Seianti Hanunia Tlesnasa: The Story of an Etruscan Noblewoman: No. 100 (British Museum Research Publication) - Softcover

Now housed at the British Museum, the sarcophagus of noblewoman Seianti Hanunia Tlesnasa contained the best-preserved skeletal remains of any so far discovered in Etruscan central Italy. This volume presents 12 papers from members of a team of specialists placing the sarcophagus and remains within their historical and archaeological context. Coverage includes, for example, observations on the subject's dental and facial features and an examination of the pigments used in the sarcophagus. The volume is not indexed. Distributed in the U.S. by the David Brown Book Company. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Judith Swaddling is curator of Etruscan material in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum. She organised the Museum's permanent exhibition, Italy before the Roman Empire, which opened in 1991 and has orchestrated several international conferences on Italic and Etruscan archaeology, the most recent being Etruscans Now, held at the British Museum in December 2002 and with which the publication of this book was arranged to coincide. Her publications include Italian Iron Age Artefacts in the British Museum (ed.) 1986, and Etruscan Mirrors in the British Museum (Corpus Speculorum Etruscorum, 1st British Museum fascicule, 2000). Her other specialisms are techniques of ancient metalwork, and ancient sport, whence The Ancient Olympic Games (2nd enlarged and revised edition, 1999), originally devised to coincide with a major British Museum exhibition of which she was organiser. John Prag is Keeper of Archaeology and Reader in Classics and Ancient History at the Manchester Museum in the University of Manchester. With Richard Neave he led the Manchester University team which pioneered the modern reconstruction of ancient faces, faces which include Philip II of Macedon, King Midas, and Lindow Man, found in a Cheshire bog in 1984. Together they wrote Making Faces Using Forensic and Archaeological Techniques (British Museum Press, 1997, reprinted 1999), which is at the same time the first accessible account of the technique and a textbook in several universities on both sides of the Atlantic. Dr Prag is particularly interested in the way facial reconstruction and the multidisciplinary approach that underpins it can be used to solve problems in archaeology and art history, as the Seianti project illustrates most dramatically. He has written extensively on many aspects of Greek art and archaeology, and is presently involved in projects to study ancient Greek DNA, and the chemical analysis of ancient Greek pottery. He is also directing a series of interdisciplinary projects to understand the history and landscape of Alderley Edge in Cheshire. He has curated many exhibitions for the Manchester Museum as well as the prize-winning permanent Mediterranean Gallery (opened 1993).