The Villanovan culture is the earliest Iron Age culture of central and northern Italy, abruptly following the Bronze Age Terramare culture and giving way in the 7th century BCE to an increasingly orientalizing culture influenced by Greek traders, which is followed without a severe break by the Etruscan civilization.
Villanovan cultural origins, but perhaps not all its peoples, lie in the Eastern Alps, with connections to the Halstatt culture.
The Villanovans introduce iron-working to the Italian peninsula; they practice cremation and bury the ashes of their dead in pottery urns of distinctive double-cone shape.The name Villanovan comes from the type-site, that of the first archaeological finds relating to this advanced culture, remnants of a cemetery found near Villanova (Castenaso, 8 kilometers south-east of Bologna) in northern Italy.
The excavation lasting from 1853 to 1855 was made by the scholarly owner, count Giovanni Gozzadini, and involved 193 tombs, six of which were separated from the rest as if to signify a special social status.
The "well tomb" pit graves lined with stones contained funerary urns; they had been only sporadically plundered, and most were untouched.
In 1893, a chance discovery unearthed another distinctive Villanovan necropolis at Verucchio, overlooking the Adriatic coastal plain.The burial characteristics relate the Villanovan culture to the Central European Urnfield culture (c. 1300 -750 BCE), and Hallstatt culture (which succeeded the Urnfield culture).
Cremated remains were placed in cinerary urns and then buried.
A custom believed to originate with the Villanovan culture is the usage of "Hut urns", cinerary urns fashioned like small huts, and other advanced urn designs.
Typical sgraffiato decoration of swastikas, meanders and squares were scratched with a comb-like tool.
Urns were accompanied by simple bronze fibulae, razors and rings.
