CHAPTER II

PREHISTORIC CIVILIZATION IN ITALY

*Accessibility of Italy to external influences.* The long coast-line of the Italian peninsula rendered it peculiarly accessible to influences from overseas, for the sea united rather than divided the peoples of antiquity. Thus Italy was constantly subjected to immigration by sea, and much more so to cultural stimuli from the lands whose shores bordered the same seas as her own. Nor did the Alps and the forests and swamps of the Po valley oppose any effectual barrier to migrations and cultural influences from central Europe. Consequently we have in Italy the meeting ground of peoples coming by sea from east and south and coming over land from the north, each bringing a new racial, linguistic, and cultural element to enrich the life of the peninsula. These movements had been going on since remote antiquity, until, at the beginning of the period of recorded history, Italy was occupied by peoples of different races, speaking different languages, and living under widely different political and cultural conditions.

As yet many problems connected with the origin and migrations of the historic peoples of Italy remain unsolved; but the sciences of archaeology and philology have done much toward enabling us to present a reasonably clear and connected picture of the development of civilization and the movements of these peoples in prehistoric times.

*The Old Stone Age.* From all over Italy come proofs of the presence of man in the earliest stage of human development—the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. The chipped flint instruments of this epoch have been found in considerable abundance, and are chiefly of the Moustérien and Chelléen types. With these have been unearthed the bones of the cave bear, cave lion, cave hyena, giant stag, and early types of the rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and elephant, which Paleolithic man fought and hunted. In the Balzi Rossi caves, near Ventimiglia in Liguria, there have been found human skeletons, some of which, at least, are agreed to be of the Paleolithic Age. But the caves in Liguria and elsewhere, then the only habitations which men knew, do not reveal the lifelike and vigorous mural drawings and carvings on bone, which the Old Stone Age has left in the caves of France and Spain.

*The New Stone Age.* With the Neolithic or New Stone Age there appears in Italy a civilization characterized by the use of instruments of polished stone. Axes, adzes, and chisels, of various shapes and sizes, as well as other utensils, were shaped by polishing and grinding from sandstone, limestone, jade, nephrite, diorite, and other stones. Along with these, however, articles of chipped flint and obsidian, for which the workshops have been found, and also instruments of bone, were in common use. The Neolithic people were also acquainted with the art of making pottery, an art unknown to the Paleolithic Age.

Like the men of the preceding epoch, those of the Neolithic Age readily took up their abode in natural caves. However, they also built for themselves villages of circular huts of wicker-work and clay, at times erected over pits excavated in the ground. Such village sites, the so-called _fonde di capanne_, are widely distributed throughout Italy.

They buried their dead in caves, or in pits dug in the ground, sometimes lining the pit with stones. The corpse was regularly placed in a contracted position, accompanied by weapons, vases, clothing, and food. Second burials and the practice of coloring the bones of the skeletons with red pigment were in vogue.

*Climatic change.* The climate of Italy had changed considerably from that of the preceding age, and a new fauna had appeared. In place of the primitive elephant and his associates, Neolithic men hunted the stag, beaver, bear, fox, wolf and wild boar. Remains of such domestic animals as the ox, horse, sheep, goat, pig, dog, and ass, show that they were a pastoral although not an agricultural people.

*A new racial element.* The use of polished stone weapons, the manufacture of pottery, the hut villages and a uniform system of burial rites distinguished the Neolithic from the Paleolithic civilization. And, because of these differences, especially because of the introduction of this system of burial which argues a distinctive set of religious beliefs, in addition to the fact that the development of this civilization from that which preceded cannot be traced on Italian soil, it is held with reason that at the opening of the Neolithic Age a new race entered Italy, bringing with it the Neolithic culture. Here and there men of the former age may have survived and copied the arts of the newcomers, but throughout the whole peninsula the racial unity of the population is shown by the uniformity of their burial customs. The inhabitants of Sicily and Sardinia in this age had a civilization of the same type as that on the mainland.

*The Ligurians probably a Neolithic people.* It is highly probable that one of the historic peoples of Italy was a direct survival from the Neolithic period. This was the people called the Ligures (Ligurians), who to a late date maintained themselves in the mountainous district around the Gulf of Genoa. In support of this view it may be urged (1) that tradition regarded them as one of the oldest peoples of Italy, (2) that even when Rome was the dominant state in Italy they occupied the whole western portion of the Po valley and extended southward almost to Pisa, while they were believed to have held at one time a much wider territory, (3) that at the opening of our own era they were still in a comparatively barbarous state, living in caves and rude huts, and (4) that the Neolithic culture survived longest in this region, which was unaffected by the migrations of subsequent ages.

*The Aeneolithic Age.* The introduction of the use of copper marks the transition from the Neolithic period to that called the Aeneolithic, or Stone and Copper Age. This itself is but a prelude to the true Bronze Age. Apparently copper first found its way into Italy along the trade routes from the Danube valley and from the eastern Mediterranean, while the local deposits were as yet unworked. In other respects there is no great difference between the Neolithic civilization and the Aeneolithic, and there is no evidence to place the entrance of a new race into Italy at this time.

*The Bronze Age.* The Bronze Age proper in Italy is marked by the appearance of a new type of civilization—that of the builders of the pile villages. There are two distinct forms of pile village. The one, called _palafitte_, is a true lake village, raised on a pile structure above the waters of the surrounding lake or marsh. The other, called _terramare_, is a pile village constructed on solid ground and surrounded by an artificial moat.

*The palafitte.* The traces of the _palafitte_ are fairly closely confined to the Alpine lake region of Italy from Lake Maggiore to Lake Garda. In general, these lake villages date from an early stage of Bronze Age culture, for later on, in most cases, their inhabitants seem to have abandoned them for sites on dry land further to the south. The lake-dwellers were hunters and herdsmen, but they practised agriculture as well, raising corn and millet. In addition to their bronze implements, they continued to use those of more primitive materials—bone and stone. They, too, manufactured a characteristic sort of pottery, of rather rude workmanship, which differs strikingly from that of the Neolithic Age. In the late Bronze Age, at any rate, they cremated their dead and buried the ashes in funerary urns. For their earlier practice evidence is lacking.

*The terramare.* The _terramare_ settlements are found chiefly in the Po valley; to the north of that river around Mantua, and to the south between Piacenza and Bologna. Scattered villages have been found throughout the peninsula; one as far south as Taranto. The _terramare_ village was regularly constructed in the form of a trapezoid, with a north and south orientation. It was surrounded by an earthen wall, around the base of which ran a wide moat, supplied with running water from a neighboring stream. Access to the settlement was had by a single wooden bridge, easy to destroy in time of danger. The space within the wall was divided in the center by a main road running north and south the whole length of the settlement. It was paralleled by some narrower roads and intersected at right angles by others. On one side of this main highway was a space surrounded by an inner moat, crossed by a bridge. This area was uninhabited and probably devoted to religious purposes. The dwellings were built on pile foundations along the roadways. Outside the moat was placed the cemetery. The dead were cremated and the ashes deposited in ossuary urns, which were laid side by side in the burial places. The remains were rarely accompanied by anything but some smaller vases placed in the ossuary.

*The terramare civilization.* With the _terramare_ people bronze had almost completely supplanted stone instruments. Bronze daggers, swords, axes, arrowheads, spearheads, razors, and pins have been preserved in abundance. However, articles of bone and of horn were also in general use. The _terramare_ civilization had likewise its special type of hand-made pottery of peculiar shapes and ornamentation. A characteristic form of ornamentation was the crescent-shaped handle (_ansa lunata_). The _terramare_ peoples were both agricultural and pastoral, cultivating wheat and flax and raising the better known domestic animals; while they also hunted the stag and the wild boar.

*The peoples of the palafitte and the terramare.* Owing to their custom of dwelling in pile villages, their practice of cremating their dead, and other characteristics peculiar to their type of civilization, the peoples of the _palafitte_ and the _terramare_ are believed to have introduced a new racial element into Italy. The former probably descended from the Swiss lake region, while the latter probably came from the valley of the Danube. These peoples, abandoning the lakes and marshes of the Po valley, spread southward over the peninsula. Because of this expansion and because of the striking similarity between the design of the _terramare_ settlements and that of the Roman fortified camps, it has been suggested that they were the forerunners of the Italian peoples of historic times.

*Other types of Bronze Age culture in Italy.* The Neolithic population of northern Italy developed a Bronze Age civilization under the stimulus of contact with the _terramare_ people and the lake-dwellers. In the southern part of the peninsula and in Sicily, however, the Bronze Age developed more independently, although showing decided traces of influences from the eastern Mediterranean. Only in its later stages does it show the effect of the southward migration of the builders of the pile villages.

*The Iron Age.* The prehistoric Iron Age in Italy has left extensive remains in the northern and central regions, but such is by no means the case in the south. The most important center of this civilization was at Villanova, near Bologna. Here, again, we have to do with a new type of civilization, which is not a development of the _terramare_ culture. In addition to the use of iron, this age is marked by the practice of cremation, with the employment of burial urns of a distinctive type, placed in well tombs (_tombe a pozzo_). In Etruria, to the south of the Apennines, the Early Iron Age is of the Villanova type. It seems fairly certain that both in Umbria and in Etruria this civilization is the work of the Umbrians, who at one time occupied the territory on both sides of the Apennines. Regarding the migration of the Umbrians into Italy we know nothing, but it seems probable that their civilization had its rise in central Europe. The later Iron Age civilization both in Etruria and northward of the Apennines has been identified as that of the Etruscans.

*Latium.* In Latium the Iron Age civilization is a development under Villanovan influences. Here a distinctive feature is the use of a hut-shaped urn to receive the ashes of the dead. This urn was itself deposited in a larger burial urn. This civilization is that of the historic Latins, to whom belong also the hill villages of Latium and the walled towns, constructed between the eighth and the sixth centuries B. C.

Elsewhere in the northern part of Italy in the Iron Age we have to do with a culture developing out of that of the _terramare_ period. Likewise in the east and south of the peninsula the Iron Age is a local development under outside stimulus.

The preceding sketch of the rise of civilization in Italy has brought us down to the point where we have to do with the peoples who occupied Italian soil at the beginning of the historic period, for from the sixth century it is possible to attempt a connected historical record of the movements of these Italian races.