Region Italian Peninsula Era first millennium BC | Ethnicity Camunni ISO 639-3 xcc | |
 | ||
Native to the south side of the Central Alps (Valcamonica, Valtellina), Italy Language family uncertain, perhaps Tyrsenian or Indo-European (Celtic) | ||
The Camunic language is an extinct language which was spoken in the first millennium BC in the Valcamonica and Valtellina valleys of the Central Alps.
Language
The extant corpus is carved on rock, similar to the rock carvings of Valcamonica. There are at least 170 known inscriptions, the majority of which are only a few words long. The writing system used is a variant of the north-Etruscan alphabet, known as the Camunian alphabet or alphabet of Sondrio. Longer inscriptions show that Camunic writing used boustrophedon.
Its name derives from the people of the Camunni, who lived during the Iron Age in Val Camonica and were the creators of many of the stone carvings in the area. Abecedariums found in Nadro and Piancogno have been dated to between 500 BC and 50 AD.
The amount of material is insufficient to decipher the language, or even to establish what relationship it has to other languages. Some scholars think it may be related to Etruscan and Raetic. Most recently Camunic has been proposed to be a Celtic language.