Purchased in the 1890s, the Italy collection includes fresco paintings, fine bronzes and jewelry, and household objects from the Roman villas of Boscoreale, a site near doomed Pompeii. Complete Etruscan tomb groups like the Museum’s are rare and of great scientific and educational value.
Lying unstudied in the collections since the 1920s, remains of animals used for food at Greek, Roman, and other Mediterranean settlements now clue archaeozoologists to the interactions of ancient peoples with their environments. Stone and bone tools from prehistoric France, as well as engraved and painted art objects, are additional pieces in the puzzle of evolving human ecology. They, too, represent one of the best collections of its kind in the United States.
