The vast number of Etruscan tombs and the richness of their decoration and furnishings tell us much about another aspect of the Etruscans’ religion: their view of the afterlife. About this the fabulous painted tombs of Tarquinia tell us most, and bid fair to tell us more as new methods are applied to their discovery and exploration. The ubiquitous Bradford has been at work in Etruria too; his quick eye has detected on air-photographs over 800 new tomb-mounds at Tarquinia alone, and new methods of ground exploration, worked out by the dedicated Italian engineer C. M. Lerici, have enormously speeded the work of exploration. Electrical-resistivity surveying with a potentiometer, sensitive to the difference between solid earth and empty subterranean space, makes possible the rapid tracing of a profile showing where the hollows of Etruscan tombs exist underground (Fig. 2.12). A hole is then drilled large enough to admit a periscope; if the periscope shows painted walls, or pottery, a camera can be attached to make a 360-degree photograph. By this method Lerici reports exploring 450 tombs in 120 days. This work, rapid as it is, is being done none too soon; land redistribution schemes, good for the farmer, bad for the archaeologist, are changing the face of south Etruria day by day; deep plowing and the planting of vines and fruit trees are destroying or obscuring the archaeological picture. Dennis would hardly lament the passing of the conditions he so graphically describes: “Among the half-destroyed tumuli of the Montarozzi [at Tarquinia] is a pit, six or eight feet deep, overgrown by lentiscus; and at the bottom is a hole, barely large enough for a man to squeeze himself through, and which no one would care to enter unless aware of something within to repay him for the trouble, and the filth unavoidably contracted. Having wormed myself through this aperture, I found myself in a dark, damp chamber, half-choked with the _debris_ of the walls and ceiling. Yet the walls have not wholly fallen in, for when my eyes were somewhat accustomed to the gloom, I perceived them to be painted, and the taper’s light disclosed on the inner wall a banquet in the open air.” Modern gadgetry like Lerici’s has destroyed some of the romance; there is something graphic about descriptions like Mengarelli’s of opening a tomb at Cerveteri in 1910, in the presence of the local and neighboring landlords, the Prince and Princess Ruspoli and the Marchese Guglielmi. As the blocks of the entrance were removed one by one, and sunlight was reflected into the tomb by mirrors, there were to be seen against the black earth objects of gleaming gold, and priceless proto-Corinthian vases resting on shreds of decomposed wood, which were all that was left of the funeral bed, while other vases were to be seen fixed to the wall with nails.