From the Paleolithic to the metal age

Description

At the entrance to the Archaeological Museum, visitors are greeted by a large display case containing a bifacial and numerous flint flakes dating back to the Lower Paleolithic. The museum tour, arranged chronologically, begins with the stone tools of Neanderthal hunter-gatherers who, on the first hills, in a steppe-like environment and with the ice extending well beyond the Apennine ridge, followed the animals typical of cold climates: these are the oldest traces of frequentation of the Parma area dating back to between 70,000 and 50,000 years ago, to the Middle Paleolithic. In this same phase, but at a time of milder climate, the exploitation of the jasper of Mount Lama began, which then intensified, thousands of years later, in the Upper Paleolithic. After the end of the last glaciation (about 13,000 years ago) a warm and humid period began during which the frequentation of human groups extended up to the plateaus of the high Apennines.

Agriculture and livestock farming, on which the new productive economy of the subsequent Neolithic period was based, encouraged population growth; in the Parma area, this increase occurred above all in the 5th millennium BC with the spread, as in much of northern Italy, of the Square-mouthed Vase Culture. The settlements occupied the well-drained and cereal-friendly lands of the high plains and large-scale exchanges of some raw materials became very intense: in the various sites, we find smooth green stone artefacts obtained from rocks of Alpine origin, blades, points, flint arrowheads from the Alpine or central Italian area, obsidian from the islands of central-southern Italy, rock crystal also from the Alps.
The deceased, as was frequent during the Neolithic, were laid in a curled up position, in simple pits in the ground. Some of them were provided with a grave goods, usually consisting of vases and jewellery for women, green stone axes, flint tools and, sometimes, jewellery for men.

In the last centuries of the Neolithic, the first copper objects appear, proving that the transition to the first metal age occurs without interruption. During the Copper Age, new technologies and practices spread (the animal-drawn plough, the wheel, metal, the exploitation of secondary animal products) which, together with a population increase, lead to a more intense and more organised exploitation of resources, but also to significant environmental changes, such as, for the Emilian area, specific deforestation not only in the mountainous areas. Among the discoveries in the Parma area, it is worth mentioning the large rectangular houses with apses whose length, in some cases, exceeded 50 metres.

The use of metal, however, becomes systematic only thanks to the spread of the copper and tin alloy, bronze; the supply of metals is the engine of the intense exchange activities of this new era (the Bronze Age) and of the contacts that are established between the numerous civilizations of the period despite their different degrees of socio-political development. Until a few years ago the only evidence from the Parma area consisted of two hoards of bronze objects. The most recent research is actually demonstrating that the territory was settled in this era too: traces of ploughing in San Pancrazio, a well in Beneceto and a burial ground with inhumation tombs, some surmounted by monumental mounds, in PR-Sant’Eurosia, are the most significant findings.