I bambini perduti di Cerveteri. Primi appunti per la ricostruzione della ritualità funeraria infantile nelle necropoli di Monte Abatone e della Banditaccia
Author(s)
Date Issued
2021
Type
bookPart
Start Page
395-416
Abstract
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.