TORBIERA DI SAN MARTINO (SAN GIOVANNI DEL BOSCO).

This morainic basin is situated in the vicinity of Ivrea, immediately to the south of the village of Giovanni, and it also has yielded, from time to time, antiquities which leave no doubt that it was a home of the lake-dwellers. The bog is of an oval shape, about 1¼ mile in length, and half this in breadth, and is beautifully situated amidst groves of chestnut and walnut trees interspersed through rich meadows and fields. On its margin are found the trunks of trees, from 1 to 2 feet in diameter, still attached to their roots and lying just as they had fallen with their points directed to the centre of the bog. These trees are generally pine, oak, hazel, alder, etc.

Below the ordinary peat there is a layer of blackish mud which, on being dried, is combustible, and underneath it lie the stratified layers of ancient lake silt, consisting of a whitish clayey substance. In the blackish intermediate layer there was found, in September, 1864, a canoe 8 feet 4 inches long, 1 foot 9½ inches broad, and 8 inches deep. (A model of this canoe is now in the Museum at Turin.) A few years later (1868) another canoe was found in this turbary, of slightly larger dimensions, having two paddles in it ([Fig. 60], No. 17). The following objects are, among others, described and figured by Gastaldi as coming from the same place, viz.:—Specimens of pottery (Nos. 14 and 23), one of which (No. 23) is a lid of a vessel precisely similar to the one from Mercurago ([Fig. 53]); flint and stone implements ([Fig. 60], No. 20); wooden net-floats (No. 21); two bronze pins (Nos. 10 and 11); and a remarkable bronze pendant (No. 15), supposed, however, to be of Etruscan or Roman origin, and of later date than the other remains. (B. 168 and 294.)

Other turbaries in the western districts of the Po that have yielded prehistoric remains, but with which there were no piles or other indications of lake-dwellings, are:—

Torb. di Torre Bairo.—Fragments of vessels made on the wheel. In another small bog a quern-stone was found which is supposed to be of Roman times.

Torb. di Mongenet.—A bronze paalstab. (B. 294, tav. xiii. 4.)

Torb. di Bolengo.—A bronze arrow-point. (Ibid., tav. xiii. 9.)

Fig. 60.—Mercurago (1 to 9, 12, 13, 18, and 22), Borgo-Ticino (19), and San Martino. Nos. 12, 14, 18, 21, and 23 = ¹⁄₄, 13 = ¹⁄₆, 17 = ¹⁄₂₄ (the paddles ¹⁄₂₀), and the rest = ¹⁄₂ real size.

Torb. di Trana.—A sword of bronze 27 inches long (B. 294, Pl. xi.), and a celt of the flat type, (B. 168, Pl. viii.)

Lago di Piverone.—A bronze sword. (B. 168, Pl. viii.)

Torb. di Oleggio-Castello.—A bronze sword and a socketed spear-head. (Ibid.)