of cremating their dead, and
other characteristics peculiar to their type of civilization, the peoples
of the _palafitte_ and the _terramare_ are believed to have introduced a
new racial element into Italy. The former probably descended from the
Swiss lake region, while the latter probably came from the valley of the
Danube. These peoples, abandoning the lakes and marshes of the Po valley,
spread southward over the peninsula. Because of this expansion and because
of the striking similarity between the design of the _terramare_
settlements and that of the Roman fortified camps, it has been suggested
that they were the forerunners of the Italian peoples of historic times.

*Other types of Bronze Age culture in Italy.* The Neolithic population of
northern Italy developed a Bronze Age civilization under the stimulus of
contact with the _terramare_ people and the lake-dwellers. In the southern
part of the peninsula and in Sicily, however, the Bronze Age developed
more independently, although showing decided traces of influences from the
eastern Mediterranean. Only in its later stages does it show the effect of
the southward migration of the builders of the pile villages.

*The Iron Age.* The prehistoric Iron Age in Italy has left extensive
remains in the northern and central regions, but such is by no means the
case in the south. The most important center of this civilization was at
Villanova, near Bologna. Here, again, we have to do with a new type of
civilization, which is not a development of the _terramare_ culture. In
addition to the use of iron, this age is marked by the practice of
cremation, with the employment of burial urns of a distinctive type,
placed in well tombs (_tombe a pozzo_). In Etruria, to the south of the
Apennines, the Early Iron Age is of the Villanova type. It seems fairly
certain that both in Umbria and in Etruria this civilization is the work
of the Umbrians, who at one time occupied the territory on both sides of
the Apennines. Regarding the migration of the Umbrians into Italy we know
nothing, but it seems probable that their civilization had its rise in
central Europe. The later Iron Age civilization both in Etruria and
northward of the Apennines has been identified as that of the Etruscans.

*Latium.* In Latium the Iron Age civilization is a development under
Villanovan influences. Here a distinctive feature is the use of a
hut-shaped urn to receive the ashes of the dead. This urn was itself