Villanovan culture

Villanovan culture, Early Iron Age culture in Italy, named after the village of Villanova, near Bologna, where in 1853 the first of the characteristic cemeteries was found. The Villanovan people branched from the cremating Urnfield cultures of eastern Europe and appeared in Italy in the 10th or 9th century bc. The earliest burial rites were usually with cremation; the ashes of the dead were placed in a decorated pottery ossuary of a biconical, or two-storied, form and covered with a bowl. The lid of the urn was sometimes a pottery imitation of a helmet, either the knobbed bell helmet of eastern central Europe or the crested helmet of northern Europe, the Villanovan helmet par excellence.

The Villanovans living in Tuscany also used the terra-cotta hut urn, which imitated a hut of wattle and daub on a frame of poles. The hut urn is characteristic of northern European urn fields, whereas the two-storied urn may be related to similar urns from Hungary and Romania.

The Villanovans controlled the rich copper and iron mines of Tuscany and were accomplished metalworkers. In the second half of the 8th century the Villanovans of Tuscany were influenced artistically by Greece; also, inhumation became the predominant burial rite, as it did during the same period in Greece.

During the first quarter of the 7th century an Orientalizing civilization, presumably introduced by Etruscans, was superimposed on the Villanovan in Tuscany. The northern Villanovans of the Po Valley, however, continued to produce a geometric art as late as the last quarter of the 6th century, when Etruscan expansion obliterated their culture.