Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

We present the first four seasons of archaeological work at San Giuliano, a multicomponent site in Lazio, Italy. Our research focuses on the Etruscan (late eighth to third centuries BC) and high medieval (ca. AD 800–1250) periods, which saw the most intensive habitation of the San Giuliano plateau and the construction of cemeteries with distinct burial traditions. Data are drawn from (1) single-burial trench tombs transitional between the Villanovan and Etruscan periods; (2) looted Etruscan rock-cut tombs, which show significant promise for recovery of artifacts and human bone; (3) regional road systems; and (4) a medieval fortified castle site atop the plateau, including a hall and a mortuary structure adjacent to a possible chapel. These analyses elucidate both the rise and fall of the Etruscan urban center and the medieval process of *incastellamento, or castle-building with relocation of populations to defensible hilltops, that reshaped the Italian landscape in the tenth to twelfth centuries. The multidisciplinary and international collaboration of the San Giuliano Archaeological Research Project (SGARP) reveals diachronic patterns in settlement and mortuary practice that have wider implications for north central Italy and the western Mediterranean more broadly.

Other Keywords
Mortuary Analysis • Historic • Mortuary archaeology • Medieval • Bioarchaeology/Skeletal Analysis • Quantitative and Spatial Analysis • Subsistence and Foodways • Digital Archaeology: GIS • Architecture • Historical Archaeology

Geographic Keywords
Principality of Monaco (Country) • Kingdom of Spain (Country) • Principality of Andorra (Country) • Portuguese Republic (Country) • Republic of Turkey (Country) • Italian Republic (Country) • Hellenic Republic (Country) • Republic of Albania (Country) • The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedoni (Country) • Republic of Bulgaria (Country)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-13 of 13)

  • Documents (13)
Documents
  • Ancient DNA from Etruscan Tombs and Beyond: A Case Study from San Giuliano (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Linderholm.

    This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ever since the Etruscans disappeared, their origins have been heavily discussed and debated and several hypotheses have been put forward that utilizes their language and culture as a source. Recently DNA have been use to try and solve this mystery. Modern DNA in...

  • Ancient Roads in the Territory of San Giuliano (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Gallagher.

    This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses the evidence for Etruscan and Roman roads in the territory of San Giuliano and evolving strategies for control of the surrounding landscape. Road survey conducted as part of the San Giuliano Archaeological Project (SGARP) has problematized...

  • Faunal Remains from Medieval San Giuliano Plateau (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Deirdre Fulton.

    This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A large number of faunal remains were uncovered during the four seasons of excavation (2016–2019) at the San Giuliano Plateau (SGP), Italy. The collection consists of species that are typical to inland sites in the northern Mediterranean during the Medieval period,...

  • Fetal Burials at San Giuliano (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Madison Crow.

    This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The burial of unbaptized fetuses at San Giuliano exposes friction between the institutional church and medieval Italy's laity. The church's theology of Original Sin, baptism, and salvation left young children especially vulnerable to dying unbaptized and being denied...

  • From Villanovan to Etruscan Mortuary Goods: The Ceramic Assemblages of Four Seventh-Century BCE Pit Graves from the Site of San Giuliano (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Veronica Ikeshoji-Orlati.

    This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The San Giuliano necropolis, located within the Marturanum Regional Park in northern Lazio, Italy, is well-known for its hundreds of Villanovan and Etruscan graves. As part of our mission to understand the patterns of human habitation at the site from the ninth...

  • Life and Death in Medieval San Giuliano (Lazio Province, Italy) (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Colleen Zori.

    This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The medieval period in northern Lazio saw significant restructuring of social and economic relationships through *incastellamento, the process by which people chose or were forced to move onto fortified hilltops. Here, I present results from four seasons of mapping,...

  • Looters Can’t Steal Everything: Salvage Archaeology at the San Giuliano Necropolis (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jamie Aprile.

    This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Etruscan cemetery around the San Giuliano Plateau has been looted extensively, but salvage excavations of several emptied tombs have yielded results that increase our understanding of the funerary landscape. In the 2018 and 2019 field seasons, two vertically...

  • Multi-isotope Evidence for Animal Husbandry, Transhumance, and Human Diet at San Giuliano, Italy (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Vaughan Grimes. Madison Janes. Andrew Kenney. Colleen Zori. Davide Zori.

    This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The San Giuliano Archaeological Research Project (SGARP) offers an excellent opportunity to investigate potential diachronic changes in human-animal interactions from the Etruscan to Late Medieval periods in central Italy. Here, we report on faunal and human...

  • Osteological Analysis of Two Contemporary Tombs from the San Giuliano Necropolis (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lori Baker.

    This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will describe and compare the skeletal remains recovered from two small Etruscan chamber tombs from the San Giuliano archeological complex in the Marturanum Park in the Lazio region of Italy. Both tombs, G13-001 and G12-060, are dated to the sixth century...

  • The San Giuliano Archaeological Research Project: New Interdisciplinary Archaeology in Central Italy (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Davide Zori.

    This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper introduces the San Giuliano Archaeological Research Project, the focus of this symposium. Our ongoing surveys and excavations at the multicomponent site of San Giuliano (Lazio, Italy) have uncovered a dynamic landscape of interlocking settlement and burial...

  • Social Spaces of Central Italy and the San Giuliano Archaeological Research Project (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Varley.

    This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Every space humans inhabit tells a story about the cultural values, social norms, and lives of those who utilized the space. This paper focuses on the archaeological remains of a medieval fortification and presumed castle located in Barbarano Romano, Italy, atop the...

  • A Study of Medieval Intrasite Find Distribution on the San Giuliano Plateau, Lazio, Italy (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Gibbs.

    This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The San Giuliano Archaeological Research Project (SGARP) excavates a site in Lazio, Italy, known as San Giuliano. The medieval component of the San Giuliano site is a local manifestation of the widespread, but still poorly understood “*incastellamento” process (the...

  • Visibility and Memory on the San Giuliano Landscape (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Sides.

    This is an abstract from the "Etruscan Centralization to Medieval Marginalization: Shifts in Settlement and Mortuary Traditions at San Giuliano, Italy" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the height of its occupation during the Etruscan period, inhabitants at the San Giuliano plateau in northern Lazio, Italy, constructed hundreds of rock-cut tombs in the surrounding escarpment, effectively creating a “city of the dead” adjacent to their city of the...