The nature of these strange villages can best be explained by an account of the best-known and the largest example of them (fig. 11).  At Castellazzo di Fontanellato, a little west of Parma, are the vestiges of a settlement which, with its defences, covered an area of about forty-three acres.  In outline it was four-sided; its east and west sides were parallel to one another, and the whole resembled a rectangle which had been pulled a trifle askew.  Round it ran a solid earthen rampart, 50 ft. broad at the base and strengthened with woodwork (plan, B).  In front of the rampart was a wet ditch (A), 100 ft. wide, fed with fresh water from a neighbouring brook by an inlet at the south-western corner (C) and emptied by an outfall on the east (D).  One wooden bridge gave access to this artificial island at its southern end (E).  The area within the rampart, a little less than thirty acres in extent, was divided into four parts by two main streets, which would have intersected at right angles had the place been strictly rectangular; other narrower streets ran parallel to these main thoroughfares.  On the east side (F) was a small ’citadel’—­arx or templum—­with ditch, rampart and bridge of its own (G, H); in this were a trench and some pits (K) which seemed by their contents to be connected with ritual and religion.  Outside the whole (L, M) were two cemeteries, platforms of urns set curiously like the village itself, and also a little burning ghat.[43] The population of the village is necessarily doubtful.  A German writer, Nissen, has reckoned it at four or five thousand, men, women and children together, crowded into small huts.  But this estimate may be too high.  In any case, many of the Terremare are much smaller.

[43] The literature of the Terremare is very large.  The results obtained up to 1894 were summarized by F. von Duhn in the Neue Heidelberger Jahrbuecher, iv. 144; the best recent accounts are by T.E.  Peet, Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy (Oxford, 1909), chaps. 14 and 17, from which fig. 11 is taken, and R. Munro, Palaeolithic Man and Terramara Settlements (Edin., 1912), pp. 291-487 and plates xxxiii foll.  A good brief sketch is given by Mr. H.S.  Jones, Companion to Roman History, pp. 4-6.  One point in the arrangement seems not quite clear.  It is generally stated that the trapezoidal outline was adopted in order to allow the water to enter the ditch from a running stream and to part easily into two channels (fig. 11).  That is quite intelligible.  But, if so, one would expect the outlet to be at the opposite end, and not (as it actually is) in the middle of one side, where it would ‘short-circuit’ the current. (Mr. H.S.  Jones seems to have confused inlet and outlet.)

[Illustration:  FIG. 11.  TERRAMARA OF CASTELLAZZO DI FONTANELLATO]