The diversity of populations in Fourth-Third Century BCE Italy is visible in their necropolises more than anywhere else. From the dawn of the first millennium BCE, each population had developed its own custom for burying important members of its community. In Northern Italy, cremation was still the practice, with the remains then placed in a precious urn. In Etruria the deceased were placed in chamber tombs that mirrored the domestic spaces of the living. The Italics of Central and Southern Italy surrounded the bodies of their dead with a profusion of metal and pottery-ware. The urban necropolises of the cities of Magna Graecia reflect the stratification of their society, the social status and gender of the buried indicated by a limited number of symbolic objects.
Figures of armed men appeared everywhere in the Fourth-Third Centuries BCE, reflecting the process of hybridisation which characterised the military sphere at the beginning of the Hellenistic Era. In addition to the heavy bronze armour derived from the ancient hoplite and heroic tradition in Magna Graecia and Etruria, we see expressions of the Italic tradition of light cavalry from the indigenous communities of Southern Italy – such as those of Lucania – right up to the of Venetic horse breeders in the north-east. New kinds of foreign warriors also appeared from the Fourth Century BCE onwards, including Celtic fighters from Northern Europe.
Female burials contained objects derived from ancient ceremonial functions – in some cases from traditions dating back to Iron Age societies, as in Latium, Etruria and Venetic – alongside garments and jewellery parures influenced by new Hellenistic-style fashions from Macedonia and Magna Graecia. The painted decorations of the chamber tombs illustrated the precise social and ritual roles of the senior male and female members of the great aristocratic families.
A major part of the burial goods were the elaborate banqueting tableware services used in the preparation and serving of meat, and above all for the consumption of wine. From the Greek and Etruscan symposia to the different customs of collective meals prevalent among the Italics and Celts, aristocratic conviviality was a diversified affair, as were the utensils, the metal-ware and the pottery used, derived from the various cultural traditions which had existed in the peninsula since the Archaic Period.