Canegrate culture
Encyclopedia
The Canegrate culture was a civilization of Prehistoric Italy
Prehistoric Italy
thumb|A Sardinian bronze statuette, perhaps portraying a tribal chief. [[Cagliari]], Museo Archeologico Nazionale.The territory of what is now Italy was settled by Neanderthal man in the Lower Palaeolithic, roughly 500,000 years ago. As elsewhere in Europe, the Neanterthals co-existed with Homo...

 whom developed from the recent Bronze Age
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...

 (13th century BC) until the Iron Age
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...

, in the Pianura Padana of what are now western Lombardy
Lombardy
Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country and one of the richest in the whole of Europe...

, eastern Piedmont
Piedmont
Piedmont is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,402 square kilometres and a population of about 4.4 million. The capital of Piedmont is Turin. The main local language is Piedmontese. Occitan is also spoken by a minority in the Occitan Valleys situated in the Provinces of...

 and Canton Ticino.

The name comes from the locality of Canegrate
Canegrate
Canegrate is a comune in the Province of Milan in the Italian region Lombardy, located about 20 km northwest of Milan....

 in Lombardy, south of Legnano
Legnano
Legnano is an Italian town and comune with 59.147 inhabitants in the province of Milan, about from Milan.It's crossed by the river Olona, and it's the 13th town for inhabitants in Lombardy....

 and 25 km. north of Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

, where important archaeological findings (approximately fifty tombs with ceramics and metallic objects) were discovered in the 20th century. It is one of the richer archeological sites of Northern Italy
Northern Italy
Northern Italy is a wide cultural, historical and geographical definition, without any administrative usage, used to indicate the northern part of the Italian state, also referred as Settentrione or Alta Italia...

. First findings were excavated around 1926 in the area of Rione Santa Colomba, and systematic excavation occurred between march 1953 and autumn 1956.

The Canegrate culture testifies the arrival of a first proto-Celtic migratory wave of populations from the northwest part of the Alps that, crossing the alpine passes, had yet infiltrated and settled down in the western Po
Po River
The Po |Ligurian]]: Bodincus or Bodencus) is a river that flows either or – considering the length of the Maira, a right bank tributary – eastward across northern Italy, from a spring seeping from a stony hillside at Pian del Re, a flat place at the head of the Val Po under the northwest face...

 area between the Lake Maggiore
Lake Maggiore
Lake Maggiore is a large lake located on the south side of the Alps. It is the second largest of Italy and largest of southern Switzerland. Lake Maggiore is the most westerly of the three great prealpine lakes of Italy, it extends for about 70 km between Locarno and Arona.The climate is mild...

 and the Lake of Como (Scamozzina culture
Scamozzina culture
The Scamozzina culture , which takes its name from the necropolis found in C.na Scamozzina of Albairate, was a prehistoric civilization of Italy that developed between the end of the middle Bronze Age and the beginning of the late Bronze Age , in western Lombardy and Piedmont.It was located in an...

). They were bearers of a new funerary ideology, which supplanted the old culture of inhumation, introducing the cremation
Cremation
Cremation is the process of reducing bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and bone fragments. This is accomplished through high-temperature burning, vaporization and oxidation....

.

From the archaeological evidences it can be deduced that their impact with the precedent populations had not been completely pacific. The absolutely typical and isolated Canegrate findings do not led to a connection with the precedent Polada culture
Polada culture
The Polada culture is the name for a culture of the ancient Bronze Age which spread on all of the territory of Northern Italy and characterized by settlements on pile-dwellings....

 and of a graduated insertion of theirs.

The population of Canegrate maintained his own homogeneity for a limited period of time, approximately a century, after which they melted with the Ligurian
Ligures
The Ligures were an ancient people who gave their name to Liguria, a region of north-western Italy.-Classical sources:...

 aboriginal populations and to give origin with this union to a new phase called the Golasecca culture
Golasecca culture
The Golasecca culture was a Celtic culture in northern Italy , whose type-site has been excavated at Golasecca in the province of Varese, Lombardy.-Archeological sources:...

.

The origins of the Orobii
Orobii
The Orobii also Orumobii or Orumbovii were a population that inhabited the northern Italian valleys of Bergamo, Como and Lecco in the 1st millennium BC....

, a population localized by Classical writers in these areas and which founded the city of Como
Como
Como is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy.It is the administrative capital of the Province of Como....

, have been linked to the Canegrate culture.

See also

  • Canegrate
    Canegrate
    Canegrate is a comune in the Province of Milan in the Italian region Lombardy, located about 20 km northwest of Milan....

  • Scamozzina culture
    Scamozzina culture
    The Scamozzina culture , which takes its name from the necropolis found in C.na Scamozzina of Albairate, was a prehistoric civilization of Italy that developed between the end of the middle Bronze Age and the beginning of the late Bronze Age , in western Lombardy and Piedmont.It was located in an...

  • Polada culture
    Polada culture
    The Polada culture is the name for a culture of the ancient Bronze Age which spread on all of the territory of Northern Italy and characterized by settlements on pile-dwellings....

  • Villanovan culture
    Villanovan culture
    The Villanovan culture was the earliest Iron Age culture of central and northern Italy, abruptly following the Bronze Age Terramare culture and giving way in the 7th century BC to an increasingly orientalizing culture influenced by Greek traders, which was followed without a severe break by the...

  • Golasecca culture
    Golasecca culture
    The Golasecca culture was a Celtic culture in northern Italy , whose type-site has been excavated at Golasecca in the province of Varese, Lombardy.-Archeological sources:...

  • Este culture
    Este culture
    The Este culture was a proto-historic culture existed from the late Italian Bronze Age to the Roman period and located in the present territory of Veneto. It is named from Este in the province of Padova.-See also:*Adriatic Veneti*Polada culture*Euganei*Canegrate culture*Golasecca...

  • Prehistoric Italy
    Prehistoric Italy
    thumb|A Sardinian bronze statuette, perhaps portraying a tribal chief. [[Cagliari]], Museo Archeologico Nazionale.The territory of what is now Italy was settled by Neanderthal man in the Lower Palaeolithic, roughly 500,000 years ago. As elsewhere in Europe, the Neanterthals co-existed with Homo...

  • Ancient peoples of Italy

Sources

  • Corbella, Roberto: Celti: itinerari storici e turistici tra Lombardia, Piemonte, Svizzera, Macchione, Varese 2000; ISBN 8883400305
  • Corbella, Roberto: Magia e mistero nella terra dei Celti: Como, Varesotto, Ossola; Macchione, Varese 2004; ISBN 8883401867
  • D'Aversa, Arnaldo: La Valle Padana tra Etruschi, Celti e Romani, Paideia, Brescia 1986ISBN 88-394-0381-7
  • De Marinis, Raffaele (1991). "I Celti Golasecchiani". In Multiple Authors, I Celti, Bompiani.
  • De Marinis, Raffaele (1990). Liguri e Celto-Liguri, Officine grafiche Garzanti Milano, Garzanti-Scheiwiller
  • Grassi, Maria Teresa: I Celti in Italia, Longanesi, Milan 1991 ISBN 88-304-1012-8
  • Kruta, Venceslas: I celti e il Mediterraneo, Jaca Book, 2004, ISBN 881643628X, ISBN 9788816436282
  • Kruta, Venceslas: La grande storia dei celti. La nascita, l'affermazione e la decadenza, Newton & Compton, 2003, ISBN 8882898512, ISBN 9788882898519
  • Kruta, Venceslas and Valerio Massimo Manfredi
    Valerio Massimo Manfredi
    Valerio Massimo Manfredi is an Italian historian, writer, archaeologist and journalist.-Biography:He was born in Piumazzo di Castelfranco Emilia, province of Modena and is married to Christine Fedderson Manfredi, who translates his published works from Italian to English...

    : I celti d'Italia, Mondadori, 2000, ISBN 8804477105, ISBN- 9788804477105
  • Violante, Antonio: I Celti a sud delle Alpi, Silvana, Milan, 1993 ISBN 88-366-0442-0
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