saw the transfer of amber from the overland route to ships as occurring along the
northwestern shores of the Adriatic, and that “it is here that middlemen must have
come into their own.”^120
The militarizing of northern Italy was approximately contemporary with the
beginning of the Terremare culture in the central Po valley, but it is not yet clear
which came first. In his review of northern Italy, for the Oxford Handbook of the
European Bronze Age, Franco Nicolis employs the following chronology—based
on carbon dates—for the Bronze Age of that region:^121
EBA 2300/2200—1650 cal BC
MBA 1650–1350/1300 cal BC
LBA 1350/1300–1200 cal BC
Final BA 1200–900 cal BCOn the historical chronology used in this book, the Middle Bronze Age in
northern Italy would be lowered to ca. 1550–1300 BC. It was early in this Middle
Bronze Age that the Terremare culture began, mostly in the Emilia-Romagna
region. The Po valley had a small population in the EBA, but in the MBA I period
the population soared. The terramaricolibuilt villages, surrounding each with a
ditch and an earthen rampart, and at the same time began systematically to turn
the surrounding forests into fields. The changes apparently happened quickly.
According to Andrea Cardarelli, “Already in the initial phases of the MB2, the
settlement evidence confirms that the Po Plain was completely colonised,
establishing a widespread network of hundreds of villages which do not seem to
extend beyond two hectares in size.”^122 The Terremare culture, which depended
both on the fertility of the soil and on the production of bronze artifacts, continued
through the Middle and the Late Bronze Age of northern Italy, but then came
abruptly to an end. In Cardarelli’s summary, “after over four centuries of life, the
world of the Terramare collapsed within an apparently brief space of time, leaving
the territory uninhabited for at least three or four centuries.”^123 Although it is clear
that in the Middle and Late Bronze Age a military class lived in the villages,
alongside the “producers” (to use Dumézil’s term), we cannot say whether the
military class presided over the creation of the villages or whether it asserted itself
over villages that had already been established.
As is the case elsewhere, the militarizing of north Italy is most evident from
the swords found there. In 1970 Vera Bianco Peroni published a catalogue of 395
bronze swords (and several accompanying sheathes) from Italy.^124 Subsequent
discoveries have added considerably to that number. All of the Italian swords date
from after Italy’s Early Bronze Age, so let us say after 1550 BC. Bianco Peroni’s
Tafel 67 shows the find-spots for all of the Italian swords known to her. If we
divide Italy approximately in half, with the dividing line drawn from Satricum on
the Tyrrhenian coast (the sword found there is Nr. 255 in Bianco Peroni’s
catalogue) to Sulmona (Nr. 138) on the Adriatic, we find that only fifteen of the
bronze swords come from south of that line while 380, or 96 percent, come from
north of it. Although central Italy has furnished a modest number of bronze swords,
162 Militarism in temperate Europe