I bambini perduti di Cerveteri. Primi appunti per la ricostruzione della ritualità funeraria infantile nelle necropoli di Monte Abatone e della Banditaccia

The recent excavation campaigns launched by the Universities of Campania ‘Luigi Vanvitelli’, of Tuscia and of Bonn at Monte Abatone (Cerveteri) have also brought to light the first infant’s tomb of the necropolis. This small shaft tomb (n° 643) can be dated to just after the mid-7th century B.C.E., and was probably that of a little girl. The tomb is dug into the mound of tomb 73, belonging to the second quarter of the 7th century B.C.E. Its position, chronology and grave goods suggest that the two tombs belong to members of the same family group, and that the location of this shaft burial outside is due to the young age of the deceased. There are no specific studies on child funeral rituality at Cerveteri. Any investigation is rendered much more complex by the almost total absence of anthropological evidence and the difficulty of identifying any infant burial inside the chamber tombs. The sole relatively trustworthy documentation concerns shaft tombs of small dimensions scattered among the mounds and chamber tombs, like this one at Monte Abatone. An analysis of the documentation in the Vecchio Recinto sector of Banditaccia published in the 1955 edition of Monumenti Antichi has provided over one hundred shaft tombs with a length of less than 120 cm, which probably refer to children from perinatal to 4-5 years of age at the most, dating from 7th to 3th century B.C.E. The number of tombs is wholly insufficient to represent the infant mortality of the community in the period considered, but it does evidence the especial care paid to at least some of the community’s children, even very young. This article takes into account these tombs from the point of view of their shape and grave goods. About twenty-five percent are sarcophagus-type, a typology that appears to have been used only for children. Most of the children’s tombs have modest grave goods. Only in very few cases are there objects evidently connected to the role and social rank that the child would have played in adulthood. As has already occurred for other cultural areas, for Cerveteri too an analysis of the archaeological data leads to a re-examination of the idea that very young children were excluded from the right of burial in the necropolis. Moreover the comparison with archaeological and anthropological data from the necropoleis of the Monti della Tolfa district suggests that some children could also be buried in the chamber tombs. At the same time, attention shifts to factors (clearly other than age alone) that limited their access to formal burial: a problem which, as we know, also concerns adults