Early Iron Age culture in Italy, named after the village where the first site was found in 1853.
It appeared in the 10th or 9th century BC as a branch of the Urnfield culture s. Its dead were cremated and the ashes put in a decorated pottery two-story urn covered with a bowl or a helmet-shaped lid, or in a so-called hut urn, a terra-cotta vessel. Expert metalworkers, the Villanovans controlled Tuscany's copper and iron mines. In the later 8th century BC their art and burials were influenced by Greece. Their culture began to fade in the 7th century.