Lepontii

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The Lepontii (also Leponti or Lepontini) were an ancient Celtic or celticized people or tribe settled during the Iron Age occupying portions of Rhaetia, in the central and western Alps, between modern Switzerland and north-western Italy during the late Bronze Age/Iron Age. According to ancient authors, their territory extended northward to the sources of the Rhône and the Rhine, and southward to the areas where the Alpine valleys open toward the Po Valley, thus including the Canton of Ticino, western Lombardy, and the Ossola Valley. Their existence is attested from the 1st millennium BC. The main settlement of the Lepontii was called Oscela, which the Romans later renamed Oscela Lepontiorum; today the town of Domodossola, in Italy. Another important centre or town was Bilitio, the present-day Bellinzona, in Switzerland. Their territory included the southern slopes of the St. Gotthard Pass and Simplon Pass, corresponding roughly to present-day Ossola, Italy; and Ticino, Switzerland. Recent archeological excavations and their association with the Golasecca culture (9th–7th centuries BC) and Canegrate culture (13th century BC) point to a Celtic affiliation. From the analysis of their language and the place names of the old Lepontic areas, it was hypothesized that these people represent a layer similar to that Celtic but previous to the Gallic penetration in the Po valley. The suggestion has been made that the Lepontii may have been celticized Ligurians. A map of Rhaetia shows the location of the Lepontic territory, in the south-western corner of Rhaetia. The area to the south, including what was to become the Insubrian capital Mediolanum (modern Milan), was Etruscan around 600–500 BCE, when the Lepontii began writing tombstone inscriptions in their alphabet, one of several Etruscan-derived alphabets in the Rhaetian territory.