Villanovan culture
Encyclopedia
The Villanovan culture was the earliest 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...
culture of central and northern Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, abruptly following the 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...
Terramare culture
Terramare culture
Terramare, Terramara or Terremare is a technology complex mainly of the central Po valley, in Emilia, northern Italy, dating to the Middle and Late Bronze Age ca. 1700-1150 BC. It takes its name from the "black earth" residue of settlement mounds. Terramare is from terra marna, "marl-earth", where...
and giving way in the 7th century BC to an increasingly orientalizing culture influenced by Greek
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
traders, which was followed without a severe break by the Etruscan civilization
Etruscan civilization
Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to a civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany. The ancient Romans called its creators the Tusci or Etrusci...
. The Villanovan culture and people branched from the Urnfield culture
Urnfield culture
The Urnfield culture was a late Bronze Age culture of central Europe. The name comes from the custom of cremating the dead and placing their ashes in urns which were then buried in fields...
of Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
. The Villanovans introduced iron-working to the Italian peninsula
Italian Peninsula
The Italian Peninsula or Apennine Peninsula is one of the three large peninsulas of Southern Europe , spanning from the Po Valley in the north to the central Mediterranean Sea in the south. The peninsula's shape gives it the nickname Lo Stivale...
; they practiced 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....
and buried the ashes of their dead in pottery urns of distinctive double-cone shape.
The name Villanovan comes from the type-site, that of the first archaeological finds relating to this advanced culture, remnants of a cemetery found near Villanova (Castenaso
Castenaso
Castenaso is a town and comune in the province of Bologna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. It is located around 12 kilometers away from Bologna, the capital of Emilia Romagna....
, 8 kilometers south-east of Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
) in 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...
. The excavation lasting from 1853 to 1855 was made by the scholarly owner, count Giovanni Gozzadini
Giovanni Gozzadini
Giovanni Gozzadini was an Italian archeologist.The last male heir of a noble family in Bologna, that had given the city men-at-arms, doctors, and jurists, Giovanni was a highly educated man in other areas such as politics...
, and involved 193 tombs, six of which were separated from the rest as if to signify a special social status. The "well tomb" pit graves lined with stones contained funerary urns; they had been only sporadically plundered, and most were untouched. In 1893, a chance discovery unearthed another distinctive Villanovan necropolis at Verucchio
Verucchio
Verucchio is a comune in the province of Rimini, region of Emilia-Romagna, Italy. It has a population of c. 9,300 and is located at 18 km from Rimini, on a spur overlooking the valley of the Marecchia river.-History:...
, overlooking the Adriatic coastal plain.
The burial characteristics relate the Villanovan culture to the Central European Urnfield culture (c. 1300 -750 BC), and Hallstatt culture
Hallstatt culture
The Hallstatt culture was the predominant Central European culture from the 8th to 6th centuries BC , developing out of the Urnfield culture of the 12th century BC and followed in much of Central Europe by the La Tène culture.By the 6th century BC, the Hallstatt culture extended for some...
(which succeeded the Urnfield culture). Cremated remains were placed in cinerary urns and then buried. A custom believed to originate with the Villanovan culture is the usage of "Hut urns", cinerary urns fashioned like small huts, and other advanced urn designs. Typical sgraffiato decoration of swastika
Swastika
The swastika is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, in either right-facing form in counter clock motion or its mirrored left-facing form in clock motion. Earliest archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient...
s, meanders and squares were scratched with a comb-like tool. Urns were accompanied by simple bronze fibulae, razors and rings.
Periodization
The culture is broadly divided into a proto-Villanovan culture (Villanovan I) from 1100 BC to 900 BC http://img641.imageshack.us/f/italiabronz.png/ and the Villanovan culture proper (Villanovan II) from 900 BC to 700 BC, when the Etruscan cities began to be founded.
The later phase (Villanovan II) saw radical changes, evidence of contact with Hellenic civilization and trade with the north along the Amber Road
Amber Road
The Amber Road was an ancient trade route for the transfer of amber. As one of the waterways and ancient highways, for centuries the road led from Europe to Asia and back, and from northern Africa to the Baltic Sea....
: glass and amber
Amber
Amber is fossilized tree resin , which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Amber is used as an ingredient in perfumes, as a healing agent in folk medicine, and as jewelry. There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents...
necklaces on women, bronze
Bronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
armor and horse harness fittings, and the development of elite graves in contrast to the earlier egalitarian culture Chamber tombs and inhumation practices were developed side-by-side with the earlier 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....
practices.
Range
Generally speaking, Villanovan settlements were centered in the Po River valleyPo 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...
and Etruria
Etruria
Etruria—usually referred to in Greek and Latin source texts as Tyrrhenia—was a region of Central Italy, an area that covered part of what now are Tuscany, Latium, Emilia-Romagna, and Umbria. A particularly noteworthy work dealing with Etruscan locations is D. H...
round Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
—later an important Etruscan center—and areas in Emilia Romagna (at Verucchio
Verucchio
Verucchio is a comune in the province of Rimini, region of Emilia-Romagna, Italy. It has a population of c. 9,300 and is located at 18 km from Rimini, on a spur overlooking the valley of the Marecchia river.-History:...
) in Tuscany
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
and at Fermi, Lazio. Further south, in Campania
Campania
Campania is a region in southern Italy. The region has a population of around 5.8 million people, making it the second-most-populous region of Italy; its total area of 13,590 km² makes it the most densely populated region in the country...
, a region where inhumation was the general practice, Villanovan cremation burials have been identified at Capua
Capua
Capua is a city and comune in the province of Caserta, Campania, southern Italy, situated 25 km north of Naples, on the northeastern edge of the Campanian plain. Ancient Capua was situated where Santa Maria Capua Vetere is now...
, at the "princely tombs" of Pontecagnano near Salerno
Salerno
Salerno is a city and comune in Campania and is the capital of the province of the same name. It is located on the Gulf of Salerno on the Tyrrhenian Sea....
and at Sala Consilina
Sala Consilina
Sala Consilina is a town and comune in the province of Salerno in the Campania region of south-western Italy. With 12,738 inhabitants it is the most populated town of Vallo di Diano.-History:...
. Small scattered Villanovan settlements have left few traces other than their more permanent burial sites, which were set somewhat apart from the settlements— largely because the settlement sites were built over in Etruscan times. This site continuity encourages modern opinion generally to follow Massimo Pallottino
Massimo Pallottino
Massimo Pallottino was an Italian archaeologist specializing in Etruscan civilization and art....
in regarding the Villanovan culture as ancestral to the Etruscan civilization
Etruscan civilization
Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to a civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany. The ancient Romans called its creators the Tusci or Etrusci...
.
Issues of identity
These cultural traces may not be directly equivalent to a widespread ethnic culture that identified itself as the equivalent of "Villanovan", Renato Peroni has suggested; they tend to underlie those of both CeltCelt
The Celts were a diverse group of tribal societies in Iron Age and Roman-era Europe who spoke Celtic languages.The earliest archaeological culture commonly accepted as Celtic, or rather Proto-Celtic, was the central European Hallstatt culture , named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria....
ic and Italic
Italic languages
The Italic subfamily is a member of the Indo-European language family. It includes the Romance languages derived from Latin , and a number of extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan, and Latin.In the past various definitions of "Italic" have prevailed...
provenance, adding to the difficulties in assessing who "founded" the culture.
See also
- Canegrate cultureCanegrate cultureThe Canegrate culture was a civilization of Prehistoric Italy whom developed from the recent Bronze Age until the Iron Age, in the Pianura Padana of what are now western Lombardy, eastern Piedmont and Canton Ticino....
- Genetic history of ItalyGenetic history of ItalyDuring prehistory Italy was populated by different but very similar Indo-European groups, later collectively listed amongst the Ancient peoples of Italy, of whom the Italic one was predominant....
- Prehistoric ItalyPrehistoric Italythumb|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...
- Terramare cultureTerramare cultureTerramare, Terramara or Terremare is a technology complex mainly of the central Po valley, in Emilia, northern Italy, dating to the Middle and Late Bronze Age ca. 1700-1150 BC. It takes its name from the "black earth" residue of settlement mounds. Terramare is from terra marna, "marl-earth", where...
Sources and further reading
- S. Gozzadini: La nécropole de Villanova, Fava et Garagnani, Bologna, 1870
- J. P. Mallory, "Villanovan Culture", Encyclopedia of Indo-European CultureEncyclopedia of Indo-European CultureThe Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture is an encyclopedia of Indo-European studies and the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The encyclopedia was edited by J. P. Mallory and Douglas Q. Adams and published in 1997 by Fitzroy Dearborn...
, (Fitzroy Dearborn), 1997. - G. Bartoloni, "The origin and diffusion of Villanovan culture." in M. Torelli, (editor) The Etruscans, pp 53–74. (Milan), 2000.
- M.E. Moser, The "Southern Villanovan" Culture of Campania, (Ann Arbor), 1982.
- D. Ridgway, "The Villanovan Cemeteries of Bologna and Pontecagnano" in Journal of Roman Archaeology 7: pp 303–16 (1994)