Introduction
The “Terramare” are banked and moated villages dating to the Middle and Recent Bronze ages (1600–1150 year BCE), located in the alluvial plain of the Po river, northern Italy. They are witness to a complex society, whose subsistence was based on intensive agriculture, pastoralism, and long-range trade (Barfield 1994). The Terramare people first carried out a radical clearing of the Po plain to provide land for intensive agriculture, and changed the natural drainage by digging canals and ditches to feed moats surrounding the villages and to irrigate the fields in the countryside (Cremaschi et al. 2006). The culture reached its apogee, along with a prolific population, at the beginning of the Recent Bronze age, but at the end of this period suffered a societal collapse that led to the abandonment of the villages in a few generations (Cardarelli 2010).
Key Issues/Current Debates/Future Directions/Examples
The Terramare have been a major subject of research by the Italian...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Barfield, L. 1994. The Bronze Age of northern Italy: recent work and social interpretation, in C. Mathers & S. Stoddart (ed.) Development and decline in the Mediterranean Bronze Age (Sheffield Archaeological Monographs 8): 129-44. Sheffield: Collis J.R. publications.
BernabòBrea, M. & M. Cremaschi. 2004. La terramara di Santa Rosa di Poviglio nel corso del Bronzo Recente, in Atti del Convegno L’età del Bronzo Recente in Italia, Lido di Camaiore 26-29 ottobre 2000: 101-11.
BernabòBrea, M., A. Cardarelli & M. Cremaschi. (ed.) 1997. Le terramare. La più antica civiltà padana. Milano: Electa.
Cardarelli, A. 2010. The collapse of the Terramare culture and growth of new economic and social systems during the Bronze Age in Italy. Scienze dell’Antichità. Storia, Archeologia, Antropologia 15: 449-520.
Cremaschi, M. & C. Pizzi. 2011. Exploiting water resource in the Bronze Age villages (terramare) of the Po plain (northern Italy). Recent investigation in the terramara Santa Rosa of Poviglio. Antiquity Project Gallery 85 (327). Available at: http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/cremaschi327/.
Cremaschi, M., C. Pizzi & V. Valsecchi. 2006. Water management and land use in the terramare and a possible climatic co-factor in their collapse. The case study of the Terramara S. Rosa (northern Italy). Quaternary International 151: 87-98.
Mele, M., M. Cremaschi, M. Giudici, A. Bassi, C. Pizzi & A. Lozej, 2011. Near-surface geophysical prospection to reveal the hidden structure of the Terramara Santa Rosa, Poviglio (Italy). Abstract in: Epitome p 339.
Pearce, M. 1998. New research on the terramare of northern Italy. Antiquity 72: 743-6.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this entry
Cite this entry
Cremaschi, M. (2014). Terramara Santa Rosa di Poviglio Alluvial Site. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_1521
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_1521
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-0426-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-0465-2
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law