Funerary Ritual and Urban Development in Archaic Central Italy

This dissertation examines the evidence for burial in archaic Rome and Latium with a view to understanding the nature of urban development in the region. In particular, I focus on identifying those social and political institutions that governed relations between city-states at a time when Rome was becoming the most influential urban center in the area. I examine the evidence for burial gathered primarily from the past four decades or so of archaeological excavation in order to present first, a systematic account of the data and second, an analysis of these materials. I reveal that a high degree of variation was observed in funerary ritual across sites, and suggest that this points to a complex system of regional networks that allowed for the widespread travel of people and ideas. I view this as evidence for the openness of archaic societies in Latium, whereby people and groups seem to have moved across regions with what seems to have been a fair degree of mobility. I connect the variety in tomb construction to the more widespread phenomenon of monumentalization, which encouraged the construction in stone of residences, temples and public buildings across the region. I consider the individuals and groups responsible for these types of construction, and how they contributed to the development of and interaction between city-states. I begin with an assessment of the historical reliability of the ancient sources concerning early Rome, since they were written centuries later than the time in question, yet comment on some of the features in the archaeological record. I go on to consider the literary evidence for funerary ritual in early Rome, in order to determine what the ancient sources have to say about the customs of their ancestors and what significance this has for the archaeological evidence. Then, I consider the documentary evidence for funerary ritual, which comes from the legislation of the Twelve Tables. The prohibitions preserved here, if they represent a valid document, illustrate the concerns of lawmakers with regard to funerary activity in and around the city of Rome. In the following section I present the archaeological evidence for burial, and provide a detailed summary of archaic burials according to site, and offer a brief description of each settlement in order to better contextualize the data. I conclude this section with an interpretation of the evidence. Finally, I concentrate on the archaeological evidence from archaic Gabii, which results from my own participation on the excavation of the site. The results of these excavations allow for the study of the intersection between the urban area, burial and landownership