The Lake-Dwellings of Europe: Being the Rhind Lectures in Archæology for 1888Munro, Robert
History
The Lake-Dwellings of Europe: Being the Rhind Lectures in Archæology for 1888
Munro, Robert
Lake-dwellers and lake-dwellings -- Bibliography; Lake-dwellers and lake-dwellings -- Europe
Another typical example of the terremare, which I wish to describe
shortly, lies 1¼ mile north of the Po, near the town of Viadana. This
station was accidentally discovered a few years ago by the brothers
Pietro and Giacomo Tassoni, the peasant proprietors of a field in
which they were making trenches for planting vines. In the course of
their operations they dug up fragments of pottery, which they brought
to the Arciprete Antonio Parazzi of Viadana (already widely known as
a skilled archæologist and the founder of an excellent museum of the
local antiquities of the district). Some of the fragments of pottery
turned out to be Roman, while others were undoubtedly pre-Roman, and
this led to a preliminary investigation of the locality, in which
the experienced eye of Parazzi soon detected the site of a terramara
dwelling. A full report of the subsequent excavations and results
obtained was published by Parazzi in the _Bullettino_ for 1886 (B.
451)--a monograph which is a perfect model of the descriptive details
of an investigation conducted on scientific methods.
First of all let me emphasise the fact that there was here no mound
at all. The field was quite flat, and to reach the surface of the
terramara beds a stratum of considerable thickness, varying from
1 to 2 feet, of the ordinary alluvial deposits had to be passed
through. The terramara beds then continued for a depth of 8 or 10
feet, underneath which came the subsoil on which the settlement was
originally constructed. It is noteworthy that in one part of the area,
underneath the terramara beds proper, a peaty bed, similar to that at
Castione, was discovered. To make the resemblance still more striking,
this _terra uliginosa_ also contained the remains of a palafitte.
These piles were very well preserved, and some of them may now be seen
in the Museum at Viadana.
It was impossible, without enormous labour, to explore this settlement
to a great extent; but by a few well-directed trenches Parazzi
ascertained that it was of a quadrangular shape, and orientated to
within 11 degrees, and that it was surrounded by a ditch and a dyke.
The enclosure, exclusive of the area of the dyke, had a superficial
area of about one English acre. Its four sides measured, respectively,
208 (N.), 218 (S.), 227 (W.), and 237 (E.) feet. The dyke was 26 feet
broad at its base, and 11 feet 6 inches high, and showed that it had
been added to on three different occasions. Its inner edge appeared
to have been very steep, a fact which suggests that, as at Castione,
there had been some kind of support to prevent the earth from falling
in. The ditch was 34 feet wide, and its maximum depth was 6½ feet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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