Death as a Process

John Pearce, Jake Weekes, John Pearce, Jake Weekes

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781785703249
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Roman Ancient History
• Index: History

The study of funerary practice has become one of the most exciting and rapidly developing areas of Roman archaeology in recent decades. This volume draws on large-scale fieldwork from across Europe, methodological advances and conceptual innovations to explore new insights from analysis of the Roman dead, concerning both the rituals which saw them to their tombs and the communities who buried them. In particular the volume seeks to establish how the ritual sequence, from laying out the dead to the pyre and tomb, and from placing the dead in the earth to the return of the living to commemorate them, may be studied from archaeological evidence. Contributors examine the rites regularly practiced by town and country folk from the shores of the Mediterranean to the English Channel, as well as exceptional circumstances, as in the aftermath of the Varian disaster in Augustan Germany. Case studies span a cross-section of Roman society, from the cosmopolitan merchants of Corinth to salt pan workers at Rome and the rural poor of Britannia and Germania. Some papers have a methodological focus, considering how human skeletal, faunal and plant remains illuminate the dead themselves and death rituals, while others examine how to interpret the stratigraphic signatures of the rituals practiced before, around and after burial. Adapting anthropological models, other papers develop interpretive perspectives on the funerary sequences which can thus be reconstructed and explore the sensory dimensions of burying and commemorating the dead. Through these varied approaches the volume aims to demonstrate and develop the richness of the insights into Roman society and culture which may be won from study of the dead.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Death as a process in Roman funerary archaeology

John Pearce

Recent decades have witnessed a boom in the study of Roman cemeteries. This is manifested in a dataset massively expanded by development-related excavation, the consolidation and proliferation of analytical techniques, and the exploitation of funerary data to explore the representation of individual identities and the dynamics of Roman society. This has also been a breakthrough period for the exploitation of human skeletal remains to explore ancient demography, seeing the first large-scale syntheses of evidence for health status from communities, regions and beyond, as well as much fuller integration with the study of funerary rituals (cf. Reece 1982). Funerary material now features more prominently, for example, in the characterisations of provinces offered in handbooks and similar volumes (e.g. Todd 2004; Millett et al. 2016; Ouzoulias and Tranoy 2010; Riggs 2012).

For most cemetery excavations, the evidence which is prioritized in documentation, analysis and dissemination comprises the burial itself, this being mainly the skeletonized human remains and the (inorganic elements of) their containers, and objects placed with the dead. More occasionally, depending on context, this also encompasses the monuments within which they were housed or by which they were marked. It is an archaeological piety that the rituals which precede or follow burial are likely to be illuminated mainly by texts and a limited corpus of images, both pertaining much more to Rome than to its empire. The cemetery itself is however a more productive entity than this might suggest. One of the major new directions in current scholarship is to expand the range of archaeological data which allows a ritual sequence to be reconstructed in much richer detail, including the phases preceding and succeeding the interment of the remains of the dead, as well as enabling the interment itself to be more fully reconstructed.

The focus of this volume therefore lies on exploring the new evidence from excavation of Roman cemeteries with a particular emphasis on ritual process. In this introductory chapter this focus is set in the context of current research interests into the Roman dead and their mourners. After briefly outlining the broader context of Roman cemetery studies in the most recent decades, the chapter explores the key interlinked developments which have contributed to this shift in perspective; some have been extensively applied, others are on a more preliminary footing. The enduring scholarly emphasis on the textual evidence for an extended sequence of rituals continues to produce insights into Roman funerary culture and offer changing perspectives on material remains. The ever-expanding range of techniques brought to bear on the study of burials, especially their organic component, is also illuminating stages of ritual before and after burial, while understanding of the spatial setting of burial is potentially enhanced through the application of archaeological prospection methods. Additionally, many excavations also now reveal a greater complexity of burial spaces as depositional environments, both the graves themselves and the diverse other features that are the product of funerary (and non-funerary) activities. Discussion of these factors provides the context for the individual papers which are introduced in the final part of this chapter.

Bodies of data – burials and monuments

The numbers of Roman burials documented in archaeological fieldwork have, in the last two decades, accumulated at a rate greater than ever before, accelerating a process already well established in the post-war period. Amongst the most striking advances in knowledge of cemeteries is the recent excavation and study of very substantial samples of burials from the city of Rome. Through large-scale rail and road infrastructural projects and development in the city’s suburbs several thousand burials have been excavated, the majority from non-monumentalized cemeteries of early and mid-imperial date, including burial areas serving the urban poor and the farms and other work spaces of the wider hinterland (Catalano et al. this volume, with further references; Dossiers d’Archéologie 330, 2008). A similar phenomenon characterizes provincial settings. Of more than 1,100 burial and cemetery excavations in Britain, for example, reported since 1921 in the annual accounts of fieldwork in the Journal of Roman Studies and Britannia, almost 600 have taken place in the last 25 years, in the main the product of changes to planning policy in 1990 in England and Wales (PPG 16, revised as PPS 5 in 2010 and superseded by the National Planning Policy Framework in 2011), which requires proposed construction projects to take account of archaeological deposits (Booth and Boyle 2008; Pearce 2015b). The case of Britain also illustrates how the character of ancient burial practice, preservation conditions and the focus of contemporary fieldwork on towns and development corridors combine to produce a dataset skewed to urban cemeteries. In France, too, development has sparked an explosion in burial numbers, again with a focus on zones of urbanisation, industrialisation and grands projets for enhancing the communications network. While similar urban biases apply, as in Britain burials have also been excavated in ever larger numbers as small groups and singletons from the margins of farmyards, the ditches of garden plots and field boundaries (e.g. Ancel 2012; Blaizot 2009; Raynaud 2006). By contrast in countries of the southern and eastern Mediterranean the growth in available data has been slower (e.g. Devreker et al. 2003; Mackinnon 2007; Pearce 2013b, 2; Rife 2012).

Research-led fieldwork directed at funerary contexts continues to be important. For example, collaborative work undertaken by the Ecole Française at Rome in collaboration with archaeological agencies and universities in Italy and Tunisia at Cumae, Pompeii, Ravenna and Pupput (Tunisia) has been especially important for methodological innovation (Scheid 2008; van Andringa et al. 2013; Dossiers d’Archéologie 330, 2008; Ortalli this volume; Lepetz this volume). Other major projects underway in a research context include the investigation of the cemeteries at Corinth and its port at Kenchreai (Rife this volume). Largescale geophysical prospection has also often yielded significant new data for the scale, layout and setting of burial areas (see below).

Through a combination of formal publication and ‘grey literature’, i.e. comprising ‘accounts of developer-funded archaeological investigations which have not been published in a recognised journal or book’ (Fulford and Holbrook 2014, 39), the data available from this fieldwork for the study of burial practice have also been substantially, if unevenly augmented. For example, cities from England including London, Colchester, Winchester, Cirencester and others to a lesser extent, are now served by a substantial sample of burials from multiple cemeteries and spanning the entire Roman period. Before 1990, this could scarcely be said of a single Roman town (Pearce 2015b). Syntheses of rural burial data reveal a similar growth in available data (e.g. Smith 2013). A similar expansion of the evidence base characterises Roman Gaul (e.g. Ancel 2012; Blaizot 2009). The continuing publication of older projects has also yielded substantial new information, in some cases completing major series of funerary publications, for example at Wederath and Krefeld-Gellep in western Germany (Kaiser 2006; Pirling and Siepen 2006), in others making complex (and often lacunose) archives from older fieldwork available. Examples of the latter include the cremation burials associated with the garrison at Brougham, Cumbria (Cool et al. 2004), small towns at Rheydt-Mülfort, Nordrhein-Westfalen, and Dillingen-Pachten, Saarland (Erkelenz 2012; Glansdorp 2005) or more than 1,300 inhumation burials from late Roman Nijmegen (Steures 2013). Archival resources on fieldwork in Greece, Lebanon and Egypt have been exploited to similar effect (De Jong 2010; O’Connell 2014; Rife 2012).

Likewise, funerary monuments continue to be more sporadically discovered, occasionally in situ, more commonly as spolia, from stelae to grand mausolea (e.g. Rossi 2012; Simmonds et al. 2008). These join the ever-proliferating body of corpora and thematic studies drawing on the near-inexhaustible body of funerary buildings, inscriptions and art documented over the last few centuries (Borg 2013, 1).

Interpreting Roman burials

The cumulative impact of this recent work is to enable the more detailed and precise mapping of the kaleidoscopic character of Roman funerary rituals, producing an ever more nuanced mosaic of practices within some common traditions. A striking example is the characterisation of the occurrence of inhumation. Across the western provinces, it can now be shown to have been practised on a widespread basis in the first to third centuries AD, sometimes as a minority ritual but in other cases, including Rome itself, accounting for the burials of a larger proportion of the population (Booth this volume; Catalano et al. this volume; Faber et al. 2004).

The transformation in analytical approaches is however as, if not more, important than the growth in data. Of this the most prominent characteristic is the greater emphasis on the analysis of human skeletal evidence; in this respect study of the Roman period follows a broader shift (Tarlow and Nilsson Stutz 2013). As well as many more site-specific studies of human skeletal remains, syntheses are now available at the regional level and beyond, with a particular focus on population health status, diet and mobility. This is the product of methodological change, a more sophisticated appreciation of the analytical potential of palaeopathological traits, an expanding suite of biomolecular techniques for analysing skeletal material, especially diet and geographical origin, and an enhanced emphasis on the insights into demographic and socio-cultural history that these can bring (Gowland and Garnsey 2010; Kilgrove 2014).

While long-standing questions in Roman funerary archaeology remain a common focus of study, for example concerning the religious or ethnic affiliations of individuals or populations, these have been extended or supplemented by consideration of identity as more broadly conceptualised. The availability of skeletal data is a significant contributory factor to the transformation of the study of burial practice for insights into identity. In particular, the application of a ‘life-course’ approach has given impetus to a much stronger focus on variability of funerary treatment according to age and gender. This has revealed a frequent close linkage between the two; the burial of ‘gender-specific’ artefacts, for example, especially of jewellery, shows significant variability according to age; in particular, girls and younger women are often distinguished by the richest and most diverse object assemblages (e.g. Cool 2010, 307–308; Gowland 2001; Martin-Kilcher 2000). The study of representation of social status in death has also been informed by the opportunity to compare funerary treatment with the diet and health of the deceased, as established from osteological and isotopic data (e.g. Müldner 2013; Pitts and Griffin 2012; Redfern et al. 2015). Closer attention to palaeopathological documentation has also permitted better characterisation of the atypical manipulations of corpses and or skeletal remains, commonly labelled ‘deviant’ burials and now documented widely beyond Britain (Belcastro and Ortalli 2010; Taylor 2008; Tucker 2013). Isotopic data and, to a lesser extent, the analysis of cranial morphology, have demonstrated the complex relationships between place of origin, ancestry and the group affiliations that burial ritual suggests (Eckardt et al. 2014).

The variety of perspectives applied to Roman burial data...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• List of Contributors
• 1. Introduction: Death as a process in Roman funerary archaeology: John Pearce
• 2. Space, object, and process in the Koutsongila Cemetery at Roman Kenchreai, Greece: Joseph L. Rife and Melissa Moore Morison
• 3. Archaeology and funerary cult: The stratigraphy of soils in the cemeteries of Emilia Romagna (northern Italy): Jacopo Ortalli
• 4. Funerary archaeology at St Dunstan’s Terrace, Canterbury: Jake Weekes
• 5. Buried Batavians: Mortuary rituals of a rural frontier community: Joris Aarts and Stijn Heeren
• 6. They fought and died – but were covered with earth only years later: ‘Mass graves’ on the ancient battlefield of Kalkriese: Achim Rost and Susanne Wilbers-Rost
• 7. Some recent work on Romano-British cemeteries: Paul Booth
• 8. Funerary complexes from Imperial Rome: A new approach to anthropological study using excavation and laboratory data: Paola Catalano, Carla Caldarini, Flavio De Angelis and Walter Pantano
• 9. Animals in funerary practices: Sacrifices, offerings and meals at Rome and in the provinces: Sébastien Lepetz
• 10. “How did it go?” Putting the process back into cremation: Jacqueline I. McKinley
• 11. Afterword – Process and polysemy: An appreciation of a cremation burial: Jake Weekes