ABSTRACT
The identification of settlements of the pile dwelling type (palafitte in Italian) and the initial development of their research in northern Italy date back to the second half of the eighteenth century, between the end of the ‘romantic dawning’ of pre-protohistoric studies in Italy and the period of the ‘Founders’, following the historical distinctions made by Renato Peroni (Fasani 1982: 33; Aspes 1992: 34-6; Peroni 1992: 9-41; Guidi and Bellintani 1996: 169-74, 188-97; Aspes 1997: 56-7). This kind of settlement received increased attention as a direct consequence of the interest that had been stimulated by the discoveries of the ‘fields of piles’ in Swiss lakes, and the theory developed by Ferdinand Keller in 1854.
