Quite clearly, the Terremare settlements were fairly advanced. Summarizing
recent work on the Terremare culture, Cardarelli points out that although the
inhabitants of these settlements depended largely on agriculture and stock-raising,
they were also deeply involved in the tin bronze industry:
The abundance of bronze objects, moulds for casting and frequent traces
of metalwork processes suggest the likely presence, in most villages, of a
resident skilled smith. The metal arrived from distant places via a complex
network of traffic which also guaranteed a supply of exotic goods, such as
the amber for manufacturing ornaments used by ladies of the emerging social
classes to indicate their status.^149That one of the classes at Olmo di Nogara was a warrior class is suggested by
yet another artifact: a small circular bronze boss. These borchiewere found
alongside many skeletons of adult males who were buried with a sword. The bronze
boss, Luciano Salzani believes, may have been a decorative feature of a wooden
shield, or may in some other way have been “lo status symboldel guerriero.”^150
Summary of the northern Italian evidence, and its linguistic
implications
Putting together the evidence from the borchie, swords, spears, cheekpieces and
ornamental chariot wheels, we can conclude that the militarizing of northern Italy
was initiated ca. 1500 BCby men who had chariots (whether or not they made
much use of them), that it began with an incursion from the Carpathian basin into
the Udine-Treviso region, and that from there it spread into the Po valley (although
the center may have remained in the northeast, where the amber trade dominated).
A military elite, whose swords and chariots were probably more for display and
intimidation than for actual combat, appears to have been at the top of society,
both in the Udine-Treviso and in the Terremare region.
So much is relatively clear. The linguistic consequences of all this cannot be
proven, but the implications are evident. As is well known, Latin vehicular
terms—rota (wheel), axis(axle), iugum(yoke) and vehiculumitself—have Proto-
Indo-European roots.^151 Despite some skepticism about linguistic paleontology,
the vehicular terms could hardly have been used in Italy before vehicles themselves
were used there, and our earliest evidence for wheeled vehicles in Italy seems to
come from the north in the middle of the second millennium BC. It has been
suggested that much earlier evidence may come from the Val Camonica, which
issues from the southern slope of the Alps and ends at the Lago d’Iseo. Along the
valley are tens of thousands of rock carvings, dating from the Paleolithic period
to modern times, and a dozen of the early carvings depict wheeled vehicles.^152
Most of the dozen depict spoke-wheeled vehicles drawn by horses, but one
carving (no. 262 in Woytowitsch’s catalogue) shows oxen pulling a wagon
mounted on what are probably meant to be disk wheels. Because north of the Alps
disk wheels have been found in contexts dating to the third millennium BC, it has
166 Militarism in temperate Europe