Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/379

 is a convent built on a mound. Where that mound rises there was originally a lake, and the foundations of the building are laid in the ruins of an ancient population which filled the lake, and converted it into a hill of refuse.

From the broken bones in the middens, we learn that the roebuck, the stag, the wild boar, then ranged the forests, that cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, and dogs were domesticated; that these people had two kinds of horses, one a powerful animal, the other small-boned, and that horseflesh was eaten by the inhabitants of the terramares.

Wheat, barley, millet, and beans have been found about the piles, together with the stones of wild plums, sloes, and cherries, also crab-apple pips.

A bronze dagger was found at Castione, a spear-head of the same metal in the deposit of Bargone di Salso. A hatchet came from the terramare of Noceto; quantities of little wheels, of unknown use, have been discovered, also hair-pins and combs. One, for a lady’s back-hair, ornamented, and of stag’s horn, came from the terramare of Fodico di Poviglio. The pottery found is mostly in fragments. Sometimes the bottoms of the vessels were rudely engraved with crosses (Figs. 22, 23, 24).

At Villanova, in the Commune of S. Maria delle