found. Burial urns were painted with designs, with accessory ceramics, such as cups on tall bases. Bronze objects are usually of wearing apparel: pins and fibulas, armbands, rings, earrings, pendants and necklaces. Bronze vessels are rare. The practice of cremation persists into the second period (early sixth to mid-fourth centuries). Cremation near the burial site, followed by ash and bone burials in terracotta jars, in excavated pits set at determined distances one from the other in scattered necropolises, characterize a culture of many small village settlements. At the site of Sesto Calende, south of Lake Maggiore, were two chariot burials dating to the 7th and 6th century BC accompanied with weapons, ornaments and a large situla while an earlier burial at Ca' Morta - Como (c. 700 BC) included a four-wheeled wagon in the tomb. In a Golasecca culture tomb in Pombia has been found the oldest known remain of common hop beer in the world. The ethnographic question The study of the so-called Lepontic inscriptions, written in the alphabet of Lugano utilized by Golaseccans of the 6th and 5th centuries BC, led Michel Lejeune (1971) to establish definitively the membership of the language conveyed by this writing to the family of Celtic languages. It is then proved the existence of a pre-Gallic celticity in the North-Western Italy, preceding the 4th century BC, whose origin must be sought long before the 600s BC, date of the invasion of Bellovesus, that is, at least at the time of Canegrate culture (13th century BC), which presents in the pottery and bronze artifacts many points in common with the most western groups of the Urnfield culture (Rhine-Switzerland-eastern France, 13th - 8th centuries BC). Or perhaps, a more likely hypothesis, is that a more ancient proto-Celtic presence can be traced back to the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age (16th-15th century BC), when North Western Italy appears closely linked regarding the production of bronze artifacts, including ornaments, to the western groups of the Tumulus culture. Gallery See also Ancient peoples of Italy Canegrate culture Celts in the Alps and Po Valley Cisalpine Gaul Este culture Insubres Lepontii Prehistoric Italy Villanovan culture References Sources Raffaele De Marinis (1991). "I Celti Golasecchiani". In Multiple Authors, I Celti, Bompiani. Raffaele De Marinis (1990). Liguri e Celto-Liguri, Officine grafiche Garzanti Milano, Garzanti-Scheiwiller Ludwig Pauli, 1971. Die Golaseccakultur und Mitteleuropa: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Handels über die Alpen