Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri, one of the finest Italian protohistorians, deals in this monograph with a major archaeological site, the Iron Age cemetery of Osteria dell'Osa, near Rome. The cemetery materials provide rich insights into the emergence of the city-state in central Italy in the crucial period 900 580 BC. Paying particular attention to the causes of variation in burials - ritual, gender, age, status - Dr Bietti Sestieri is able to develop a convincing picture of the late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Latium vetus in the wider context of southern Etruria and Campania.