![Europe middle bronze age](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Europe_middle_bronze_age.png)
The Apennine culture is a
technology complex in central and southern
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
from the Italian
Middle Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...
(15th–14th centuries BC).
In the mid-20th century the Apennine was divided into Proto-, Early, Middle and Late , but now archaeologists prefer to consider as "Apennine" only the ornamental pottery style of the later phase of Middle Bronze Age (BM3). This phase is preceded by the Grotta Nuova facies (central Italy) and by the Protoapennine B facies (southern Italy) and succeeded by the Subapennine facies of 13th-century ("Bronzo Recente"). Apennine pottery is a burnished ware incised with spirals, meanders and geometrical zones, filled with dots or transverse dashes. It has been found on
Ischia
Ischia ( , , ) is a volcanic island in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It lies at the northern end of the Gulf of Naples, about from Naples. It is the largest of the Phlegrean Islands. Roughly trapezoidal in shape, it measures approximately east to west ...
island in association with
LHII and
LHIII pottery and on
Lipari
Lipari (; scn, Lìpari) is the largest of the Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the northern coast of Sicily, southern Italy; it is also the name of the island's main town and ''comune'', which is administratively part of the Metropolit ...
in association with LHIIIA pottery, which associations date it to the Late Bronze Age as it is defined in Greece and the Aegean.
Society
The people of the Apennine culture were alpine cattle herdsmen grazing their animals over the meadows and groves of mountainous central Italy. They lived in small hamlets located in defensible places. On the move between summer pastures they built temporary camps or lived in caves and rock shelters.
[ Their range was not necessarily confined to the hills; their pottery has been found on the ]Capitoline hill
The Capitolium or Capitoline Hill ( ; it, Campidoglio ; la, Mons Capitolinus ), between the Forum and the Campus Martius, is one of the Seven Hills of Rome.
The hill was earlier known as ''Mons Saturnius'', dedicated to the god Saturn. Th ...
at Rome as well as on the islands mentioned above.
Imputations of ethnicity
In the 19th and early 20th centuries various theorists made various imputations of ethnicity concerning the Apennine culture. In the 20th century, the Italian scholar, Massimo Pallottino
Massimo Pallottino (9 November 1909 in Rome – 7 February 1995 in Rome) was an Italian archaeologist specializing in Etruscan civilization and art.
Biography
Pallottino was a student of Giulio Quirino Giglioli and worked early in his career on ...
, who specialized in Etruscan civilization
The Etruscan civilization () was developed by a people of Etruria in ancient Italy with a common language and culture who formed a federation of city-states. After conquering adjacent lands, its territory covered, at its greatest extent, roughl ...
, rejected them as oversimple. At least with reference to Italy, he discarded Kossinna's Law, which states languages and ethnic groups are to be identified with archaeological groups. Therefore, Pallottino argued that terms such as "the Terramare culture" or "the Apennine culture" have no ethnic or linguistic significance.
The Apennine drew to an end with the spread of the Proto-Villanovan culture
The Proto-Villanovan culture was a late Bronze Age culture that appeared in Italy in the first half of the 12th century BC and lasted until the 10th century BC, part of the central European Urnfield culture system (1300-750 BCE).
History
Proto-V ...
from the north. It pervaded all of Italy and introduced cremation; however, in Italy cremation existed side-by-side with continued inhumation. By the start of the Villanovan regional cultures had evolved along two main lines: those that practiced both cremation and inhumation and those that practiced inhumation only. The Tiber river
The Tiber ( ; it, Tevere ; la, Tiberis) is the third-longest river in Italy and the longest in Central Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio, where it is joined by the Riv ...
was the dividing line. It also divided the two main language groups: Etruscan and Italic. Whatever the Proto-Villanovan represents culturally it cannot have been a uniform language or ethnic group; hence, an "Italic" invasion at that time is to be excluded.
Pallottino's presentation of the contemporaneous view of how the Indo-European language
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...
s on the left bank of the Tiber and southward and eastward arrived is as follows. Three waves of Indo-European language speakers, speaking closely related languages, arrived in small groups over time across the Adriatic sea
The Adriatic Sea () is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan Peninsula. The Adriatic is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from the Strait of Otranto (where it connects to the Ionian Sea) to t ...
and moved inland. The first occurred in the Middle Neolithic starting with the Square Mouthed Vases culture and prevailed for the remaining Neolithic and the Proto- and earlier Apennine. The Latin language evolved ultimately from their speech, in Italy. The second wave is associated with Mycenaean civilization
Mycenaean Greece (or the Mycenaean civilization) was the last phase of the Bronze Age in Ancient Greece, spanning the period from approximately 1750 to 1050 BC.. It represents the first advanced and distinctively Greek civilization in mainland ...
of the Late Bronze Age and brought the ancestors of the Italic language speakers into central and south Italy. They prevailed during the remainder of the Apennine. The third wave came with the Proto-Villanovan Culture and is ultimately responsible for the Venetic language speakers. Pallottino admits that this is a tentative and unproven interpretation of the linguistic and archaeological evidence, but he proffers it as being better than the previous view of an invasion of Italic people from the north in the Terramare culture
Terramare, terramara, or terremare is a technology complex mainly of the central Po valley, in Emilia, Northern Italy, dating to the Middle and Late Bronze Age c. 1700–1150 BC. It takes its name from the "black earth" residue of settlement ...
, which was distinct from and parallel to the early Apennine.
The Apennine culture was in this theory always practiced mainly by speakers of unknown languages in the Italic branch of Indo-European, from which the historical languages later came. The term "Proto-Italic", in Pallottino's view, is less useful because there was no single proto-language in Italy. Such a language would have existed on the other side of the Adriatic (Illyria
In classical antiquity, Illyria (; grc, Ἰλλυρία, ''Illyría'' or , ''Illyrís''; la, Illyria, ''Illyricum'') was a region in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula inhabited by numerous tribes of people collectively known as the Illyr ...
) in the Neolithic. The way of life of the population in the Apennine range also is consistent with an etymology of Italia as "land of young cattle" (see under Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
).
Sites
Some of the major sites of the culture are described below.
![Ceramica appenninica](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Ceramica_appenninica.png)
Latium (Lazio)
Colle della Capriola ("Capriola hill")
Capriola hill is located to the south of Bolsena
Bolsena is a town and ''comune'' of Italy, in the province of Viterbo in northern Lazio on the eastern shore of Lake Bolsena. It is 10 km (6 mi) north-north west of Montefiascone and 36 km (22 mi) north-west of Viterbo. The an ...
on the eastern side of Lake Bolsena
Lake Bolsena ( it, Lago di Bolsena) is a lake of volcanic origin in the northern part of the province of Viterbo called ''Alto Lazio'' ("Upper Latium") or ''Tuscia'' in central Italy. It is the largest volcanic lake in Europe. Roman historic ...
. In ancient times Bolsena was part of Etruria
Etruria () was a region of Central Italy, located in an area that covered part of what are now most of Tuscany, northern Lazio, and northern and western Umbria.
Etruscan Etruria
The ancient people of Etruria
are identified as Etruscan civiliza ...
. In addition to remains of Etruscan structures there is a distinct site representing a hamlet of the Apennine Culture that was occupied continuously from the late Neolithic through the Eneolithic
The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star.
Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...
, indicating that the population existed before the Apennine and adopted it by cultural diffusion. Excavated by Bloch in 1958 the site evidences wattle-and-daub huts with thatched roofs supported by internal poles. The huts were about by placed on rock-cut foundations. They were surrounded with stone walls for individual defence.
Luni sul Mignone
At approximately 10 km from Blera
Blera is a small town and ''comune'' in the northern Lazio region of Italy. It was known during the Middle Ages as Bieda, an evolved form of its ancient name, which was restored in the twentieth century. It is the birthplace of Pope Sabinian; Pope ...
(northern Lazio
it, Laziale
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) to the west of the frazione
A ''frazione'' (plural: ) is a type of subdivision of a ''comune'' (municipality) in Italy, often a small village or hamlet outside the main town. Most ''frazioni'' were created during the Fascist era (1922–1943) as a way to consolidate territ ...
of Civitella Cesi, on the left bank of the small Mignone river, next to an abandoned railroad bridge is the acropolis of Luni sul Mignone. The place has been abandoned for centuries (except for archaeologists) and is inaccessible except by foot from Civitella Cesi.
On the acropolis and in a plain to the east, Tre Breci, is a site continuously occupied from the Neolithic to the Iron Age, in addition to the remains of Etruscan Luni (which was then in Etruria) on a higher plateau nearby. The Etruscan citadel is later. Part of the sequence of tre Breci belongs to the Apennine Culture.
This site was excavated 1960–1963 by the Swedish Institute at Rome
The Swedish Institute in Rome ( sv, Svenska institutet i Rom, it, Istituto Svedese di studi classici a Roma) is a research institution that serves as the base for archaeological excavations and other scientific research in Italy. It also pursues ...
and numerous C-14 dates and the association of Late Helladic
Helladic chronology is a relative dating system used in archaeology and art history. It complements the Minoan chronology scheme devised by Sir Arthur Evans for the categorisation of Bronze Age artefacts from the Minoan civilization within a his ...
pottery with Apenninic pottery, both found there, were used to date the Apenninic pottery phases. Carl Eric Östenberg summarized them as: I (1350/1300–1250), II (1250–1150), III (1150–1000), IVA (1000–850) and IVB (850–800); that is, the Apenninic there is Late Bronze Age persisting to 800 BC without the Villanovan
The Villanovan culture (c. 900–700 BC), regarded as the earliest phase of the Etruscan civilization, was the earliest Iron Age culture of Italy. It directly followed the Bronze Age Proto-Villanovan culture which branched off from the Urnfield ...
.
Noteworthy at the site are the foundations of three houses cut into rock as deep as , with rammed earth
Rammed earth is a technique for constructing foundations, floors, and walls using compacted natural raw materials such as earth, chalk, lime, or gravel. It is an ancient method that has been revived recently as a sustainable building method.
...
over limestone chips for floors. The lengths are , and at wide. The walls were stone with possibly thatched roofs. There were multiple entrances. Pottery was chiefly cooking ware. Portable hearths and hand mills were found, along with remains of wheat, barley, beans and peas. The animal bones were chiefly cattle but also pigs, sheep and goats. The population apparently farmed and raised animals. The size of the dwellings and the multiple entrances may indicate multi-family residences.
Campania
Nola
The Avellino eruption
The Avellino eruption of Mount Vesuvius refers to a Vesuvian eruption in 1995 BC. It is estimated to have had a Volcanic Explosivity Index, VEI of 6, making it larger and more catastrophic than Vesuvius's more famous and well-documented Eruptio ...
of Vesuvius in the Bronze Age preserved the pottery and remains of a village of the Apennine Culture in and under sediments from pyroclastic flow. The site is in the comune of Nola, at the locality of Croce del Papa. Unusual about the site is that the forms of perishable objects could be recovered with clarity from the cavities they left in the ash. Remains of goats were found, and also the hoof-prints of goats, sheep, pigs and cattle. Also striking are the thousands of human footprints left in the semi-indurated ash by the population fleeing into the Apennines. The remains suggest that Italics were present in Campania since at least the Middle Bronze Age.
Apulia (Puglia)
Coppa Nevigata
Southwest of Manfredonia, on the coast of the Gargano in northern Apulia, are the remains of a site initially occupied during the Neolithic, and reoccupied during the Protoapennine, Apennine, and Subapennine phases of the Bronze Age. The site was fortified and has evidence of early purple dye and olive oil production, as well as contacts with the civilizations of the Aegean.
See also
*Ancient peoples of Italy
This list of ancient peoples living in Italy summarises groupings existing before and during the Roman expansion and conquest of Italy. Many of the names are either scholarly inventions or exonyms assigned by the ancient writers of works in anc ...
*Prehistoric Italy
The prehistory of Italy began in the Paleolithic period, when species of ''Homo'' colonized the Italian territory for the first time, and ended in the Iron Age, when the first written records appeared in Italy.
Paleolithic
In prehistoric times ...
*Vučedol culture
The Vučedol culture ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, Vučedolska kultura, Вучедолска култура) flourished between 3000 and 2200 BCE (the Eneolithic period of earliest copper-smithing), centered in Syrmia and eastern Slavonia on the right bank of t ...
Sources
Bibliography
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Apennine Culture
Archaeological cultures of Southern Europe
Archaeological cultures in Italy
Bronze Age cultures of Europe
Italic archaeological cultures
Prehistoric Italy