GOLASECCA is a village situated on the river Ticino, a few miles below the point at which it issues from Lago Maggiore. Extensive cemeteries of the iron age have been found all over this district, and the name Golasecca has come to be applied indis criminately to the whole series, occupying an area of nearly forty square kilometres. Some of them are situated on the left bank of the Ticino at Somma, Vergiate, Sesto Calende and Golasecca itself ; others on the right bank at Castelletto Ticino and the Laz zaretto of Borgo Ticino. During the past hundred years all these sites have been despoiled by excavators, very often unauthorized, and the objects found in them have been broken up or scattered over the world. The only collection of any size or importance is in the newly arranged museum at the Sforza castle in Milan. There may be seen the contents of the Sesto Calende tomb illus trated in the accompanying plate, as well as the collection formed by Castelfranco, the only archaeologist of the past generation to make any comprehensive study of the region.
All the cemeteries of the Somma plateau were of the cremation rite. The tombs were very simple, each containing a single cinerary urn, often enclosed in the centre of a circle of rough stones. In several instances these circles were approached by a corridor of similar stones. The most perfect example of this kind is a circle 17 metres in diameter enclosing a smaller circle 4 metres in diameter approached by a corridor 3o metres long. One burial was found within the small circle and three more within the outer circle. Castelfranco observed traces of about 5o stone enclosures and it is probable that there had been many more. Castelfranco, whose explorations were fairly extensive and systematic, states that he invariably found a tomb in the centre of every circle that he explored, and that the tombs found within the circles contained precisely the same pottery as those which stood isolated from any enclosure. The construction of the graves moreover was precisely the same whether enclosed within a circle or not. There were four varieties, viz. (I) Plain round holes in which the ossuary was placed without any protection; (2) a heap of small stones surrounding the ossuary, which rested on a bed of similar stones and was sometimes covered with a rough slab ; (3) rough slabs forming an oblong protection; (4) regular cists made of several slabs. These four methods of grave-making are precisely those employed by the other cremating peoples of Italy, which shows that the Golaseccans belonged to the same original family as the Comaeines, Atestines and Villanovans. The contents of the ossuaries were poor, consisting at most of one or two fibulae or weapons, or small objects of bronze, iron, amber or glass. Outside the cinerary urn itself were sometimes smaller jars and bowls.
It was principally upon a study of this pottery that Castelfranco based his division of the Golasecca antiquities into two periods. It expresses a theory which cannot be maintained. There are undoubtedly two schools of pottery-making represented at Gola secca, the one characterized by rough jars with incised ornamen tation, the other by a finer ware with striped decoration obtained by double-burnishing. Examples of each class are shown in the accompanying plate. But the two styles were sometimes found to gether in a single tomb and they are certainly not mutually ex clusive. Similarly the attempt to establish the existence of two periods by the evidence of fibulae has broken down under analysis, so that there is only one period in all the Golasecca cemeteries.
As to the chronology there have been until lately great divergen cies of opinion, caused chiefly by the different interpretations given to the warrior's tomb of Sesto Calende (see illustration above). The tomb of the warrior Sesto Calende is the most important single discovery in the Golasecca area. It was found by a farmer in the process of ploughing his field in 1867, and was described by Biondelli in the same year. A sketch of the grave is shown in the plate, with the principal objects contained in it. Discussion as to the date has centred upon the situla made of plates of hammered bronze ornamented with rudely executed figures and scenes. These are not embossed or engraved as on the fine situlae of the Etruscans or Atestines but outlined by the very primitive process of pointille, that is to say with small consecutive dots. The technique is so infantile and the execution so poor that it was natural to suppose the situla to be a very archaic work. Actually however, comparisons have shown that though childish art it is not primitive. For an attentive examination of the scenes brings out the fact that they are derivations with a good deal of travesty and misunderstanding from a well known Etruscan original. And from the date of this original it is possible to fix the date of the Sesto Calende situla, which can be very little if at all earlier than Soo B.C. The theory therefore that this is the grave of some very early Celtic warrior, with all its implications of a Gaulish invasion in the early iron age must be finally abandoned. Nor is there any reason for attributing the burial to a Celt even of the fifth century, for the weapons and accessories are not distinctively Gaulish ; in fact the tomb though richer than the average is a fair representa tion of the usual Golasecca civilization.
The entire subject thus becomes much clearer. The Sesto Calende warrior and his famous situla find their natural place at the end of the Golasecca period. There are not two periods, as Castelfranco supposed, but only one, which ranges from 7 5o or 70o to Soo B.C. as the fibulae plainly show. The Golasecca period therefore is precisely conterminous with the Arnoaldi period of Bologna.
The amount of material available for a study of Golasecca, though lamentably meagre, shows that in the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. that branch of the cremating invaders which had made its way by stages from the Eastern Alps to a home on Lago Maggiore was backward in its civilization. The Golaseccans are far behind the Atestines and the Villanovans of the same period ; they are dis tinctly poor relations, living in a remote province on the outskirts of the more progressive nations. They were not of much import ance in the development of early Italy. There seems, however, to have been a trade system which extended all through the pre Alpine region from the Ticino to Trieste, by which the products of the Adriatic filtered to this distant corner. And perhaps it is possible to detect in some of the metal work and in the individual character of the pottery the beginnings of a native local style which is independent although barbaric. The Golaseccans, how ever, form only a part of the early population of Lombardy with neighbours and kinsmen living round Varese and Como. In this region the records begin earlier and the material though scattered is more abundant (see COMACINES).
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—The Gaulish theory of Bertrand is given in his Bibliography.—The Gaulish theory of Bertrand is given in his book written with S. Reinach in 1894 Les Celtes dans les vallees du Po et du Danube. D. Randall-Maelver, The Iron Age in Italy (1g27), gives all the original references. The articles by de Mortillet and Castelfranco are now out of date, though the latter has a certain value as an original record. The old-fashioned dissertation of the Abbe Giani has been usefully summarized by Montelius La Civilisation primitive en Italie, cols. 231-247, with plates, who has reproduced the best of his drawings, as well as those of Castelfranco and Biondelli. Dechelette Manuel d'Archeologie, vol. pp. 730-743 is useful. Hoernes has a good discussion of the Situla in his Urgeschichte der bildenden Kunst.