The Terramare culture rises to prominence in…

The Terramare culture rises to prominence in northern Italy’s Po Valley.

In spite of local differences, the Terramare is of typical form; each settlement is trapezoidal, with streets arranged in a quadrangular pattern.

Some houses are built upon piles even though the village is entirely on dry land and some are not.

There is currently no commonly accepted explanation for the piles.

An earthwork, strengthened on the inside by buttresses, protects the whole; a wide moat supplied with running water encircles it.

In all, over sixty villages are known, almost entirely from Emilia.

In the Middle Bronze Age, they are no larger than two hectares (four point nine acres) placed at an average density of one per twenty-five square kilometers (nine point seven square miles).

Many sites have been abandoned in the Late Bronze Age,  and the ones that have not are larger, up to sixty hectares (one hundred and fifty acres).

Of the remains discovered, stone objects are few; bronze axes, daggers, swords, razors and knives are found, as also minor implements, such as sickles, needles, pins, brooches, etc.

There are also objects of bone and wood, besides pottery (both coarse and fine), amber, and glass paste.

Small clay figures, chiefly of animals (though human figures are found at Castellazzo), are interesting as being practically the earliest specimens of plastic art found in Italy.

The Terramare people remain hunters, but also have domesticated animals; they are skillful metallurgists, casting bronze in molds of stone and clay; they are also agriculturists, cultivating beans, grapes, wheat, and flax.

Both inhumation and cremation are practiced, with cremated remains placed in ossuaries; practically no objects were found in the urns.

Cremation may have been a later introduction.