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 to an increasingly Orientalizing culture influenced by Greek traders, which was followed without a severe break by the
Etruscan civilization. Villanovan cultural origins, but perhaps not all its peoples, lay in the Eastern Alps, with connections to the
Halstatt culture. The Villanovans introduced iron-working to the Italian peninsula; they practiced
cremation and buried the ashes of their dead in pottery urns of distinctive double-cone shape.
The culture is broadly divided into a
proto-Villanovan culture (Villanovan I) from
1100 BC to
900 BC and the
Villanovan culture proper (Villanovan II) from
900 BC to
700 BC, when the Etruscan cities began to be founded.
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, 8 kilometers south-east of
Bologna) in northern
Italy. The excavatation lasting from
1853 to
1855 was made by the scholarly owner, count Giovanni Gozzadini, 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 were only spontaneously plundered and most were untouched. In 1893 a chance discovery unearthed another distinctive Villanovan necropolis at
Verruchio, overlooking the Adriatic coastal plain.
Generally speaking, Villanovan settlements were centered in the Po River valley and
Etruria round
Bologna—later an important Etruscan center—and areas in
Emilia Romagna (at
Verruchio and
Fermi), in
Tuscany and
Lazio. Further south, in Campania, a region where inhumation was the general practice, Villanovan cremation burials have been identified at
Capua, at the "princely tombs" of Pontecagnano near
Salerno (finds conserved in the Museum of Agro Picentino) and at Sala Consilina. Small scattered Villanovan settlements have left few traces other than their more permanent burial sites 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 in regarding the Villanovan culture as ancestral to the
Etruscan civilization.
The burial characteristics relate the Villanovan culture to the central European
Urnfield culture, for example the
Hallstatt 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 swastikas, meanders and squares were scratched with a comb-like tool. Urns were accompanied by simple bronze
fibulae, razors and rings.
The later phase (
Villanovan II) saw radical changes, evidence of contact with Hellenic civilization and trade with the north along the
Amber Road: glass and amber necklaces on women, bronze armor and horse harness fittings, and the development of elite graves in contrast to the earlier egalitarian culture. Chamber tombs and inhumation practicers were developed side-by-side with the earlier cremation practices.
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
Celtic and
Italic provenance, adding to the difficulties in assessing who "founded" the culture.
*S. Gozzadini:
La nécropole de Villanova, Fava et Garagnani, Bologna, 1870
*
J. P. Mallory, "Villanovan Culture",
Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, (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)
*
Museo Archeologico di Verucchio: Villanovan necropolis (in English)
*
Ashmolean Museum: Ancient Italy Before the Romans 
