- chapter 5: The Villanovan culture –
subsequent, Villanovan, culture which would be manifested at the beginning of the Iron
Age only in certain parts of Italy.
Evidence of the passage from the custom of inhumation to cremation is found in the
tumulus (mound-shaped) tombs in the necropolis of Crostoletto di Lamone on the left
bank of the Fiora River, not far from the site of Castellaccio di Sorgenti della Nova, with
burials, whether by inhumation or cremation, established since the Late Bronze Age.
The urn used is almost always a biconical vessel, usually covered by an upended bowl.
Sometimes the burials are double, that is, in the same well-shaped tomb (tomba a pozzo) or
custodia (large container), two ossuaries are deposited at the same time.
Taken together, the data seem to indicate the presence of individuals or families at the
head of different groups. And in the fi nal phase of the Bronze Age, there must have begun
the process that generated (at least two centuries later) a tribal society based on families
and the increasingly widespread ownership of land.
In the ninth century bc the territory is divided instead into rather large districts, each
belonging to a large village, divided internally into widely spaced groups of huts, and
into a small number of isolated villages located in strategic positions, for which we can
assume some form of dependence upon the larger settlements.
Compared to the preceding period, this type of aggregation is characterized by a
higher concentration of the population. To the number of villages located mostly on
inaccessible plateaus, with defensive priority assigned to the needs of agriculture, are
added settlements over wide plains where the population was grouped into a single hilltop
location. It is a sort of synoikistic process, so, for example, at Vulci people were gathered
from the district of the Fiora and Albegna Rivers, while to Veii came the communities
that inhabited the region from the Tiber River to Lake Bracciano, including the Faliscan
and Capenate territories. The reference to Halesos, son of Saturn, the mythical founder
of Falerii in the genealogy of Morrius the king of Veii (Servius, Commentary on Aeneid
8.285) may conceal this close relationship between Veii and the Ager Faliscus (the territory
of the historical Faliscans).
The great movement of population that characterizes this period is unthinkable
without political organizations that were able to impose their decisions on the individual
village communities: the different groups, undoubtedly each consisting of nuclei linked
by bonds of kinship, located within or outside the tufa plateaus that would be the future
seats of the Etruscan city-states, have cultural links between them, also attested to by
the analysis of craft production, such as to imply affi liation to the same political unit and
enabling us to speak of such human concentrations as “proto-urban” (Fig. 5.1).
Strong indications of the change in relationship with the land are derived mainly from
the radical change of the dislocation of the settlements and the tendency to concentrate the
population sites on the plateau, surrounded by large areas of farmland. The development
of large-scale cultivation of new land must have resulted in new business relationships.
It seems hard to believe that the exploitation of resources over some hundreds of square
kilometers could be implemented in a situation in which the land was still owned in
common: it does not seem questionable to postulate for this period a subdivision of
property.
The area in which Villanovan culture extends, from its fi rst appearance, is not limited
to the territory of Etruria proper (Fig. 5.2). In addition to the Tyrrhenian Villanovan
culture, an Emilian Villanovan may be distinguished in the north, which includes the
region south of the Po plain, with its capital at Bologna, and a Romagna-Villanovan