Non solo crisi. Elementi di continuità e discontinuità tra IV e III secolo a.C. nelle province di Varese, Milano, Como, Bergamo (IT) e nei Cantoni Ticino e Grigioni (CH)

The article analyses continuity and discontinuity in the material culture and settlement patterns in the 4th and the 3rd centuries B.C. The research area includes Western Lombardy, Eastern Piedmont (IT) as well as the Canton Ticino and Mesolcina (CH), traditionally indicated as territorial spread of the Golasecca culture. In the past 20 years, old data from necropolis (excavated between the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries) and data from recent settlements excavations (discovered in the second half of the 20th century) have been published. These works make it possible to understand how the local populations faced new political and economic situation due to the movements of Celts and the end of the Etruscan trade-system in the Po Valley. Starting from G III A (480–400 B.C.), the analysis focuses on the periods LT B (400–260 B.C.) and LT C1 (260–200 B.C.). Unlike previous studies, which depicted these centuries as moments crisis, isolation and decline, we now understand how, after a phase of stabilisation, processes of dynamism and innovation lead to new trades and settlement forms.