Im trying to understand the ways in which the certain Italic peoples adopted their writing systems, and some history/culture of these peoples circa and before the founding of Rome.
For the most part, even just directing me towards some literature that would give me a greater understanding of Italic life around this time would be amazing. And please feel free to correct any mistakes Ive made or flaws in my view of the area in this period!
*Is this correct? From what I understand, the Etruscans adopted the Euboean Greek alphabet as late as the 8th century BCE and were the first of the Italic peoples to learn how to write. From there, the Latins adapted and used the majority of the alphabet. Adaptations of Etruscan alphabet continued to spread through the peninsula.
When the Romans eventually conquered the Etruscans in the 3rd centure BCE, Latin became the dominant language, and the Etruscan writing system declined and changed until the 1st century CE when it was totally lost.
*Are there any depictions or reconstructions of what any Italic village or town would look like anywhere from 1200 BCE to the founding of Rome? What would a metallurgists place of work look like, how much did styles of housing differ between Italic societies?Any information about anything at all in this context would be appreciated.
*What would a major city/settlement have looked like? What would Rome have looked like when it was founded, and is there any information detailing its growth? Again, any information at all in this context would be appreciated.
How's your Italian? A lot of the best scholarship for your topics will be in Italian, especially for those that do not involve Rome or the Romans directly. Many that aren't Italian will instead be in German, unfortunately. I can give you some places to start—your questions are very broad—and try to find as much English as possible. Start with Forsythe for an overview (I put him first), then have a look through the other refs to see what sounds interesting.
Gary Forsythe, A Critical History of Early Rome: from Prehistory to the First Punic War. UC Press, 2005.
========== Alföldi, A. 1965. Early Rome and the Latins. Ann Arbor.
Baldi, P. 1999. The Foundations of Latin. Berlin and New York.
Banti, L. 1973. Etruscan Cities and Their Culture. Translated by E. Bizzarri. Berkeley.
Barfield, L. 1971. Northern Italy Before Rome. London and New York.
Bietti Sestieri, A.M. 1992. The Iron Age Community of Osteria Dell’ Osa: A Study of Socio-Political Development in Central Tyrrhenian Italy. Cambridge.
Bonfante, G. and L. 1983. The Etruscan Language. New York.
Cornell, TJ. 1991. “The Tyranny of the Evidence: A Discussion of the Possible Uses of Literacy in Etruria and Latium in the Archaic Age.” In Literacy in the Roman World, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 3. Edited by M. Beard et al. Ann Arbor.
Cristofani, M. 1972. “Sull’Origine e la Diffusione dell’ Alfabeto Etrusco.” ANRW I. 2: 466–89.
Gierow, P.G. 1964–66. The Iron Age Culture of Latium. 2 vols. Lund.
Hall, J.F., ed. 1997. Etruscan Italy: Etruscan Influences on the Civilizations of Italy from Antiquity to the Modern Era. Provo UT.
Holloway, R. R. 1981. Italy and the Aegean 3000–700 B.C. Louvain.
Meyer, JC. 1983. Pre-Republican Rome: An Analysis of the Cultural and Chronological Relations 1000–500 B.C. Analecta Romana Instituti Danici Supplementum XI. Odense.
Potter, T.W. 1979. The Changing Landscape of South Etruria. London.
Prosdocimi, A.L., ed. 1978. Lingue e Dialetti dell’ Italia Antica. Popoli e Civiltà dell’ Italia Antica 6. Rome.
Radke, G. 1979. Die Götter Altitaliens. Münster.
Ridgway, D. and F.R.S. Ridgway, eds. 1979. Italy Before the Romans: The Iron Age, Orientalizing and Etruscan Periods. London and New York.
Smith, C. J. 1996. Early Rome and Latium: Economy and Society C. 1000 to 500 B.C. Oxford.
Tesse D. Stek, Cult Places and Cultural Change in Republican Italy: a Contextual Approach to Religious Aspects of Rural Society after the Roman Conquest. Amsterdam UP, 2009.
Mario Torelli, Studies in the Romanisation of Italy. ed. and trans. Fracchia and Gualtieri. U of Alberta Press, 1995.
Vine, B. 1993. Studies in Archaic Latin Inscriptions. Innsbruck.
Wallace, R. E. 1998. “Recent Research on Sabellian Inscriptions.” Indo-European Studies Bulletin of the Friends and Alumni of Indo-European Studies (University of California Los Angeles) 8.1: 1–9.
Woudhuizen, F. C. 1992. Linguistica Tyrrhenica: A Compendium of Recent Results in Etruscan Linguistics. Amsterdam.