Vasi-a-bocca-quadrata culture
The Vasi-a-bocca-quadrata culture ( Italian Cultura dei vasi a bocca quadrata , VBQ, also just called Bocca quadrata culture for short ) is a culture of the Middle Neolithic , which was founded during the 5th millennium BC Was widespread in northern Italy . The name refers to the pottery, which has a square opening.
Research history, structure
Luigi Bernabò Brea (1910-1999) created in the late 1940s and mid-1950s a sequence of the Neolithic cultures of Northern Italy based on the stratigraphy in the Arene Candide grotto near Savona in Liguria . He divided the Neolithic in Northern Italy as follows:
- Neolitico inferiore, with the cardial or imprint culture, etc. a., at the same time as the band ceramic
- Middle Neolithic, characterized by the Vasi-a-bocca-quadrata culture u. a., simultaneously with the funnel beaker culture (TBK)
- Neolitico superiore with the Lagozza culture u. a., at the same time as the cord ceramic
The Vasi-a-bocca-quadrata culture is divided into three sections after the decoration of the pottery:
- The first and oldest shows a decoration with incisions and graffiti,
- the middle one is characterized by spiral and meander decorations,
- the last phase shows vessels with figures and prints.
Funeral customs
The burial sites of this culture are among the oldest of the Neolithic in Italy. The dead were buried lying on their side on the left, with their heads flexed to the east, with their gaze directed south. Occasionally, however, the supine position also occurs.
More than 40 graves were known in 2012 around the Ligurian Arene Candide , in La Pollera there were 47, in the Grotta dei Pipistrelli (bat cave) there were 10. The dead lay here with their heads facing north or northeast. Ocher was often found in a vessel with the dead. There were also green stone axes, bone needles, antlers, triton clams and animal teeth. A skull was removed in La Pollera and skulls deposited in the cave of Arma del Sanguineto.
In Veneto , tombs were found at Progno di Fumane and Quinzano Veronese. The most important site is La Vela near Trento , where remains of at least 14 individuals were found. Some of the dead were buried in stone circles, others in stone boxes, with the two burial rites in different areas of the cemetery. Here, too, the dead lay on their left, but they were oriented from southwest to northeast or from south-southwest to north-northeast. With the exception of one child, the dead were tucked away in pairs. Nine of the fourteen graves contained grave goods, flint tools for men, polished stone tools such as hatchets and bone needles. Women and children, on the other hand, became millstones, small vessels and a type of bottle or flask, as well as bone tools. There was also jewelry in the form of spondylus shells. Some graves, like Grave 1, were particularly richly furnished, as in this case the grave of a man to whom a chisel, an ax, a flint blade and nine arrowheads had been added. One child, that of grave 3, was given spondylus shells, small vessels, one of which contained cinnabar , and a bone needle.
In Emilia, more precisely in the center and in the west, which includes the regions of Piacenza, Parma and Reggio Emilia, around 200 individuals were found at 17 sites. The custom varied between individual graves and significant clusters, in one case there were 55 dead in a small cemetery. The dead were deposited in simple earth pits on the left. They faced south and east-west storage. In contrast to the other two main areas of culture, there were neither scattered bones nor post-mortem manipulation, apart from the skulls and bones at the sites of Ponte Ghiara, Le Mose and Via Guidorossi ( Parma ), which were stored on the floor of a kind of silo . Burns were very rare (a total of 7 cases, representing 3.5% of the cases examined): one in Ponte Ghiara, two in Le Mose and four in Gaione - Cascina Catena. These are exclusively women. Only in the necropolises of Vicofertile and Gaione-Cinghio were cenotaphs , a kind of mock grave, to commemorate certain dead. No additions were found there either. Such cenotaphs are known from the Balkans and the Danube region of Central Europe.
The graves of the first phase of the culture contained no graves, while those of the second phase contained 30 to 60% graves.
Figurines are rare, so far only the Venus of Vicofertile (grave 3) and a figurine from Via Guidorossi (grave 53) are known.
Most of the finds are exhibited in the Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico “Luigi Pigorini” in Rome, in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan and in the Museo Civico di Piadena in Cremona.
literature
- Maria Bernabò Brea, Massimo Cultraro: La statuetta femminile di Vicofertile (PR) nel contesto neolitico italiano e transadriatico: confronti tipologici e significati simbolici , in: Preistoria Alpina 46 (2012) 125–145. ( online , PDF)
- Luigi Bernabò Brea : Gli scavi della Caverna delle Arene Candide Volume I, Bordighera (Imperia), 1946 and 1956.
- Annaluisa Pedrotti: Il Neolitico , in: Michele Lanzinger, Franco Marzatico, Annaluisa Pedrotti (ed.): Storia del Trentino. La preistoria e la protostoria , Volume I, Il Mulino 2000.
- Alessandro Ferrari, Elisabetta Mottes, Paola Visentini (eds.): Vasi a Bocca quadrata - Evoluzione delle conoscenze nuovi approcci interpretativi. Atti del Convegno Riva del Garda 12-15 maggio 2009 , 2009.
