Villanovan culture

Common card · No. 262606

The Villanovan culture (c. 900–700 BCE), regarded as the earliest phase of the Etruscan civilization, was the earliest Iron Age culture of Italy. It directly followed the Bronze Age Proto-Villanovan culture which branched off from the Urnfield culture of Central Europe. The name derives from the locality of Villanova, a fraction of the municipality of Castenaso in the Metropolitan City of Bologna where, between 1853 and 1855, Giovanni Gozzadini found the remains of a necropolis, bringing to light 193 tombs, of which there were 179 cremations and 14 inhumations. The Villanovans introduced ironworking to the Italian Peninsula. They practiced cremation and buried the ashes of their dead in biconical ceramic funerary urns. The burial characteristics relate the Villanovan culture to the Central European Urnfield culture (c. 1300–750 BCE) and to the Hallstatt culture, which succeeded it. In their initial phases, it is not possible to distinguish them from one another.

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