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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: TAV-THE |
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TERRAMARA (from Ital. terra mama, " marl ") , the name given by archaeologists' to a type of primitive culture mainly of the early bronze age, but stretching back into the later stone age. This civilization is represented by a number of mounds, formerly thought (e. g. by Venturi) to be sepulchral, but really the remains of human habitations, analogous to shell heaps (q.v.) or kitchen middens. They are found chiefly in north Italy, in the valley of the Po, round. Modena, Mantua and Parma. A summary of early results as to these mounds was published by Munro (Lake Dwellings) in 189o, but scientific investigation really began only with the excavation of the terramara at Castellazzo di Fontanellato (province of Parma) in 1889. From this and succeeding investigations certain general conclusions have been reached. The terramara, in spite of local differences, is of typical form; it is a settlement, trapezoidal in form, built upon piles on dry land protected by an earthwork strengthened on the inside by but resses, and en-circled by a wide moat supplied with running water. The east
ordinary lake dwelling.The remains discovered may be briefly summarized. Stone objects are few. Of bronze (the chief
minor implements, such as sickles, needles, pins, brooches, &c. There are also objects of bone and wood
CERAMICS ), amber and glass-paste. Small clay figures, chiefly of animals (though human figures are found at Castellazzo), are interesting as being practically the earliest specimens of plastic art found in Italy.The occupations of the terramara people as compared with their neolithic predecessors may be inferred with comparative certainty. They were still hunters, but had domesticated animals; they were fairly skilful metallurgists, casting bronze in moulds of stone and clay; they were also agriculturists, cultivating beans, the vine, wheat and flax. According to Prof. W. Ridgeway (Who were the Romans? p. 16; and Early Age of Greece, i. 496) burial was by inhumation: investigation, however, of the cemeteries shows that the bodies were burned and the ashes placed in ossuaries; practically no objects were found in the urns. Great differences of opinion have arisen as to the origin and ethnographical relations of the terramara folk. Brizio in his Epoca Preistorjca advances the theory that they were the original
pile
pile
1 Since the International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology at Bologna in 1871, when the shortened form terramara (plur. terremare) was adopted. is regarded as falling in with discoveries (somewhat incomplete, it is true) in Hungary and Bosnia. AuTHOR! TIES.All the evidence is collected by T. E. Peet, The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy and Sicily (Oxford, 1909), xiv. and xviii., which gives illustrations and references to the more important literature; this work
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