In the first millennium BC, communities in Italy underwent crucial transformations which scholars have often subsumed under the heading of ‘state formation’, namely increased social stratification, the centralisation of political power and, in some cases, urbanisation. Most research has tended to approach the phenomenon of state formation and social change in relation to specific territorial dynamics of growth and expansion, changing modes of exploitation of food and other resources over time, and the adoption of selected socio-ritual practices by the ruling élites in order to construct and negotiate authority. In contrast, comparatively little attention has been paid to the question of how these key developments resonated across the broader social transect, and how social groups other than ruling élites both promoted these changes and experienced their effects. The chief aim of this collection of 14 papers is to harness innovative approaches to the exceptionally rich mortuary evidence of first millennium BC Italy, in order to investigate the roles and identities of social actors who either struggled for power and social recognition, or were manipulated and exploited by superior authorities in a phase of tumultuous socio-political change throughout the entire Mediterranean basin. Contributors provide a diverse range of approaches in order to examijne how power operated in society, how it was exercised and resisted, and how this can be studied through mortuary evidence. Section 1 addresses the construction of identity by focusing mainly on the manipulation of age, ethnic and gender categories in society in regions and sites that reached notable power and splendour in first millennium BC Italy. These include Etruria, Latium, Campania and the rich settlement of Verucchio, in Emilia Romagna. Each paper in Section 2 offers a counterpoint to a contribution in Section 1 with an overall emphasis on scholarly multivocality, and the multiplicity of the theoretical approaches that can be used to read the archaeological evidence.

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface and acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• Introduction: burial and social change in first-millennium BC Italy: an agent-focused approach
• Section 1: Funerary symbolism and ritual practice: from élite identities to gender, age, personhood and connectivity
  • 1. Theoretical issues in the interpretation of cemeteries and case studies from Etruria to Campania
  • 2. Styles of drinking and the burial rites of Early Iron Age Middle-Tyrrhenian Italy
  • 3. Potting personhood: biconical urns and the development of individual funerary identity
  • 4. Somebody to love: gender and social identity in seventh- and sixth-century BC Chiusi
  • 5. Women in a warriors’ society
  • 6. Verucchio. The social status of children: a methodological question concerning funerary symbolism and the use of space within graves
  • 7. Quid in nomine est? What’s in a name: re-contextualizing the princely tombs and social change in ancient Campania
  • 8. Nested identities and mental distances: Archaic burials in Latium Vetus
• Section 2: Identities on the fringe
  • 9. Frontiers of the plain. Funerary practice and multiculturalism in sixth-century BC western Emilia
  • 10. Falling behind: access to formal burial and faltering élites in Samnium (central Italy)
  • 11. Youth on fire? The role of sub-adults and young adults in pre-Roman Italian Brandopferplätze
  • 12. Inequality, abuse and increased socio-political complexity in Iron Age Veneto, c. 800–500 BC
• Finale
  • 13. Shifting perspectives: new agendas for the study of power, social change and the person in late prehistoric and proto-historic Italy