2. ITALIAN ARCHEOLOGY. Italian archaeology, from the remotest periods of human existence down to the Roman Age, pre sents a series of successive phases enclosed by a vast horizon. The archeological material, which is uniform or nearly so during the Stone Age, at the dose of the latter, and at the begin ning of the Metal Age, appears distinctly di vided into regional groups. The people who produced it remaining in' their own localities expressed their tendencies under varying influ ences and in different ways, as influenced by their local environment without, however, los ing the fundamental racial characteristics which testify to their common origin. During the fol lowing age of metal these differences increase as waves pile up and mix with waves. To the difference in implements is added the divergence of funeral rites. In northern and middle Italy, cremation and the placing of the remains in a mortuary vase take the place of sepulchre; in other regions cremation appears at isolated points, while in others it is absent; all this indicating not only intensified commercial cur rents, but also that there was a real movement of population. Caution is necessary in attribut ing differences of archmological material and of rites to immigrations of new people; these phenomena do not always coincide, sometimes they conflict with the spread of race and lan guage. If for a given epoch we should color a map, using four different colors to show the districts in which are found similar material, analogous funeral rites, one race and one lan guage, the four colors would not exactly cover one another. Nevertheless, if there were immi grations into Italy they occurred chiefly in the age of metal and the culmination of the move ment was toward the end of the Bronze Age and at the beginning of the Iron Age. Two facts unite with the data supplied by implements and rites to prove that there was, in upper and middle Italy, an infiltration of ,peoples from the central regions of Europe : First, the presence in these parts of Italy of a different anthropo logical type with a rather large and round head, whereas in lower Italy the old Mediterranean type of the oblong, finely modeled cranium has remained almost unaltered. Second, the ad vance and then the predominance of the Aryan language, whereas the ancient Mediterranean race which occupied Italy and its islands at the end of the Stone Age had a non-Aryan lan guage.
From the beginning of the Iron Age the dif ferences between the different regions of Italy remain practically stationary as far as the an cient indigenous civilizations are concerned; but they soon became intensified and simplified by two conquests or civilization movements which divided Italy between them. These two move ments came from the eastern basin of the Medi terranean. From the insular and peninsular countries which afterward constituted classic Greece, there came into southern Italy and into Sicily small successive waves of peoples, at first not yet Aryanized as to language and per haps driven out from their old habitations by new invasions (in these people we can recognize the Pelasgians of tradition) ; then, peoples who corresponded more and more to the conception which we have of the classic Greek (a Medi terranean stock, Aryanized in language). The pre-Hellenic, proto-Hellenic and Hellenic peo ples colonized chiefly the coast and some stretches of contiguous territory. A parallel movement was the establishment of Phoenician settlements, which were, however (except in a part of Sicily), covered up by the Grecian colonization, and are not of great importance as regards the Italian Peninsula. The Phoe nicians contented themselves with trading with the latter.
The other immigration, which divided Italy with the Greeks, was that of the Etruscans— a people of Mediterranean stock and of non Aryan language. They came across the sea from Asia Minor and, finding the coasts of southern Italy occupied as far as Cumz, they crossed the Tiber and occupied the country to which they gave their name. From there, cross ing the Apennines, they conquered the Xmilian plain as far as die Adriatic. Their influence branched out also into upper Italy, became ex tended to Latini and over Rome, to the citizens of which the Etruscans were masters in the liberal arts and in religion, even giving them a king. Finally even the most southern Greek coastal colonies felt their influence which as sexted itself in the Campania of the interior by its systematizing work of changing old indig enous dwelling-places into regular cities with religious and military organizations, which rose to great importance, and to vigorous life (Capra, Nola, Pompeii).