Children wearing bronze ‘warrior’ belts discovered in 2,500-year-old cemetery in Italy
Archaeologists in southern Italy have discovered the tombs of two children buried wearing large bronze belts almost 2,500 years ago. The metal accessories are unusual because they are usually only found in adult male burials of the pre-Roman Samnite culture.
During recent work at the site of a former tobacco factory in Pontecagnano, a town in the Campania region of southwest Italy, archaeologists excavated part of an ancient cemetery containing 34 burials dated to the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, according to a translated document. statement of the Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of Salerno and Avellino. About half of the graves contained skeletons of children aged 2 to 10 years old.
Article continues below
Pontecagnano was first settled in the 9th century BC by inhabitants of Villanovan culturewho introduced highly skilled bronze working practices to southern Italy. Two centuries later, Etruscan groups transformed Pontecagnano into a commercial hub for Greek, Phoenician and Italian traders. And by the fifth century BC, the Samnites – warlike tribes who lived in the mountains of southern Italy and spoke a language called Oscan – had settled in Pontecagnano. The city remained a hub of the Samnites until the Roman conquest of southern Italy in the 3rd century BC
The Pontecagnano cemeteries have revealed key information about Samnite burial practices. Their graves were organized by family unit and most took the form of earthen pits covered with a tile roof. Grave goods offered to the dead included a variety of pottery, but some artifacts were gender specific: men were buried with warrior-coded artifacts like spearheads, javelins, and grave goods. bronze beltswhile women received rings and brooches.
But during the new excavations, archaeologists discovered two children aged 5 to 10, buried with bronze belts typical of adult male burials. Archaeologists had already discovered at least one other example – a 12-year-old child wearing a bronze belt – in Pontecagnano. “It’s a discovery of great importance,” says the archaeologist Gina Tomay declared to the Italian media ANSA in 2021. Tomay also said that the boy lived in the fourth century BC and was buried with ceramic cups to ensure he would have food and wine in the afterlife.
Experts are not sure why these children were buried with a typical warrior’s accessory. However, 6th-century AD Anglo-Saxon tombs of boys buried with belts and other warrior equipment in the United Kingdom may have been placed there to speak of “the men these children could have become“, archaeologists have already suggested.
Excavations are underway in various sectors of the town of Pontecagnano due to public and private construction projects, so the overall results of the archaeological work have not yet been made public. The superintendency plans to announce new discoveries in this important pre-Roman settlement once the research is completed.
