Il cavallo nella ritualità funeraria dell’età del Ferro di Padova: un confronto con Este e uno sguardo all’ambito bolognese

The aim of this paper is to verify, through a distributional and chronological analysis of the evidence, the apparent discrepancy, in the urban necropolis of pre-Roman Padua, between the absence of equine trappings and harnesses in the grave goods and the presence of equine burials, also considering the importance of horses in funerary contexts, as testified by epigraphic-linguistic data and numerous iconographic representations, both on grave goods (Situla Art) and on sepulchral markers (funerary Stelae). The diachronic and topographical framework of evidence, whether real or iconographic, outlined in detail for Padua, has been compared with that obtainable for the Iron Age in the other large Veneto plain centre of Este and in the Villanovan and Etruscan settlement of Bologna. The evaluation of similarities and differences made it possible to better clarify the importance attributed to the horse in the funerary sphere and the different ways of expressing it in time and space, as well as contribute to a better understanding of funerary behaviour between the three proto-urban and then urban centres.