Spheres of Consumption of Metalwork and Trans-regional Interactions at the Onset of the Urban Phenomenon in Northern Italy

This paper investigates aspects of consumption and circulation of metalwork in northern Italy in the framework of the first explicit appearance of the urban phenomenon (8th – 7th century BC), with special focus on a multifunctional and polysemous class of artefact, bronze axes. An analysis of the discarding/deposition, ritual treatment, and circulation of these objects allows us to outline the existence of different spheres of consumption in Villanovan north-central Italy: one that conceives of axes as functional tools/weapons, and as a key medium for bulk trade of metal; the other utilises some of them in the manifestations of self-aggrandisement of nascent elites during sumptuous funerary rituals. Different understandings of axes as working tools and weapons associated with swords emerge from mortuary rituals and votive offerings in Veneto and the Caput Adriae. The production and distribution of axe types suggests that two distinct trans-regional networks of communication were in action, respectively centred on Etruria and the southern Po plain (with Bologna and Verucchio as core centres) on one hand, and on northeast Italy and the circumalpine Hallstatt zone on the other.