Objects of Memory, Attachment, and Childhood: A Case from Roman Piedmont (Northwestern Italy)

Archaeological contexts sometimes yield artefacts that are interpreted by scholars as ‘heirlooms’. Although the criteria of identifying them in the archaeological record are still not fully clear, these are considered objects of memory passed down in a human group at variable social levels (family, tribes, communities etc.) through generations, as symbolic markers of hereditary rank, ancestry, ethnicity and personal bond. I will present a case from a funerary area of Libarna, a Roman town located in the Regio IX of Italia (Eastern Piedmont). This necropolis, whose occupation is dated between the first and third centuries AD, yielded a group of 36 tombs, both inhumations and cremations. One of these contained a child aged 5–10 years old, according to anthropological analysis. A rich outfit, including personal objects in precious materials and pottery typical of the Roman tradition, was placed along the child and dates the grave to the late first–second century AD. Within the grave goods, remarkable is the presence of a bronze object, conventionally called ‘borchia a scudetto’ in the archaeological literature. This is likely a cloth ornament frequently documented in the pre-Roman indigenous tombs and settlements of Liguria from the third to early first century BC. In this paper I will try to analyse the meaning of such an artifact, by focusing on the following key questions: (1) Can we consider this older object a ‘family heirloom’? (2) Why was it placed in a child’s tomb and how does this relate to the other grave goods? (3) Does the presence of the ornament within the funerary outfits reveal any form of individual or collective memory and personal attachment of the child (or of the living, who buried the child) toward family members, including their ‘ethnic’ component and how?