The Final Bronze Age Settlement of Casalmoro (Mantua, Italy)

Casalmoro lies along the Chiese river in the province of Mantua, in the northern Po Plain, and it represents the biggest known settlement area for Final Bronze Age Italy. This was one of the new settlements founded in the twelfth century BC north of the Po, in the region between eastern Lombardy and Veneto, after the crisis of the Terramare culture. This work provides a typological analysis and a chronological definition of the finds, and presents a significant amount of pottery and bronze artefacts for the first time. It then proposes a framing of Casalmoro in its regional context and in relation to other areas of the Italian Peninsula at the beginning of the Final Bronze Age. This settlement area constitutes an important context both for chronological aspects and to understand the processes leading to the birth of the proto-urban centres at the dawn of the Iron Age.