Zur Rekonstruktion der Struktur der frühen römischen Gesellschaft im Spiegel lazialer Grabsitten und antiker Schriftquellen

This study presents new approaches to understanding the burial customs of Lazio as indicators of former social conditions and gaining insight into the formation phase of the social structures that later dominated the society of the Roman republic. For this purpose, the ancient written sources on the nature of Roman gentes and familiae are analysed, as are the funeral customs of the necropolis at Osteria dell’Osa in comparison to the structural development of other cemeteries of the Early Iron Age and Orientalising period in Lazio and Etruria. The evolutionistic model of the development of the Roman political system hitherto favoured by many researchers is unsuitable for the documentation of the social meaning of the burial customs since the graves do not reflect e. g. any family connections or other social units and do not match the written traditions. Instead, it is possible to illustrate the genesis of the state-supporting functionaries of the Roman republic by means of these funeral customs. The clue to this are the text documents on the burial customs of the senatorial noble families and the public offices held by patricians.