Diversity in death: a construction of identities and the funerary record of multi-ethnic central Italy from 950 to 350 BC (original) (raw)
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2018
The archaeology of death in pre-Roman Italy frequently focuses on important issues such as social stratification, gender roles and ancestor cult. Central Italy, taken as the regions Etruria, Latium Vetus or Old Latium, the Sabina Tiberina and the Faliscan-Capenate area, was however home to various Peoples and is diverse in many aspects. This variation is mirrored in the funerary record and reveals differences between main centres in each of the four above-mentioned regions. For example, the wealth as deposited in tombs fluctuated considerably per centre and period as if status differences were less expressed in some settlements than in others. Local, cultural choices in funerary rites, and even per clan, are examined in this paper in the broader context of identity. It will address issues such as child burials and the structural presence of elaborate warrior tombs in Etruria during the eight century BC while they hardly occur in Latium Vetus and the other regions. The point of departure will be our excavations at Crustumerium at the crossing into these four regions since the interpretation of its funerary record remains puzzling due to assimilation of diverse cultural traits of the surrounding Peoples and its traditional rituals and ceremonies encasing death (www.Crustumerium.nl; Attema et al. 2016).
Burial and society in non-Greek Salento (Southeast Italy) 600-250 BC.
In this paper I offer an assessment of the relationship between burial ritual and society in a small yet extremely interesting region of Southern Italy. Moving beyond acculturation and post-colonial discourses I have tried to discuss the relationship between funerary ritual and societal differentiation in native societies of Southern Italy in their own terms adopting an explicitly Marxist framework of analysis.
One of the principal transformations underlined by researchers analysing urban landscape during late antiquity concerns changes in funerary patterns and the progressive development of intramural burials, a phenomenon that has traditionally been linked to processes of Christianisation, the construction of churches inside cities and particularly a change in the relationship between people and the bodies of the dead, especially those of martyrs and saints (Ariès 1977; Brown 1982). In this paper I shall try to demonstrate that between the 4th and the 6th century the existence of burials inside the city walls is rare and almost never related to Christian buildings. At least in northern Italy roman and Ostrogothic populations continued respecting roman traditions, burying their dead in existing cemeteries located in suburban areas outside the city walls. Some of these burial areas had existed since republican and imperial times and contained pagan and Christian burials alike. Others seem to have been created, again in the suburbs, during the 3rd century and developed a century later into large Christian areas. Real changes in burial practices inside the city would only begin from the end of the 6th century with the multiplication of scattered burials and the development of intramural cemeteries linked to private chapels and, more rarely, episcopal churches.
Acta archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae (Print), 2022
The investigation of elite girls’ burials in the Italian peninsula is part of a broader doctoral research project that aims to outline the territorial distribution of Early Mediaeval elite women and girls in the Italian peninsula and analyse the strategies of their funerary self-representation in a short but significant period. Altogether 24 elite girls’ burials have been identified in Roman-Byzantine and Lombard territories between the second half of the sixth and the end of the seventh centuries AD. Our analysis focuses on the most significant elements: find context, burial topography, the quality of the funerary goods, and funerary construction. In Byzantine territories, elite children were given ad sanctos burial, but with significant differences in purchasing power between the cities and the countryside. The urban elite was willing to spend huge amounts of money for the burial of their girls inside churches, while the same level of wealth has not been detected in the countryside so far. On the other hand, in the Lombard Kingdom and the Duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, funerals given to elite Lombard girls did not differ from those of older age groups and involved handing over important family brooches between generations. By the mid-seventh century AD, elite girl’s burials were frequently near or inside churches and rural oratories, contributing in a significant way to a gradual narrowing of the cultural gap between Lombards and the local population.
American Journal of Archaeology 118.3, 2014
This article approaches gender as a means of understanding cultural identity in Italy before the Roman conquest. Most scholars have assumed based on written sources that the ancient inhabitants of Samnium, who are noted for their fierce resistance to Rome, shared a gender system in which men were primarily regarded as warriors and women as caretakers of the household. Archaeological support for this view has been sought in the contrast between burials containing weapons (assumed to belong to men) and those containing jewelry or personal ornaments (attributed to women). In line with recent studies that challenge such a view, I employ statistical methods to verify correlations between grave goods, sex, age, and social status. Results reveal that cultural attitudes toward gender among the Samnites were complex. In many cases, gender configurations were structured in such a way that both men and women performed similar social activities and may have participated as equals in commensal politics. These findings demonstrate the potential for quantitative archaeological analysis to enhance our knowledge of cultural identity and social organization in an area of the ancient world for which there is very little written evidence.* introduction Ancient Samnium, which corresponds to presentday Molise, south Abruzzo, and north Campania (fig. 1), is described in ancient historical writing as the homeland of the Samnites. Authors such as Livy,
Funerary deviancy and social inequality in protohistoric Italy: what the dead can tell
Preistoria Alpina , 2017
Recent approaches to the study of past funerary rites have usually rejected any simplistic equivalence between social structure and funerary representation, as well as between funerary complexity and social complexity. Despite theoretical advancements in funerary archaeology, until recently poor and marginal tombs were often disregarded in favor of richer tombs displaying more sophisticated burial practices, or were simply attributed to low-ranking individuals or socio-cultural outsiders , with little consideration paid to the different nuances of the funerary record. In this article, we outline a research initiative which aims to provide a systematic investigation of social diversity and social marginality in protohistoric Italy, with particular attention to Veneto and Trentino South-Tyrol (" IN or OUT " project: Phases 1 and 2). Riassunto Recenti approcci allo studio degli antichi riti funerari generalmente respingono ogni generica corrispondenza tra struttura sociale e rappresentazione funeraria, così come tra la complessità funeraria e quella sociale. Fino a poco tempo fa, le sepolture povere e/o marginali erano trascu-rate rispetto a quelle più ricche che mostravano sofisticate pratiche rituali di seppellimento, ed erano comunemente attribuite a personalità di basso rango o a soggetti socialmente e cultural-mente estranei, talvolta con scarsa attenzione per le complesse sfumature del record archeolo-gico e dei suoi significati. In questo contributo proponiamo un'analisi sistematica della marginalità e della diversità sociale nell'Italia protostorica (progetto " IN or OUT "). L'elaborazione di dati funerari raccolti in Veneto ed in Trentino Alto Adige ha permesso di propor-re alcune osservazioni sull'organizzazione sociale delle comunità che abitavano queste regioni nell'età del Bronzo e del Ferro (" IN or OUT " fasi 1 e 2).
2021
This dissertation examines aspects of the cremation burial assemblages of graves from the published material of Bécsi Road cemetery of the canabae of Aquincum and the southern cemetery of the civilian settlement of Carnuntum in the Roman region of Pannonia as evidence of practices that reflect multiple and intersecting identities of the deceased. In doing so, this project shows that the archaeological evidence of burials provides an ideal medium through which to examine the development, negotiation and maintenance of social identities in a Roman provincial society. Through a systematic examination of aspects of the assemblage, such as the features of the burial and artifacts, practices and other markers of identity based on ethnicity, status, gender and age are revealed. This project takes into account multiple, intersecting identities in its examination of the burial evidence at a general communal level and at an individual burial level, since identities cannot exist in isolation as other identities always inform them. This project also considers that practices reflecting identities also change over time. Since mourners cremated the deceased in cemeteries over a long period of time, from the late first century AD to the mid third century AD in the Bécsi Road cemetery and from the middle of the second century AD to the mid third century in the southern cemetery, this project noted that trends of practice evolved over time. This project compares the two cemeteries by way of reconstructing practices of the funerary ceremony and examining the artifacts used in them so as to determine how the distinct funerary practices developed in response to globalizing processes. Theories concerning globalization form the interpretive basis of this project. Globalization theories are attractive because they take into account concurrent homogenizing processes that foster similarity on a wide scale and heterogenizing processes that promote difference. Both broad processes can be observed as occurring at these two locales as they share