Fig. 80.—Various forms of Spindle-whorls or Beads (1⁄2) from Campeggine.
From the existence of metal slag and stone moulds ([Fig. 81]) the authors inferred that the terramaricoli knew the art of founding in metals.
Professor Strobel gave also a minute description of the bones and other organic remains, to which I shall afterwards refer when treating of his subsequent investigations in this wide and important field of research.
Fig. 81.—Stone Mould from Castelnuovo.
In summing up, the authors used the following words:—
"As to the first origin of the marl-earths, it is clear that the banquets, as you assert, are a considerable part; but there seems to us to appear in the scoriæ, the millstones, the heaps of grain, the palisades, the potsherds, already cited, together with the arms and utensils of all sorts which are found in these earths, something more than a mere meeting-place to banquet. It seems to us, if we do not err, that there is something of settlement and duration. Man did not meet there only to arrange and devour the feast, but to employ himself besides in domestic avocations, in preparing implements and arms, to sew garments, and make nets—in a word, to inhabit them; besides, to exercise the practices of their religious worship, and, perhaps, also to burn their dead, and all these after the fashion of barbarians, such as the people of the marl-beds must have been. These people, according to the place and time, were fishermen, hunters, shepherds, and even agriculturists." (B. 91, p. 83.)
These words contain the most important feature of this report. The authors, though not absolutely free from the previous notions that floods and inundations had something to do with the stratification of the débris, distinctly recognise that the terremare must be considered as the remains of the habitations of the living, and not, as hitherto supposed, the resting-places of the dead.