Date of Award

Fall 2025

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Anthropology

First Advisor

Carlina De la Cova

Second Advisor

Kristina Killgrove

Abstract

The cemetery of Osteria dell’Osa is the only completely published Iron Age cemetery from Latium. Its research legacy continues as dietary, mobility, and biological affinity patterns were reconstructed through carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and strontium isotope analyses and biodistance analysis using bone and dental samples for this dissertation project. The main hypotheses tested are:

a) The diet of people buried at Osteria dell’Osa during the Iron Age likely consisted of mostly grains like wheat and barley, which may yield low carbon isotope signatures;

b) The protein consumption of the diet of people at Osteria dell’Osa was mainly composed of terrestrial protein with no significant marine protein contribution, which may appear as low nitrogen isotope signatures;

c) If incipient status and biological sex were factors in social organization in the Iron Age as they were in the Imperial period, then the patterns in the carbon and nitrogen isotope data will show higher-quality foods consumed by males and by older individuals;

d) If migrants were present at Osteria dell’Osa, then they would yield anomalous 87Sr/86Sr signatures from the established geological value;

e) If exogamy played a significant role in this Latial community, then most of the “nonlocal” individuals will be females;

f) If Iron Age Latium was a mixture of both endogenous and exogenous individuals, then it is to be expected that both local and nonlocal isotopic Sr signatures will be present at a similar rate;

g) If co-interred individuals within burials represent extended family members (biologically related), then these will be presented as a homogeneous group;

h) If females are the more mobile sex or the family groups practice exogamy patrilocally, their teeth will be phenotypically different from the males.

The δ15N (7.8 to 9.3‰) and δ13Cco (-20.4 to -16.4‰) from bone collagen, as well as the δ13Cap (-13.7 to -11.3‰) and δ18O (-4.1 to 3.6‰) from the apatite results, demonstrate that people buried at Osteria dell’Osa were eating the same foods consisting mainly of terrestrial protein and C3 plants with a small contribution of the only locally available C4 plant, millet. The δ15N range comparisons between Late Bronze Age and Iron Age Latial sites indicate that protein needs were met primarily through terrestrial plant (legumes) and animal proteins. Marine protein did not contribute substantially to the Iron Age Latial diet.

The 87Sr/86Sr (0.708882 to 0.710118) range from Osteria dell’Osa shows that most individuals fall within the expected geological range and most likely were born locally. Only six individuals were identified through their anomalous strontium isotope values and classified as “nonlocals.” Nevertheless, their 87Sr/86Sr signatures suggest that mobility at a regional scale was more common than long-distance migration. Furthermore, the biodistance analysis confirms this pattern, indicating a mostly homogeneous population at Iron Age Latium.

Rights

© 2025, Andrea Noemí Acosta Caballero

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