Dress and social identity in mortuary contexts : the case of Iron Age Osteria dell'Osa

Abstract

This thesis explores the construction of social identity through aspects of dress and personal appearance, using mortuary data from Latial Phase II (c.900-770 BeE) at the central Italian cemetery of Osteria dell'Osa. I investigate the strength of the biological basis for gender identities by examining the connection of objects of dress and personal ornament to individuals of known sex. The outcomes of this process are used to inform cautious inference of social gender where sex is unknown or uncertain. I then examine how other social identities were reflected and maintained through dress, and how these might have been predicated on gender. The diachronic approach adopted in this thesis allows examination of local social change at the threshold of the wider transformation that saw the beginnings of aristocratic society in Latium in Phase III. Unusual mortuary treatment of select individuals is also examined for evidence of rare social identities that might be based on status, ethnicity or marginalisation. Throughout the thesis, statistical analysis is supplemented by spatial analysis with the aim of identifying kinship-based patterning of ornament types. Reconstruction of complete costumes is impossible from the extant evidence, but regional and foreign comparanda identified for many types allow speculation on the ways many ornaments might have been worn. Such comparanda also illuminate cultural similarities that help situate the society of Osteria dell'Osa in its broader Iron Age context. Finally, this thesis aims to demonstrate how the challenges of using published data can be overcome to show how social identities were reconstructed in death through dress.