Prehistoric Italy - Iron Age

Iron Age

The Camuni were an ancient people of uncertain origin (according to Pliny the Elder, they were Euganei; according to Strabo, they were Rhaetians) who lived in Val Camonica – in what is now northern Lombardy – during the Iron Age, although human groups of hunters, shepherds and farmers are known to have lived in the area since the Neolithic.

They reached the height of their power during the Iron Age due to the presence of numerous iron mills in Val Camonica. Their historical importance is, however, mostly due to their legacy of carved rocks, c. 300,000 in number, which date from the Palaeolithic to the Middle Ages.

Among the populations of pre-Roman Italy, the most notable were the Etruscans who, starting from the 8th century BC, created a refined civilization which largely influenced Rome and the Latin world. The origins of this non-Indo-European people, which originated from the Tyrrhenian coast of central Italy and later expanded to Emilia and Campania, are uncertain.

Other peoples living in northern Italy include the Ligurians (an Indo-European people who lived in what is now Liguria, southern Piedmont and the southern French coast), and the Veneti of north-eastern Italy, who probably came from Illyria or, according to other studies, Asia Minor. In the peninsula, alongside the Etruscans, lived numerous tribes, mostly of Indo-European origin: the Umbri in Umbria, Latins, Sabellians, Falisci, Volsci and Aequi in the Latium; Piceni in the Marche and northern Abruzzo; Samnites in southern Abruzzo, Molise and Campania; Daunians, Messapii and Peucetii (forming the Apulian or Iapygian confederation) in Apulia; Lucani and Bruttii in the southern tips of the peninsula; Sicels, Elymians and Siculi in Sicily. Sardinia, since the 2nd millennium BC, was still inhabited by the Nuragic people. Apart from the Latins (who created the Roman civilization), the most successful were perhaps the Samnites, who were able to create a large federation across the central Apennines and effectively opposed the Roman expansions until the Samnite Wars.

Some of these peoples, living in southern Italy and Sicily from the 8th to the 3rd century, lived alongside new colonies founded by the Phoenicians and Magna Graecia, and were later absorbed into the Roman state.