The Villanovan culture in Italy

The story

A cemetery found near Bologna

Between 1853 and 1855, in the countryside of Villanova, near Bologna (the name of Gozzadini's estate), the scholar Giovanni Gozzadini had an ancient cemetery excavated. A great number of tombs came to light: 193, of which 179 held the burnt remains of the dead and 14 a skeleton buried whole. Inside were terracotta urns and objects of bronze and iron. Nobody had ever seen such a collection, and Italian archaeology was struck by it. Scholars said that this culture needed a name, and they gave it that of the place: Villanovan.

Since then, in many other places in Italy, similar tombs have been found. In 1893, for example, a chance discovery brought to light at Verucchio, in Romagna, another great Villanovan cemetery. But the cemetery of Villanova remains the one that gave its name to it all.

When and where

The Villanovan culture is placed between about 900 and 700 BC, although some reconstructions have it begin a few decades earlier or end a few decades later. It spread over a large part of Italy: Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Lazio and Campania. It is considered the first phase of Etruscan civilisation and the oldest Iron Age culture in Italy. Before it there was a culture called Proto-Villanovan, which in turn descended from that of the “urnfields” of central Europe.

The double-cone urns

The Villanovans, at least until about 720 BC, cremated their dead. The ashes were collected in a vase of impasto, a coarse hand-made clay, and then buried in a pit dug in the ground. The most common urn has the shape of two cones joined at the base, and for this reason it is called “biconical”. The lid was an upturned bowl or, for warriors' tombs, a real helmet or a terracotta helmet imitating its shape. Some urns had the shape of a small hut with a thatched roof, and they show us what houses were like in those days.

Inside or beside the urn were placed the dead person's objects: fibulae (bronze pins for fastening clothes, a bit like our safety pins), razors, rings, weapons, pieces of armour. Among the bronze objects the crested helmets stand out. From about 800 BC there also appeared inhumation tombs, that is, with the dead person buried without being burnt, and chamber tombs. In the tombs of the richest, amber and glass appeared, brought from far away: a sign that these villages were not isolated.

How they lived

The Villanovans lived in villages of huts. The walls were made of woven branches covered with clay, or of mud bricks, and the roofs were thatched, supported by wooden posts. The huts could be rectangular, oval or round. They worked the land, kept animals, and made pottery and metal objects.

They were among the first in Italy to use iron on a large scale. They went on making pins, razors and weapons from bronze. The chance to get hold of metals, and to trade amber and glass with distant lands, widened the gap between richer and poorer families. In the cemetery of Villanova, for example, six tombs had been placed in an area separate from the others: perhaps the remains of more important people.

From villages to Etruscan cities

Around 720 BC a period began called “Orientalising”, because influences arrived from the East through trade with Greeks and Phoenicians. The huts gave way to real cities, and the tombs of the rich became large and full of luxury objects. From this arose the civilisation we call Etruscan. Most scholars today think that the Etruscans did not arrive from another country, but that their culture was born in Italy, precisely from the Villanovans. The idea has replaced an old tradition, told by the Greeks, according to which the Etruscans had come from Asia.