Golasecca culture

The Golasecca culture (9th - 4th century BC) was a Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age culture in northern Italy, whose type-site was excavated at Golasecca in the province of Varese, Lombardy, where, in the area of Monsorino at the beginning of the 19th century, Abbot Giovanni Battista Giani made the first findings of about fifty graves with pottery and metal objects.

The culture's material evidence is scattered over a wide area of 20,000 km²[1] south of the Alps, between the rivers Po, Serio and Sesia, and bordered on the north by the Alpine passes.

With the collaboration of French, Italian and German archaeologists meeting at the Archaeological Congress of Stockholm in 1874, the timing of the Culture of Golasecca became clearer, divided into three periods from 900 to 380 BC.

In the area of Castelletto sopra Ticino, between 2001 and 2003, an excavation conducted under the direction of Filippo Maria Gambari unearthed in the district of Castelletto sopra Ticino (Via del Maneggio, Via Aronco, Via Repubblica) the oldest aristocratic necropolis of Piedmont, developed between the end of the ninth and seventh centuries BC.

After a long activity of cataloguing and restoration, the artefacts (urns and grave goods) were exhibited between 2009 and 2010 at the multipurpose room Albino Calletti of Castelletto sopra Ticino in a major exhibition entitled L’alba della città - Le prime necropoli del centro protourbano di Castelletto Ticino.

Subsequent phases of the Golasecca culture are so periodized:[1][4] Sites characteristic of Golasecca culture have been identified in western Lombardy, eastern Piedmont, the Canton Ticino and Val Mesolcina, in a territory stretching north of the Po River to sub-alpine zones, between the course of the Serio to the east and the Sesia to the west.

The site of Golasecca, where the Ticino exits from Lake Maggiore, flourished from particularly favourable geographical circumstances as it was quite suitable for long-distance exchanges, in which Golaseccans acted as intermediaries between Etruscans and the Hallstatt culture of Austria, on the all-important trade in salt.

[6] The settlements depended on domesticated animals: remains reveal the presence of goats, sheep, pigs, cattle and horses.

[7][8][9][10] The Golasecca culture is best known for its burial customs, where an apparent ancestor cult imposed respect for the necropolis, a sacred area untouched by agrarian use or deforestation.

[1] Or perhaps, a more likely hypothesis, is that a more ancient proto-Celtic presence can be traced back to the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age (16th-15th century BC), when North Western Italy appears closely linked regarding the production of bronze artifacts, including ornaments, to the western groups of the Tumulus culture.