Culture of Villanova

The space on which will be formed future the Étrurie is already clearly drawn at the beginning of and raises of what the archeologists named “ culture of Villanova ” (of the name of a major archeological site, Villanova di Castenaso, located in the area of Bologna). This Neolithic culture corresponds then to a single ethnic entity which knows the work of metals, in particular that of the Fer.

Main features

The major characteristic of the culture of Villanova is the recourse to the Incinération the late ones, whose ashes are then placed in biconical ballot boxes: the similarity of this funerary practice with that of the culture known as of the “Fields of Ballot boxes”, in the Danubian plain , led certain historians to put forth the assumption of a Scandinavian origin of Villanoviens.

Another characteristic of the culture of Villanova is the production of a particular Céramique, of black color, which one calls bucchero .

Lastly, Villanoviens know and employ the iron ore: this last comes especially from the isle of Elba. The Greek , which are provided to it probably also, name then it Αἰθαλία/ Aithalia ; they however give the same name to the island of Lemnos.

Villanoviens live in villages of oval huts, sometimes quadrangular, use iron weapons and produce out of bronze of the helmets, the armours and the domestic objects of quality. Art takes again geometrical reasons and the figure human, rare, is extremely stylized there. The vases, initially manufactured with the hand, then with the turn, have original forms which develop under the influence of Greece mycénienne. They seem sedentaries, farmers, stockbreeders and warriors (lances, swords, shields and daggers of the rich tombs). The women do not seem not excluded from raised social positions or the richness.

Origins

The ancestors of Villanoviens had to start to emigrate of the areas located on the circumference of the Black Sea, by successive waves, in the neighborhoods of the last three centuries of; also, they could be regarded as predecessors of the Celtes or proto-Celts, as well as the other protohistoric populations established with the Bronze Age in the north of the Mediterranean (Provence, Iberian peninsula and Italian peninsula).

It is known however that these populations were not the first to be established in these areas: many prehistoric complexes testify some, among which it is necessary to quote the “megalithic civilization” of Sardinia (island is inhabited as of by population not Indo-European, which, after installation of new arrivals - the Shardanes , pertaining to the Peuples of the sea - there built works cyclopean of stone which one names Nuraghe S in Sardinian), but also population of the “Terramare” in Italy of north and the center.

The Italian peninsula during the Bronze Age

During the Bronze Age, the Italian peninsula is characterized by a clear cultural homogeneity which results in the same type of ceramics and the same type of funeral rituals, in which the incineration of late prevails.

However, two types of burials coexist in the south, particularly in the area of Caere (Cerveteri) and of Vulci, where one also finds Tumulus which were well studied in addition.

These differences are undoubtedly related to the privileged contacts which then the south maintains the peninsula with the Sardinia. As of this time, there exist also contacts and commercial exchanges with the Mycéniens, and more generally in all the surface chyprio-mycénienne, which includes/understands the south of the Italian peninsula and Sardinia.

Beginning of the age of iron

At the beginning of the age of iron, the diffusion of the culture villanovienne is attested in the whole of the peninsula. It offers however a particular density on a territory a little broader than current the Toscane.

The density and the capillarity of the human presence are remarkable in this last area. The sites, indeed, are on average distant there of 5 with 15 km from/to each other. The rational and systematic exploitation of the grounds gives the impression to be in the presence of a vast process of colonization, started during and led in the long term in the space from two to three generations.

At the conclusion of this evolution, the rural landscape is made up by many villages of comparable importance: those shelter small agrarian communities and are the surest indices of the existence of a relatively levelling company.

Beginnings of Etruscan civilization

On the backdrop described above emergent then of the aristocracies: this phenomenon is related to a socio-economic differentiation which leads to the constitution of new social groups.

The “nuclear family” replaces the agrarian community of the previous period, which corresponds to the introduction of the capacity of a Lord's Prayer familias . One attends then the transmission of the heredium : the transmission of the inheritance is carried out within the same family and the inheritance itself becomes hereditary.

The introduction of this rule constitutes a major change at the protohistoric period. This change determines in its turn the implementation of a new social system which replaces the antiquated company villanovienne.

Such a system is well-known: it was indeed described by the Roman authors:

rex /king;
populus /peuple;
curiæ /associations of men where the infantry is recruited;
tribes /tribe where the members of the cavalry recruit themselves;
shepherds /councils of old;
customers /citizens attached to the service of the patroni (eminent people);
familiæ /nuclear family;
gentes /groups bound by the consanguinity and another type of dependence.

It is about the same time, during, and undoubtedly as of both or three centuries previous which arrive by sea and small groups the Tyrrhéniens in space villanovien.

These newcomers, very few, are integrated in the companies which they find on their arrival, apparently without major clashes since no trace of invasion, i.e. of fire or destruction of site, then does not seem to destabilize the process villanovien of Colonisation in progress.

The arrival of Tyrrhenian coincides with the beginning of what the archeologists name “orientalizing period” of “Etruscan” civilization. It is undoubtedly not either foreign with the emergence of one aristocracy to which belongs exclusively, initially, the knowledge of the writing, which makes its appearance in Étrurie then.

It is also necessary to consider another important phenomenon, which has occurred about the same time: it is about the presence of the Phéniciens in the Western Mediterranean. The latter are established in the south-west of Sardinia, in Nora, as of the 9th century. Thereafter, the Etruscans maintain close commercial relations with them.

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