Paleodemography and selective funerary practices at Latium Vetus, Middle-Tyrrhenian Italy

Abstract

The early Iron Age necropolis of Osteria dell'Osa (Latium Vetus, Middle-Tyrrhenian Italy, 9th to 7th cent. BC) constitutes an example of culturally induced biasses affecting both the sex and age-at-death structure of a large human skeletal sample (545 individuals). The direction of the biasses points to their unicausality within the archaelogical context. Paleodemographic analyses depict a population whose infant and mature-senile mortality estimates, and sex ratio values, consistently deviate from a realistic protohistoric demographic model. Critical integration of archaeo-anthropological records indicates a distinctive ritual pattern (exclusion from the necropolis of specific people) for the ancient Latin population, differentiating it from the coeval Villanovian and Etruscan populations.