My favorite science story about the Etruscan language is using statistics of dice to clarify the words for numbers.
Dice were popular in ancient Mediterranean cultures. The older number arrangement put usually 1 opposite 2; 3 opposite 4; 5 opposite 6. At some point it shifted to the more modern 1-6; 2-5; 3-4 arrangement.
Usually dice used dots or "pips" as today, but an example was found numbered with Etruscan words. Arguing from statistics of how dice were numbered, they convincingly identified the pairs of numbers. This resolves an ambiguity from other literary sources about the Etruscan words for 4 and 6.
Gambling with etruscan dice: A tale of numbers and letters
G Artioli, V Nociti, I Angelini
Archaeometry 53 (5), 1031-1043, 2011
The graphical and linguistic interpretation of the first six Etruscan numerals has long been confronted with the ambiguous assignment of the words huth and sa to either 4 or 6. Here, we show how the systematic combinatorial analysis of the numerals appearing on ancient southern Etrurian dice dated from the eighth to the third centuries bc, together with the careful comparison of the results with the only two existing dice carrying the alphabetical translations of the numerals conserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, finally allows unambiguous mathematical resolution of the linguistic riddle, allowing the firm attribution of the numeral 6 to the graphical value huth and 4 to sa. Combinatorial analysis of the numerals distribution on the six faces of the die shows that only two of the 15 possible numerical combinations were actually in use in southern Etruria, and that during the fifth century bc there was a marked shift from the typical (1–2, 3–4, 5–6) combination used in the early seventh‐ to fifth‐century bc dice to the (1–6, 2–5, 3–4) combination used at later times and still largely adopted today. The largest body of archaeometric data on dice specimens from Etruria is presented, based on macroscopic examination, X‐ray diffraction, DRIFT spectroscopy and density measurements.
Dice were popular in ancient Mediterranean cultures. The older number arrangement put usually 1 opposite 2; 3 opposite 4; 5 opposite 6. At some point it shifted to the more modern 1-6; 2-5; 3-4 arrangement.
Usually dice used dots or "pips" as today, but an example was found numbered with Etruscan words. Arguing from statistics of how dice were numbered, they convincingly identified the pairs of numbers. This resolves an ambiguity from other literary sources about the Etruscan words for 4 and 6.
[1] http://www.academia.edu/download/44616033/GAMBLING_WITH_ETRU...