"Fu giornalista, propagandista, oratore fino a quando lo prese la passione delle cose antiche, dei monumenti, delle ricerche, degli scavi". Il conte Francesco Mancinelli Scotti devastatore d'Etruria?

For many scholars who are interested in the late 19th-early 20th century excavations in South Etruria, Tuscany, Ager Faliscus and Latium Vetus, Francesco Mancinelli Scotti is a well- known key figure of those years. This excavator was often working outside the legal boundaries of archaeology and was therefore named “the eternal wrecker of every archaeological site”. Despite this negative judgment, the interest of this ‘archaeologist’ lies in his frenetic activity on the field which resulted in fundamental discoveries of pre-Roman Italy as well as in the creation of important collections in museums in Italy and abroad. Although the importance of his excavations has been often stressed in archaeological literature, this chapter presents the first comprehensive and critical analysis of his biography. Count Francesco Mancinelli Scotti was born in Civita Castellana on 23 July 1847 and died in Rome on 24 July 1936. For most of his long life, from approximately the age of forty to over eighty years old – 1886 to 1928 – he has been a compulsive excavator in the Faliscan region, in most of South Etruria, Latium and elsewhere. His spasmodic archaeological experience can be better understood while looking at the earlier years of his life and at his family heritage. His father, Crispino Mancinelli, inherited the noble title of the Mancinelli Scotti, once a rich Umbrian family from Narni, but since 1816 certainly the family decayed and became bankrupt, and was therefore forced to move to Civita Castellana. Here things got even worse while Crispino joined the political rebellions against the Pope in 1848 and while the power was restored he was exiled from the Papal States. In his early twenties Francesco Mancinelli Scotti, following in the footsteps of the father, joined the volunteer soldiers of Giuseppe Garibaldi, fighting in Lombardia and then in 1867 at Monterotondo and Mentana. He probably took part in September 1870 to the Breach of Porta Pia. Close friend of Ricciotti Garibaldi, until the very end of his life the strong link with the Garibaldinians not only resulted in the political participation of Francesco to the community of veterans, but also, thanks to his rebel character, in the constant fighting with institutions. For a short period of time he directed in Terni a weekly polemic journal, the “Cittadino Ternano”. For some of the papers he was later prosecuted because of defamation. Without any money archaeology soon became for Francesco the opportunity to make a living for him and for his numerous family and in this perspective the number of discoveries he made for forty years and the continuous attempts to sell abroad most of the finds appear to have been a direct consequence of this need. The recent discovery in the archive of one of his great-grandchildren of his Autobiography – published in this chapter for the first time – adds a significant number of new sites to the ones traditionally known to have been excavated by Francesco Mancinelli Scotti.