Anthropological remains were uncovered during construction work on an area of land (50,000m2) at Levata.
This extensive site is situated on a tract lowest levels of the Mantuan plain, delimited to the north by the fluvial scarp formed by the Mincio, at the base of which there is a substantial layer of peat from the lakes that once existed here. Between the site and the scarp is a small paleolithic riverbed which was identified during the course of investigations. South of the latter a ditch was found which delimits to the north the Neolithic settlement, whilst the other limits were not reached.
No floors have survived, only the sub-structures. Amongst these are numerous pits of small to medium size, wide but shallow lenticular pits and oblong narrow pits. The post holes, usually situated within the structures, are occasionally separate from them. Two quite deep wells were found. All structures were re-used as middens. The finds give a chronology which runs from the later part of the mid Neolithic period (fragments of pottery from the “Vasi a Bocca Quadrata” culture) to the Final Neolithic/beginning of the Copper Age (pottery with decoration impressed with a point).
An enormous quantity of pottery, lithic and bone finds were recovered. These included a large copper awl – a tool which symbolises the use of metal in northern Italy at the end of the Neolithic period; a long wide flint blade made from a stone foreign to the Paduan area and is rather more similar to stone types found in Provence; several large and one small pintadera richly decorated with spiral meanders; miniature vases; blades of obsidian and hyaline quartz from the Alps. Inside one pit a bone arrowhead was found, typical of the mid Bronze Age it was probably lost by hunters based in one of the many Mantuan villages of that period.
Finally, four inhumation burials in earth graves were investigated, all were supine depositions and the only object found was a bronze fibula probably dating to the second half of the 6th century B.C. (Marco Baioni, James Tirabassi)