http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7028330.stmAfter seven hot summers of digging, an Italian archaeological team believe they have discovered one of the most important sites of the ancient world.
Fanum Voltumnae, a shrine, marketplace and Etruscan political centre, was situated in the upper part of the Tiber river valley.
It lies at the foot of a huge outcrop of rock, upon which is perched the mediaeval city of Orvieto.
A walled sanctuary area, 5m-wide (16ft) Etruscan roads, an altar, and the foundations of many Roman buildings that have laid buried for two millennia have been discovered.
And as the dig closed for the 2007 season, with tarpaulins being pulled over ruins to protect them from the winter weather, Professor Simonetta Stopponi of Macerata University was upbeat about the site's significance.
"I am confident that for the first time we have positively identified one of the most important lost sites of the ancient world," she told the BBC.
Fanum was already famous in antiquity as a religious shrine and a meeting place where the 12 members of the Etruscan League, a confederation of central Italian cities, used to gather every spring to elect their leader.
In the autumn of 398BC an extraordinary policy meeting was held in Fanum.
A Roman army had been besieging the town of Veii, a wealthy member of the Etruscan League, which lay only 16km (10 miles) north of Rome.
The citizens of Veii, exhausted by years of warfare, appealed for help and asked the other members of the league to join them in declaring war on Rome.
The gods of the shrine of Fanum were duly consulted, but the vote went against collectively defending Veii.
Two years later the town fell to Rome.
It was the beginning of the end for the Etruscan League, all of whose cities eventually fell to Roman invaders.
/Marcus
