Polada (c.2200-c.1600 BC) is an Early Bronze Age lake dwelling in Lombardy and the type-site of the Polada culture in Northern Italy and adjacent parts of southern France. Its earliest phase includes features derived from Beaker assemblages. Many Polada sites are waterlogged and have revealed a wide range of organic remains, including longbows, crook-ards (ploughs), dugout canoes and spoked wheels.
The Apennine culture (c.1800-c.1200 BC) appears to have practised both pastoral and agricultural ways of life. Semi-nomadic herders moved animals to upland pastures (giving the culture its name) for the summer and back to the lowlands for the winter, but others lived in permanent villages, on defensive hilltop sites and concentrated on farming and tending domestic animals. Trade is evident at some sites; others, like Lipari and Taranto, show that trade was important too.
The Nuragic culture (c.1800-c.800 BC) was a civilization of Sardinia. Its name derives from the nuraghi, Middle to Late Bronze Age masonry towers made with large stones and a false cupola (hollow inverted cup-like) vault on top. Around these towers stone villages were built, with dwellings in the form of stone huts. The Corsican torri, though smaller, share many archaeological features with the nuraghi on Sardinia, and give the Torrean Bronze Age civilization its name.
The Terramare culture (c.1700-c.1150 BC) of the central Po Valley, takes its name from the ‘black earth’ (terra mara) that farmers use as fertiliser. Like their Polada predecessors, the terramaricoli also made their homes on palafitte (stilts, probably against flooding). They were farmers, though many continued to hunt boars, deer and bears, and perhaps fish; and they worked in wood, bone and horn as well as bronze. The arrival of the terramaricoli in Northern and Central Italy coincides with the spread in the south of Mycenaean influence in Apulia, Sicily and the Aeolian Islands.
The Ausonian culture (c.1250-c.1050 BC) describes the Late Bronze archaeology on Lipari and northeast Sicily because it shares a number of features with the Apennine culture of the mainland. It also coincides with the legend that Liparus, a prince of the Ausonians from central-south Italy, landed on Lipari and settled there.
The Lombardy-Piedmont region has long been open to cultural influences from central Europe. In the thirteenth century BC the Canegrate culture (Varese, Lombardy) adopted the tradition of the Urnfield culture (c.1300-c.750 BC) of central Europe and began cremating their dead and burying the remains in an urn together with grave goods.
The Fossa (‘trench’) Grave culture of Campania and Calabria first appeared during the Late Bronze Age (c.1100-c.900 BC). A Fossa cemetery was found at Cumae and others were discovered on the offshore islands of Ischia and Vivara, where they succeeded to Apennine villages. The sites in Calabria are closely linked to others in Sicily, and this accords with the Greek tradition that when their colonists reached eastern Sicily they met a people named the Siculi (=Sicels) who had crossed to Sicily from Southern Italy.
During the final phase of the Late Bronze Age, the practice of cremation spread south of the Po Valley, and because it developed into the succeeding Villanovan Iron Age culture, it has been named Proto-Villanovan (c.1100-c.900 BC). Pianello di Genga (Marche) unusually contained more than a thousand cremations and is a type site for the period. During this time most of the future Etruscan cities were already occupied, including Populonia in Tuscany; and Caere, Vulci and possibly Veii, all now within north Lazio.
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