The funerary ritual of cremation in Latium vetus in the ancient phase of the Final Bronze Age (ca. 12th cent. B.C.)

Abstract

In the ancient phase of the EBF (ca. 12th century BC), Latium appears to be closely connected to Etruria. The ritual of incineration now appears in a new version that is adopted simultaneously by communities in the two regions.
The formal burial is now reserved for only a very few individuals per community. Moreover, for the first time the cinerary urn becomes the house of the dead, indicated by the lid that reproduces the shape of a hut roof. This element introduces the idea of death as a passage to a new life in a different physical dimension, which during the next phase will be developed in systematic and
consistent forms in the ritual of Latium, but not in that of southern Etruria. Such a radical change in ritual, ideology and funerary behaviour is the correlate of an important political-organisational novelty involving both regions, the emergence of centralised forms of political control.