ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the social standing of children in Bronze and Early Iron Age Italy through the lenses of personhood theory. An analysis of funerary practices from different Italian regions in late prehistory suggests that not all individuals were granted full social integration (personhood). Inter-site, intra-site and chronological variability can be detected in the burial rituals: crucially, however, foetuses, neonates and young children were often given no formal burial at all or funerary rites that were different and less sophisticated from those granted to adults. While caution is needed in drawing inferences from burial data alone, this evidence fits well with anthropological research on infant and foetal personhood worldwide, and may indicate that in late prehistoric Italy infants were considered nonpersons, or incomplete persons, by their burying community.
