396 Proceedings of Royal Society of EdinhurgTi. [sess. 
deposits of an earthy substance found scattered over the provinces 
of Parma, Eeggio, and Modena, in the shape of large fiattish 
mounds, became known to agriculturists as possessing great fertilis- 
ing power — a property which henceforth was turned to advantage 
by using their contents as manure. To such an extent has this 
practice been carried that many of these deposits, covering in most 
instances many acres in extent, have now entirely disappeared. 
In the course of the excavations various objects of antiquity were 
found by the workmen, such as Roman coins and tiles, implements 
of bone, horn, bronze, &c. ; the bones of domestic and wild animals, 
and, occasionally, human bones. But such discoveries failed for 
a long time to lead to any scientific investigation ; and when these 
mysterious mounds happened to be referred to by the early writers 
of this century each had a theory of his own to account for them. 
Thus the celebrated naturalist, Venturi, assigned them partly to 
the Boh, a Celtic race, who here, according to him, cremated their 
dead warriors, and ceremoniously threw their weapons and animals 
taken in war into the burning pyres ; and partly to the Romans, 
who selected these heaps for their dwellings and burial-places. 
Others supposed them to be the sacred and traditional cemeteries 
of successive races ; and it is a curious fact that many of these 
mounds are to this day crowned by a modern church or convent, 
around which the Christians have been in the habit of burying their 
dead. Nor did the opinion of Gastaldi, published in 1861, throw 
much light on the matter. Seeing that the Terremare were 
invariably situated near a running stream, he considered them the 
heterogeneous debris of different ages—Roman graves, cremations, 
and funeral feasts, — which had been washed down and re-arranged 
by floods. But these, and all similar theories, based on the sup- 
position that they were the abodes of the dead, were not in 
harmony with the domestic character of the pottery and implements 
turned up. The starting-point of a long series of researches by 
Professors Pigoriiii and Strobel, which have now completely cleared 
up the problem, was the announcement in 1861 that the remains 
of a palafitte, analogous to those found in lakes and peat-bogs, were 
to be seen beneath the true terramara-deposits at Castione dei 
Marches!. Nearly 100 of these mounds have now been more or 
less investigated, with the result that there can no longer be any 
