Laura Bentini

A large Etruscan-period terracotta jar, 14,838 bronze objects, including finished items and tools (axes, fibulae, knives, sickles, razors) as well as unfinished objects, production waste and raw ingots of copper and other metals.This hoard of foundry materials, discovered in 1878 near the Basilica of San Francesco in Bologna, is an exceptional testament to the city’s metallurgical activity and industrial importance during the Villanovan period, between the late 8th and early 7th centuries BC. The discovery of this ‘storage room’ is attributed to Antonio Zannoni, an eclectic figure in late 19th-century Bologna who coordinated numerous excavations both within and outside the city’s urban fabric and applied himself to documenting archaeological activity with scientific rigour: excavation surveys, cataloguing of finds, maps, photographs and meticulously detailed reports have made his documents invaluable sources. Enriched by a foreword by Laura Bentini and extracts from the excavation notebooks, this volume republishes and recontextualises the text and the 56 photographic plates with which Zannoni meticulously documented the excavation and the finds of the so-called “Bologna Foundry”.