The Woman Born with Rome

In 1971 Italian archaeologists began excavating a necropolis along the Via Laurentina, the ancient road connecting Rome to Lavinium. Many graves have been found dating to the early centuries of Rome's history, between 800 and 600 BC. (The traditional date of the city's founding is 753 BC.) The Museo Nazionale Romano has recently opened a new exhibit of this material at the Baths of Diocletian.

The History Blog has a post on the most interesting burial, known as Tomb 359. This was such a mass of metal and corrosion that it was removed from the ground as a block and excavated in the lab. The occupant was identified as a woman of 20 to 24, buried around 730 BC, so, she was born right around the old date of Rome's founding.

She was very rich for the time:

She was buried in a garment festooned with jewels: a necklace of bronze pendants shaped like animals and humans, large rings attached to the gown with bronze and amber brooches, silver hair ornaments and more. A full banquet service with sacrificial knives, skewers for cooking meat, bronze and ceramic drinking vessels was also interred with her. There are objects of Etruscan and southern Italian origin in the grave goods. The amber in her brooch was imported from the Baltic Sea.