Comune di Spilamberto

Langobards and Romans

For the two centuries that they ruled Italy, the Langobards, even during periods of both good and bad fortune and – in the end – total collapse, stubbornly endeavoured, through both war and diplomacy, to establish a kingdom throughout the peninsula, where they arrived from the Pannonian plains in 569 determined to set up permanent residence. From the onset the conquest of Romania, the eastern part of the Po valley south of the Po River and the upper Adriatic, turned out to be quite a difficult task, something that only Aistulf partially succeeded in doing in 751 by then near the end of the kingdom. The territories of the Exarchate and the Pentapolis, with the fundamental stronghold of Ravenna, the capital of Byzantine Italy, were the key to controlling the Adriatic and ensured land-based access to Rome and Naples, clearly separating Langobardia Major from the southern duchies. Therefore, it’s natural that already when the invasion began the Langobards penetrated as deep as possible into the heart of Emilia-Romagna, conquering Parma, Reggio and Modena, establishing small military settlements along the course of the Panaro and Secchia rivers.   

After just twenty years the Langobards were forced to withdraw owing to the decisive Byzantine offensive of 590 that led to the re-conquest of Modena and Reggio, territories that returned under Langobard control only in 643 due to Rothari’s military campaigns and the battle of the Scultenna (Panaro) River. As a result of such events it was possible to re-establish and maintain the border along the two rivers, from the Apennines to the Po, for more than one hundred years. The rich and well-organised ager mutinensis, that up to the second half of the 6th century had still maintained the network of the Roman populace, although with extensive gaps, in just a few decades became the theatre of a major crisis that changed the structural framework of the Late Antique territory, drastically reducing the number of villages while fostering the birth of concentrated settlements. This collapse, that inaugurated a new world, certainly was affected by disastrous flooding, well documented by written sources and archaeological evidence, that covered an extensive area of Padania around 589, during the reign of Authari.

The cemetery of Spilamberto

The historical events, during a difficult period ranging from 570 to 590, involving the first Langobards in Spilamberto, can be chronicled today, at least partially, thanks to the discovery in 2003 of their cemetery near the Panaro River. It is on the banks of the old Scultenna that they lived and died fifteen centuries ago, at the dawn of the Middle Ages. While not very familiar with the dwellings of the small but certainly not isolated colony of warriors and their families – assigned to monitor a section of the uncertain border as well as perhaps a ford or a ferry – we do know something about the cemetery of approximately thirty dirt graves (just three with armed males), separated into parental groups that provide evidence of the settlement of a noble clan (fara) that existed for no more than one generation. Only the funerary customs and grave goods, including some very high quality artefacts of undeniable symbolic value, provide us with a glimpse of their culture and daily life as well as their relationships with the Roman populations, on both sides of the border.

The warriors were buried in very simple graves with personal weapons (sword, spear and shield) that according to Germanic tradition denoted a free and fighting man, along with belts, complete with iron and bronze trimmings, and very few other artefacts: knives, arrowheads and firesteels.Instead, the grave goods of the numerous female graves are much richer and more elaborate and provide evidence of the non-recent assimilation of Byzantine customs and tastes, but also the cultural association with other barbaric nations. Some of them contain everyday objects (Pannonian tableware with stamped decorations, bone combs and knives), rare Langobard style jewellery (an “S”-shaped gilded bronze brooch and hard stones) in addition to other fine and precious pieces, which may have come to this small outpost as a result of trade or as gifts from the people beyond the borders or from the spoils of recent pillaging or a family inheritance.

Among these “exotic” materials, mainly concentrated in two burials of higher social rank, the most distinctive include cast bronze recipients, a silver spoon with an augural inscription, a heavy bronze oil lamp, a Late Roman style disc-shaped brooch–pendent in gilded silver with antique cameo and river pearls, a magnificent Germanic style glass drinking horn and an exceptional forged iron folding stool covered with damascened decorations, for which only a few pieces from the early medieval period have ever been found throughout Europe.

The lineage of these women, and therefore of their families, was further enhanced by the burial in separate pits, next to the graves, of three large Nordic ponies, perhaps descendents of the horses ridden by the Langobards, centuries earlier, in their first migration from Scandinavia to northern Germany. This custom, which originated in Western Europe between the 3rd and 5th centuries, spread subsequently into the territories to the east of the Rhine among the peoples of the eastern Franks, Alemanni, Langobards and Thuringii.

Considering the completeness and cultural variety of the artefacts, the cemetery on the Panaro undoubtedly offers the most significant and representative evidence of the first Langobard settlement in the area of Modena. Thanks to this exceptional find Spilamberto has become a crucial site in the history of the troubled border between Langobardia and Romania. 

The exhibition

To focus on and disseminate the importance of the discovery – already several years old but for which studies have only just begun – the Municipality of Spilamberto and the Department of Archaeological Heritage of Emilia-Romagna, backed by the scientific support of the Lombardy Department of Archaeological Heritage, have created an exhibition that, while comprehensive, still leaves room to explore many other aspects of the find. Based on the recomposition of the most important burials, the wide assortment of artefacts and the extensive system of interesting artefact descriptions embellished by graphic rendering, thought-provoking theories and themes are proposed for subsequent in-depth studies to be carried out within the framework of the reconstruction of the early medieval history of the area of Modena and Emilia-Romagna.