Northwest Necropolis of Satricum: An Iron Age Cemetery in Latium Vetus

By Demetrius J. Waarsenbury

This book presents the results of the excavation campaigns, which were conducted almost a century ago in the Northwest Necropolis of Satricum (Borgo Le Ferriere, Latium). Between 1896 and 1898 Italian excavators exposed a series of tombs here dating from the Iron Age to the Orientalising period. The spectacular finds remained virtually unknown until the 1970s, when renewed interest in Latial protohistory brought about a first reappraisal of the Satrican evidence. The incentive was a sad event, however. Considerable parts of ancient Satricum and its necropolis, which had remained virtually intact up to the 1960s, were now being destroyed by agricultural activities. When the Comitato per l'Archeologia Laziale invited the Dutch Institute in Rome to re-open archaeological research at the site, the Northwest Necropolis had already been converted into vineyards. What remains today is the impressive tomb furniture, partly on display and partly in storage at the Villa Giulia Museum in Rome. This study provides an extensive analysis and description of this material. The cemetery as a whole documents Satricum's rise and growth in the centuries preceding the Archaic period. It sheds a new and surprisingly detailed light on how a modest Iron Age village rapidly developed into one of the most potent cities in the Latial plain.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9051702949
• ISBN13: 9789051702941
• Release Date: December 1996
• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Length: 559 Pages