Le "sepolture principesche" nel Latium Vetus

In the attempt to find a sort of ‘identikit’ of princely burials in Latium Vetus between the end of the Iron Age and the beginning of the Orientalizing Age, this monograph contextualized them in a long-term historical perspective and compared them to all Latin burials by using an index of richness already elaborated by Alessandro Guidi for Veii.

The main conclusions of the book are:

1) The ‘princely graves’ of the Orientalising period, represent the final step of a long term process (pre- and proto- urban formation) started at least at the end of the Bronze Age if not even earlier;

2) In fact, already at the beginning of the VIII century B.C., we find in Latium Vetus ‘warriors graves’ and ‘rich female’ burial graves, which could be considered the forerunners of princely graves of the Orientalising Age;

3) In the IX century B.C. a masking egalitarian ideology seems to be dominant and status symbols (weapons in male burials and weaving and spinning instruments in female burial) are generally spread among different burial and no single exceptional burial seems to emerge;

4) In an earlier phase, instead (around the end of the X century B.C.), some exceptional graves are distinguished form the average burials: some male burials with full weapon equipment and a very rich female burial with distaff and spindle (Le Caprine tomb 5). This burial is particularly remarkable because it is a child burial, which could mean hereditary status.