Verucchio: The Iron Age Settlement

A preeminent site of Early Iron Age Italy, Verucchio was a stronghold in the eastern part of present-day Romagna, controlling the northern Adriatic Sea and the Apennines’ passes towards the Italian Peninsula between the 9th and 7th centuries BC. Although the funerary ritual displays signs of hierarchical society with a concentration of power and wealth, including an unparalleled abundance of amber artefacts and wooden masterpieces, the settlement area and population dynamics remain largely unknown to date. According to the traditional view, Verucchio would have been an ‘Etruscan colony’, a sort of outpost of the Villanovan culture north of the Apennines. Recent discoveries and alternative theoretical approaches are changing this picture, suggesting a more complex process of internal development and shifting periods of success and abrupt crisis.