A Key to the Coffin: A model to assess social change in Villanovan tombs from Veii, Tarquinia and Verucchio (950 to 700 BC)

Status in Italic tombs is generally classified through the value, the quantity and the quality of the objects in the corredo. In this paper this methodology is examined and the different objects that are specifically related to status are listed separately. This list is used to individually classify Early Iron Age tombs from Veii, Tarquinia and Verucchio. Those with the clearest expression of high status are used to reconstruct an overall development of increasingly complex leadership between approximately 950 and 700 BC. The different material ways in which this process was expressed in the mentioned settlements is central to this observation.