- Gilda Bartoloni –
as part of religious practice; for one man, thought to be of Greek origin, they speak of
a religious sacrifi ce. At Veii, at the center of the so-called Cittadella on Piazza d’Armi
(the acropolis of the city), a structure with an oval plan, including a trench tomb (tomba
a fossa) (Fig. 5.3), was interpreted as “a sort of mortuary chapel erected for the veneration
of an exceptional death” (G. Colonna, unpublished conference paper), while on the great
plateau near the north-west gate, at the center of a large oval hut of the ninth century bc,
was found a burial within an earthen grave, with the skeleton of a 35-year-old woman
with offerings of a few bronze objects.
We know the necropoleis better than the settlements: through their analysis it has
become possible to see the bigger picture of cultural development. The examination
of burial grounds as structured contexts allows the study of the economic, sociological,
and intellectual aspects of ancient societies that are only partially illuminated by other
evidence. The moment of death and the subsequent funeral ritual become important
social occasions, although the funeral rites cannot be considered a simple statement of
the values of a given community. The refl ection of the society of the living in funeral
customs can never be considered direct and immediate: it is mostly indirect, selective and
mediated. During the ninth century, the exclusive rite of most Villanovan necropoleis
was cremation, even though there are frequent examples of inhumation in trench graves
as well: at Populonia, and at Cerveteri, for example, from the beginning of the use of
the Sorbo necropolis the two rites co-existed. The tombs dug in virgin soil are usually a
pozzetto (in “well-shaped,” cylindrical pits) with the ossuary sometimes protected inside a
custodia (container) made of tufa (at Veii, Bisenzio) or of nenfro (Tarquinia).
The funeral offerings, extremely limited in the earliest burials, seem mostly to consist
of the ossuary (Fig. 5.4) inside which were the cremated bones, protected with a lid,
and one or more fi bulae of different styles depending upon the type of textile, hair-
spirals (fermatrecce) and spindle whorls in female depositions, razors or pins in male
Figure 5.3 Tomb of an adult man, Veii, Piazza d’Armi (photo G. Bartoloni).