Pl. -ares. Also β. in It. form terramara, pl. terremare. [a. F. terramare (1867, Rev. des Deux-Mondes, 653, in Littré), ad. dial. It. terramara (used in Emilia, about Bologna), for terra-marna (Bellini), f. terra earth + marna (dial. mara) MARL.
Introduced into anthropological use by Strobel and Pigarini, 1862.)
An ammoniacal earth found in the valley of the Po, in Italy, and collected as a fertilizer; it occurs in flat mounds, identified as the sites of dwellings of a people of the later neolithic period. Hence transf. (pl.) The prehistoric settlements themselves. Also attrib.
α. 1866–8. Baring-Gould, Curious Myths Mid. Ages, Leg. Cross (1877), 365. These quarries go by the name of terramares. They are vast accumulations of cinders, charcoal, bones, fragments of pottery.
1871. Tylor, Prim. Cult., I. ii. 55. Relics discovered in gravel-beds, caves, shell-mounds, terramares, lake-dwellings.
β. 1890. Huxley, in 19th Cent., Nov., 761. The pre-historic people of the terremare.
1899. R. Munro, Prehist, Scot., vi. 205. Combs of bronze have been found both in the Swiss lake-dwellings and in the Terremare. Ibid., xi. 434. There is … in the eastern part of the Po Valley another class of ancient habitations known as terremare,… they may be regarded as land palafittes.
