LA MORTALITÀ INFANTILE IN ITALIA SETTENTRIONALE IN EPOCA ROMANA. IL CONTRIBUTO DELLA DOCUMENTAZIONE EPIGRAFICA ED ARCHEOLOGICA

The study of epigraphic and archaeological documentation related to infant mortality in Roman times in Northern Italy (corresponding to the Augustan regiones VIII, IX, X and XI) led to various methodological, historical, social, anthropological and demographic considerations. In the first volume, after an introduction (part I) about infancy and infant mortality in Roman times, the epitaphs catalogued are analysed (part II), focusing on the monument, on the onomastics and on the status of the families mentioned in the texts. The last part of this volume (part III) examines the archaeological evidences, with studies about rituals, symbols and furnishings founded in graves and related to infancy. The second volume includes the epigraphic and archaeological catalogues, indices and a brief chapter about a georeferenced database created to archive the information studied. Childhood represents a liminal period, not precisely defined both from juridical and literary sources. In recent studies there are several interpretations for its division into periods that differ not only according to the lexicon, but also regarding to age limits. Similarly, the epigraphic documentation does not display uniformity, as prematurely dead infants are remembered with different monuments and formulae. Thanks to this diversity it was possible to deepen not only the lexical aspects, but also the onomastic subject, proposing considerations concerning the transmission of names within the family and the evolutions of the onomastic sequence over the centuries from the so called “romanisation” to the late antique period and the spread of Christianity. Various catalogued inscriptions, contextualised, have been analysed from a social point of view, as they preserved important information regarding the status of the deceased and their families. The archaeological documentation has been deepened, instead, not only from the ritual point of view (which presents differences between the pre Roman, Roman and Christian period), but also analysing the symbolic values of items found in graves. It has been possible to highlight how the infant body was the subject of different funerary rites and it was connected to objects and images related to infancy, nutrition and games. The extensive work derived from the study and the contextualization of the documentation examined allowed to emphasize how the evidences related to premature death in the Roman world were extremely articulated. It was indeed possible to highlight the perception of the infant not only as an individual, but also as a part of a family and a wider social group.