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.

La période entre 338 et 290 av. J.-C. fut un tournant pour Rome, car elle vit la soumission des Latins et la défaite des Samnites, ce qui permit à l’Urbs de devenir la première puissance italique. On assista donc à l’avènement d’un impérialisme romain. Se pose alors la question de l’idéologie d’État de cette Rome en transition. Comme cette expansion fut accompagnée par la construction, à Rome, de dix nouveaux temples, souvent dédiés à des divinités nouvelles, et que toute divinité exprimait une idéologie, il nous a semblé possible de reconstituer, dans ses grands traits, cette idéologie d’État grâce aux nouvelles divinités et leurs sanctuaires. Nous avons donc choisi d’analyser deux nouveaux temples : celui de Quirinus et celui de Victoria. Le choix de Quirinus s’explique par le fait que ce dieu avait, on l’a montré, déjà été assimilé à Romulus ; quant à Victoria, on l’a choisie pour trois raisons : elle était une déesse de la victoire ; son temple fut élevé au-Dessus du Lupercal, au cœur même de la « Rome de Romulus » ; grâce aux fouilles de P. Pensabene, on peut reconstituer son sanctuaire. Puis, on a analysé les deux temples et leurs divinités à travers les concepts (cadre social de la mémoire, mémoire collective) issus de la sociologie de M. Halbwachs. On a ainsi constaté qu’à travers ces temples, l’élite dirigeante avait diffusé auprès du peuple une nouvelle identité collective affirmant le caractère exceptionnel de Rome et contenant l’idée d’une expansion illimitée de l’Urbs. Cette création d’une identité romaine impérialiste se fondant sur Romulus et la religion en général, on peut l’interpréter comme la construction d’un destin collectif pour Rome. / The period between 338 and 290 B.C. saw a sea change for Rome, because the subjugation of the Latins and the defeat of the Samnites allowed her to become the main italic power, and witnessed the advent of a roman imperialism. In this context arises the problem of the state ideology of this Rome in transition. As this expansion was accompanied by the construction of ten new temples in Rome, frequently consecrated to new deities, each of them expressing a specific ideology, we thought it possible to reconstruct the new state ideology through an analysis of the deities and shrines in question. So, for our study, we chose two new temples, those of Quirinus and of Victoria. Quirinus because of his assimilation to Romulus, Victoria because she was a deity of victory; her shrine was built above the Lupercal, at the heart of the “Rome of Romulus”; and because her temple can be reconstructed thanks to the excavations of P. Pensabene. Then we analyzed the two temples and their godheads through concepts (social frame of memory; collective memory) taken from the sociology of M. Halbwachs. In this way we came to the conclusion that, through these two shrines, the ruling élite had tried to communicate to the common people a new collective identity promoting the exceptionality of Rome and her unlimited powers of expansion. This construction of an imperialistic roman identity being based on Romulus and the religion in general, one can interpret it as construction of a collective destiny for Rome.