[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":27},["ShallowReactive",2],{"hreflang:/en/zoom/p2ch3z4-the-golasecca-culture-before-the-gauls":3,"zoom:p2ch3z4:en":7},{"fr":4,"en":5,"es":6},"/zoom/p2ch3z4-la-culture-de-golasecca-avant-les-gaulois","/en/zoom/p2ch3z4-the-golasecca-culture-before-the-gauls","/es/zoom/p2ch3z4-la-cultura-de-golasecca-antes-de-los-galos",{"period":8,"chapter":17,"zoom":20},{"id":9,"title":10,"titleEn":10,"titleEs":11,"range":12,"rangeEn":12,"rangeEs":13,"covers":14},"p2","Antiquity","Antigüedad","≈ 600 BC → 51 BC","≈ 600 a. C. → 51 a. C.",[15],{"filename":16,"url":16},"Lionel Royer - Vercingetorix Throwing down His Weapons at the feet of Julius Caesar.jpg",{"id":18,"title":19},"p2ch3","The Golden Age of the Gauls",{"id":21,"title":22,"chapterId":18,"html":23,"hasEn":24,"isFallback":25,"seoDescription":26},"p2ch3z4","The Golasecca Culture, Before the Gauls","\u003Chr>\n\u003Cp>The main chapter notes, in section II, that the \u003Cstrong>Insubres\u003C/strong> probably descend from the \u003Cstrong>Golasecca\u003C/strong> culture, already established in the sub-Alpine lake region as early as the 6th century BC, rather than having arrived with the great Gaulish wave of the early 4th century. This zoom presents this culture in its own right: who were these populations really, what material traces did they leave, and how did their world eventually merge into the larger one of Cisalpine Gaul?\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>⏳ A civilization identified late\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>The Golasecca culture takes its name from excavations carried out from \u003Cstrong>1822\u003C/strong> onward by the abbé \u003Cstrong>Giovanni Battista Giani\u003C/strong>, on the territory of the commune of Golasecca, in the present-day province of Varese. Giani initially interprets his findings as Roman; it takes the archaeologist \u003Cstrong>Gabriel de Mortillet\u003C/strong> to correctly link these remains to a pre-Roman civilization of the early Iron Age, of Celtic origin. The three-phase chronology (Golasecca I, II, III), still used today, is established by \u003Cstrong>Alexandre Bertrand\u003C/strong> at an international congress held in Stockholm in 1874.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>This culture occupies, between roughly \u003Cstrong>850\u003C/strong> and \u003Cstrong>375 BC\u003C/strong>, a territory stretching from Lombardy to eastern Piedmont, through Swiss Ticino and western Veneto — a pivotal zone between the Alps and the Po valley, crossed by the major routes linking the Hallstatt world to the north with the Etrusco-Italic world to the south.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>🔥 Cremations, chariots, and situla art\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>The Golasecca populations practise cremation: the ashes and bones of the deceased are placed in terracotta urns, themselves buried in pit necropolises organized with regular spacing — a system reflecting a society of small scattered villages, each associated with its own necropolis. Some elite burials, such as those found at \u003Cstrong>Sesto Calende\u003C/strong>, dated to the 7th and 6th centuries BC, contain Hallstatt-type chariots, weapons, and ornaments, as well as large \u003Cem>situlae\u003C/em> — bronze vessels with the figured decoration characteristic of this culture.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Situla art, which reaches its peak during the Golasecca II phase (6th-5th centuries BC), blends motifs and techniques of Etrusco-Mediterranean origin with more properly Celtic and Hallstatt traditions — a syncretism that directly reflects this culture’s geographic position, at the crossroads of influences from north and south. Notably, the Golasecca elites appear to have adopted a form of writing as early as the late 7th century BC, borrowed and adapted from the Etruscan alphabet — one of the earliest attestations of the use of writing among populations of Celtic origin.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>🔚 Absorption rather than disappearance\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>The Golasecca culture does not vanish abruptly: it loses its own autonomy as new Gaulish waves — the Insubres included, according to the hypothesis adopted in the main chapter — merge with the fabric already in place, before the broader settlement of the Boii, the Cenomani, and the Senones, from \u003Cstrong>400 BC\u003C/strong> onward, definitively attaches the whole region to what ancient sources would call Cisalpine Gaul. Golasecca is thus not so much replaced as gradually absorbed into a larger cultural and political whole — a continuity that partly explains why the Insubres, unlike the Boii or the Senones, retain no identifiable mother-tribe remaining in Gaul itself.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>🧠 Key points\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cul>\n\u003Cli>The Golasecca culture, identified through excavations beginning in 1822, occupies northern Italy between roughly 850 and 375 BC, long before the great Gaulish wave of the 4th century BC.\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>Its populations practise urn cremation and produce, at their peak (6th-5th centuries BC), situla art blending Etruscan and Hallstatt influences, as well as an early form of writing adapted from the Etruscan alphabet.\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>The Insubres very probably descend from it, which explains their older roots in the region compared with the Boii, the Cenomani, or the Senones.\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>Golasecca does not disappear abruptly but is gradually absorbed into Cisalpine Gaul as new Gaulish waves settle from 400 BC onward.\u003C/li>\n\u003C/ul>\n",true,false,"The main chapter notes, in section II, that the Insubres probably descend from the Golasecca culture, already established in the sub-Alpine lake region as",1786625709858]