Fig. 68.—Polada. Nos. 37 and 38 = 1⁄6 and all the rest = 1⁄2 real size.
Wood.—Several articles of wood are preserved, as handles of implements, a portion of an oar, fragments of the casings for flint saws. A stool with six legs cut out of the solid. These are now mostly shrivelled up and scarcely recognisable.
Osseous Remains.—Upper part of a human skull. Also numerous bones of the following animals:—the urus and some other breeds of cattle, horse, sheep, goat, dog, cat (one skull), wild boar, pig, stag, and roe.
Dr. Rambotti thinks that there was satisfactory evidence to conclude that the settlement had been destroyed by fire.
No report of this remarkable lake-dwelling has yet been published in Italy, but the principal objects were exhibited at a Congress of Art and Archæology held at Brescia in the autumn of 1875. On this occasion no less than fourteen pages of the published catalogue of the exhibition are devoted to the enumeration of Dr. Rambotti's collection from Polada.
CASCINA, Etc.
The Torbiera di Cascina, situated between Castelnuovo and San Georgio, in Salice, has from time to time yielded objects which, there can be no doubt, belonged to ancient pile-dwellers. The station was first recognised by Martinati (Adige, 1874, No. 23), who found flint arrow-points, a laurel-leaf-shaped lance-head, some stone implements, bits of staghorn, etc. In 1878 Pigorini gives a further account (B. 328d') of some of the objects since discovered, including 18 flint pieces—arrow-points of various forms, including one of the so-called rhomboidal type (selce romboidale), a magnificent lance-head, a fine saw, and one small triangular chisel. In the Museo Kircheriano at Rome there are also preserved a bronze axe of the flat type ([Fig. 51], No. 9) and a curious knife of bronze (No. 12), similar to those from the lake-dwelling at Peschiera, which were found in this place.
Martinati (B. 279, p. 179) also describes another small torbiera in the vicinity of Lazise, in which three rows of piles were encountered, and associated with them were fragments of black pottery. It was also reported that in past years entire vessels of the same kind were found in the locality.
TERREMARE.
Shortly after the middle of last century certain artificial deposits of an earthy substance found scattered in the shape of large, flattish mounds, over the provinces of Parma, Reggio, and Modena, became known to agriculturists as possessing great fertilising power—a property which they henceforth turned to advantage by using their contents as manure. To such an extent has this practice been carried that many of these deposits, notwithstanding their great extent, covering, in most instances, many acres, have now entirely disappeared. This substance looks like a mixture of clay, sand, ashes, etc., arranged in differently-coloured strata—yellowish-brown, green or black—and goes among the peasants under the name of marna or mèrne; but in scientific circles it is generally called terramara, more especially since the meeting of the International Congress at Bologna. In the course of these annual excavations various objects of antiquity were noticed by the workmen, such as Roman coins and tiles; implements of bone, horn, bronze, etc.; the bones of domestic and wild animals; and even human bones, were occasionally turned up. But these popular observations failed to lead to any scientific investigation, and when these mysterious mounds happened to be noticed by the early writers of this century each had a theory of his own to account for them. Thus the celebrated naturalist Venturi, in his "Storia di Scandiano," published in 1822, assigns them partly to the Boii, a Celtic race who here, according to him, cremated their dead warriors and ceremoniously threw their weapons and animals taken in war into the burning pile; and partly to the Romans, who subsequently inhabited the country, and selected these heaps for their dwellings and burial-places. Others supposed them to be the sacred or traditional cemeteries of successive races, and hence their contents are called "terrecime-teriale"; and it is a curious fact that many of these truncated mounds are to this day crowned by a modern church or convent, around which the Christians have been in the habit of burying their dead. Nor did the opinion of Gastaldi, published in 1861 (B. 43), throw much light on the matter. Seeing that the terremare were invariably situated near running streams, he considered them heaps of the remains of different, ages—Roman graves, cremations, and funeral feasts, which had been washed down and re-arranged by floods. But these and similar theories, based on the supposition that they were the abodes of the dead, were not in harmony with the domestic character of the pottery and implements turned up. The starting-point of a long series of researches which have now cleared up the problem was the announcement by Professor Strobel of Parma, in 1861 (B. 44), that the remains of a palafitte, analogous to those found in lakes and marshes, were to be seen below the true terramara deposits at Castione dei Marchesi.