Marzabotto
Marzabotto is a small Italian village in the Apennines, near which the remains of an Etruscan town could be excavated. It is the best preserved and explored Etruscan city.
The excavations of Marzabotto are closely connected with the beginning of the Celtic archeology in Italy. At the 5th Congress of Prehistoric Anthropology and Archaeology in Bologna in 1871 for the first time the cultural connections of the finds with the transalpine Western and Central Europe were mentioned.
History and archaeological finds
At the end of the sixth century BC, the Etruscans, to found colonies north of their actual native land began. Especially in the Po valley and on the way there arose some cities. As early as the sixth century was at Marzabotto, whose ancient name is not known, a village of round huts. Around 500 BC the city was expanded with the arrival of the Etruscans to a city that was created by a rectangular pattern with about 15 m wide main roads. Side streets were 5 m wide. Beneath the streets of the city, which had an open sewer, there was a water pipe. The houses, of which usually only the stone foundations and clay roof tiles were found, were usually arranged around an open courtyard. In the city there were metal and ceramic workshops and in addition to the residential areas on the slopes of the citadel ( acropolis ) which temple. The city probably was about 350 under BC, when the Gauls invaded Italy.
Between 1867 and 1871 two necropolis of Gabriel de Pierre Jean Édouard Desor Mortillet and were examined and identified the above mentioned cultural contexts over the Alpine ridge in the urban area. In one burial ground, at the foot of the Acropolis, were 17 inhumation burials found in the other, to an uninhabited place in the city center, eight. Male burials with weapons, women's graves with brooches (including one from Marzabotto type, see below) and bangles, but all grave sites without pottery, were exposed. The two necropolis dated to the period from the beginning to the middle of the 3rd century BC, when the city no longer existed, but only one or two small settlements ( according to ancient authors called boisch ) remote settlement in what is now Casalecchio di Reno, as shown by comparisons of the La Tène found objects. The funeral rites are here and there, different from the rites in other centers in the region (Bologna, Monte Bibele, Monterenzio ), because it was doing no Hellenizing Greek- Etruscan customs, held as a symposium ( " feast " ) or competitions. There were just bodies and none of the usual time also cremations. Some of the burials took place in the so-called grave shafts, which was seen as an argument of a connection between cis- and trans-Alpine ( Celts ) world. Reuse of abandoned well shafts, however now considered likely.
Some metal objects from the urban area are also latènezeitlich how hollow hump tires and fibulae, some (intentionally? ) Deformed. Some of it was in the temple area, and could therefore be classified as votive offerings (ex - votos ). A sure to be speaking as ex - voto object is a primer that had been deposited in a water sanctuary in the northern part of the city. Vessels with celtic ornaments again indicate on Casalecchio where just such ceramics were found.
There is a museum in which the discoveries made here are to be seen on site.
Marzabotto Primer
According to the said copy of the fibula found by Mortillet and Desor in Marzabotto this guy was named Marzabotto Primer, also known as Zurich or wire-shaped fibula. The particular form of this booklet shows a symmetrical curved bow with double-sided spiral and a semi-circular foot. Therefore, it constitutes a mixture of trans-Alpine fibula forms and those of the so-called Certosa fibula and is south of the Po represent only one with this Fund. As a technical innovation of the Early La Tène applies the manufacture of a workpiece in one pass. The material mostly bronze wire, rare silver or iron was used. The Marzabottofibel is a master object of time segment " La Tène A" ( ~ 480 to ~ 380 BC); their distribution area is from the Marne region of the Rhine Valley, the Central Switzerland to the upper Danube. It was found in both men, women and children's graves, the situation situation leaves a carrying method accept as secured to the upper body.