did, however, have the "hard C" or /k/ sound, as in cat, and started using Γ to represent it, almost entirely replacing the use of Κ.
The Latins also had some problems with the Etruscan alphabet once they started using it. Unlike Etruscan, Latin had both the "G" and "C" sounds. However, instead of converting Γ (which was now written much like the modern C) to the /g/ sound, and using K for the /k/ sound, like in Greek, they kept the Etruscan way and invented a new letter G to fill in for the /g/, by adding one additional mark. Also through sound differences, this is the way the Etruscan also lead to the letter F.
The Etruscan Language: An Introduction by Giuliano Bonfante, Larissa Bonfante