Thesis--Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main, 1974. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This doctoral thesis examines complex burial behaviors as ritualized responses to changing sociopolitical landscapes just prior to a warring-states period and emergence of Rome as world power. A multivariate statistical approach investigates skeletal estimations of biological kinship (“biodistance”) and its role in the burial and social organizational practices of two central Italian Iron Age (1000-27 BC) groups: Pentri Samnites from Alfedena Campo Consolino (600-400 BC, L’Aquila, Abruzzo) and Pretuzi from Campovalano (750-100 BC, Teramo, Abruzzo). Despite missing data and sample imbalances, these are two of the largest, best-preserved, and generally contemporaneous Iron Age series spanning prehistoric, protohistoric, and historic periods. Alfedena Campo Consolino is a special subsection of a broader burial area and Campovalano represents a nearly complete necropolis. Most data from these Iron Age semi-transhumant agropastoralists comes from mortuary rather than settlement contexts. Thus, burial location is a central archaeological theme because of its potential to indicate corporate land ownership, group permanence, and identity. However, burial areas tended to be structured by family lineages and the similar material cultures they contain confound detailed discernment of the social identities encoded within the graves. I test the hypothesis that the mountainous and economically less-incorporated Pentri Samnites at Alfedena Campo Consolino will have stronger associations between biological and burial distances due to greater emphasis on biological kinship organization of the deceased. On the other hand, I expect that the Pretuzi from Campovalano will be more phenotypically variable as a result of broader ideas of kinship due to further economic and social reaches. To test these hypotheses, Mantel tests were used to examine the strength of association between biological similarity and spatial proximity of burials. Also, multidimensional scaling and univariate and multivariate analyses of variance were performed on data subgrouped by burial location, sex, time period, head position, and clothes brooch frequencies. Distribution of widely found funerary items, brooches, were examined in-depth for the potential that they varied spatially with biological patterns of variation as a marker of biological group membership. In general, I think brooches were well-made, distinctive, and highly visible indicators of wearers’ social position and identity. Male faces and cranial bases at Alfedena Campo Consolino and female multivariate tooth row measures at Campovalano produce the most noticeable signals. Because samples differ so greatly in their compositions and sizes, results of this study cannot specify if ACC was organized by biological kinship to a greater degree than CMV. Instead, results are interpreted in terms of the idea that a greater diversity of burial and social organization existed in Iron Age central Italy than previously thought. This research constitutes an important advance in evaluation of the spatial dimension of mortuary practices and social identity formation during an unstable time, and novel biodistance approaches such as those developed in this thesis should be considered as additional lines of evidence for comprehensive mortuary analyses.

Assessing population diversity in southern Italy has traditionally relied on archaeological and historic evidence. Although informative, these lines of evidence do not establish specific instances of within lifetime mobility, nor track population diversity over time. In order to investigate the population structure of ancient South Italy I sequenced the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from 15 Iron Age (7th – 4th c. BCE) and 30 Roman period (1st – 4th c. BCE) individuals buried at Iron Age Botromagno and Roman period Vagnari, in southern Italy, and analyzed δ18O and 87Sr/86Sr values from a subset of the Vagnari skeletal assemblage. Phylogenetic analysis of 15 Iron Age mtDNAs together with 231 mtDNAs spanning European prehistory suggest that southern Italian Iapygians share close genetic affinities to Neolithic populations from eastern Europe and the Near East. Population pairwise analysis of Iron Age, Roman, and mtDNA datasets spanning the pan-Mediterranean region (n=357), indicate that Roman maternal genetic diversity is more similar to Neolithic and Bronze Age populations from central Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, respectively, than to Iron Age Italians. Genetic distance between population age categories imply moderate mtDNA turnover and constant population size during the Roman conquest of South Italy in the 3rd century BCE. In order to determine the local versus non-local demographic at Vagnari, I measured the 87Sr/86Sr and 18O/16O of composition of 43 molars, and the 87Sr/86Sr composition of an additional 13 molars, and constructed a preliminary 87Sr/86Sr variation map of the Italian peninsula using disparate 87Sr/86Sr datasets. The relationship between 87Sr/86Sr and previously published δ18O data suggest a relatively low proportion of migrants lived at Vagnari (7%). This research is the first to generate whole-mitochondrial DNA sequences from Iron Age and Roman period necropoleis, and demonstrates the ability to gain valuable information from the integration of aDNA, stable isotope, archaeological and historic evidence. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / With biochemical information obtained from teeth, this study examines the population structure and geographic origins in two archaeological communities located in southern Italy. Analysis of classical remains has traditionally been the subject of historical and archaeological inquiry. However, new applications evaluate these population changes with integrated stable isotope and ancient DNA techniques. Overall, the biochemical results suggest that the pre-Roman communities harbor deep maternal ancestry originating from eastern Europe and the eastern Mediterannean. These results, when compared to the genetic diversity of Roman and broader Mediterranean populations, indicate that the Romans share closer genetic similarity with ancient Stone and Bronze Age communites from Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, than with the pre-Roman community studied here. Furthermore, tooth chemistry results indicate a predominantly local population buried in the Roman period cemetery.