Death as a Process: The Archaeology of the Roman Funeral

311 Pages·2017·23.3 MB·English

by  John Pearce

Studies in Funerary Archaeology Vol. 12
Death as a Process
edited by
John Pearce and Jake Weekes
Oxford & Philadelphia
Published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by
OXBOW BOOKS
The Old Music Hall, 106–108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE
and in the United States by
OXBOW BOOKS
1950 Lawrence Road, Havertown, PA 19083
© Oxbow Books and the individual contributors 2017
Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-323-2
Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-324-9 (epub)
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Pearce, John, 1969- editor, author. | Weekes, Jake, editor, author.
Title: Death as a process / edited by John Pearce and Jake Weekes.
Description: Oxford ; Philadelphia : Oxbow Books, 2017. | Series: Studies in
funerary archaeology ; 12 | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017000884 (print) | LCCN 2017016253 (ebook) | ISBN
9781785703249 (epub) | ISBN 9781785703256 (mobi) | ISBN 9781785703263 (pdf) |
ISBN 9781785703232 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Funeral rites and ceremonies--Rome. | Human remains
(Archaeology) | Funeral rites and ceremonies, Ancient. | Excavations
(Archaeology) | Burial--History--To 1500. | Social archaeology. |
Burial--Rome.
Classification: LCC DG103 (ebook) | LCC DG103 .D43 2017 (print) | DDC
393/.930937--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017000884
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and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher in writing.
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Front cover: Excavation (Canterbury Archaeological Trust); the tomb of Publius Vesonius Phileros in the niche
under the podium (A. Gailliot, MFPN/FPN).
Back cover: Tomb L14001, “Actiparc” site near Arras (France), 1st century AD (Service Archéologique d’Arras –
INRAP).
Contents
Preface ......................................................................................................................................v
List of contributors .............................................................................................................viii
1. Introduction: Death as a process in Roman funerary archaeology...........................1
John Pearce
2. Space, object, and process in the Koutsongila Cemetery
at Roman Kenchreai, Greece ..........................................................................................27
Joseph L. Rife and Melissa Moore Morison
3. Archaeology and funerary cult: The stratigraphy of soils in the
cemeteries of Emilia Romagna (northern Italy) .........................................................60
Jacopo Ortalli
4. Funerary archaeology at St Dunstan’s Terrace, Canterbury ....................................83
Jake Weekes
5. Buried Batavians: Mortuary rituals of a rural frontier community......................123
Joris Aarts and Stijn Heeren
6. They fought and died – but were covered with earth only years later:
‘Mass graves’ on the ancient battlefi eld of Kalkriese ..............................................155
Achim Rost and Susanne Wilbers-Rost
7. Some recent work on Romano-British cemeteries ..................................................174
Paul Booth
8. Funerary complexes from Imperial Rome: A new approach to
anthropological study using excavation and laboratory data ...............................208
Paola Catalano, Carla Caldarini, Flavio De Angelis and Walter Pantano
9. Animals in funerary practices: Sacrifi ces, off erings and meals at Rome
and in the provinces .....................................................................................................226
Sébastien Lepetz
iv Contents
10. “How did it go?” Putting the process back into cremation .................................257
Jacqueline I. McKinley
11. Afterword – Process and polysemy: An appreciation of a cremation burial ....287
Jake Weekes
Preface
‘Romans killed dozens of unwanted babies at English “brothel”’1
The Roman dead continue to speak to an audience beyond that of Romanists or burial
archaeologists. In recent years’ discoveries related to the excavation or analysis of
burials have received widespread media attention. The extensive coverage in 2010 of
the interpretation of infant burials from the villa at Yewden in Buckinghamshire as
the unwanted off spring of prostitutes serving clients from Roman London is but one
example. Through the medium of their tombs, real or highly contested, readers and
viewers have also encountered famous names from antiquity, including St Paul, James,
the claimed brother of Jesus, and the ‘real life Gladiator’, Marcus Nonius Macrinus,
the discovery of whose monument on the via Flaminia not far north of Rome was an
archaeological sensation in 2008. Colourful characters from Roman Britain met during
the last 15 years include Southwark’s ‘gladiator girl’, the Spitalfi elds’ ‘princess’, and
Catterick’s ‘eunuch’. Evidence for violent death or epidemic thrust other discoveries
to prominence, for example gladiators from Ephesus and London, ‘headless Romans’
from York, and the occupants of the mass grave excavated in the catacomb of Sts Peter
and Marcellinus, for which the Antonine plague is the soberest of the interpretations
off ered. Speculation over the contents of sealed coffi ns, like the ‘burrito’ from late
Antique Gabii on the outskirts of Rome, recalls the antiquarian thrills of tomb
opening in earlier eras. This sensationalising attention is a well-established tradition
in (Graeco-)Roman funerary archaeology: Ian Morris commented two decades ago on
the disproportionate attention paid by archaeologists to ‘quirks’ and ‘oddities’ in the
study of Roman burial, and Eleanor Scott noted the propensity for ‘ripping yarns’ to
emerge in interpretation of the dead, often with a strongly sexist dimension, using
the early 20th century excavation of the Yewden villa and its later reception. This
notwithstanding, it is essential to acknowledge key developments in the study of the
Roman dead.
Fieldwork in the last two decades, especially through development-led archaeology,
has enormously increased both the sample of excavated burials available for study
and the diversity of contexts from which these derive. Much greater emphasis is
given to the reporting and analysis of human remains. The much fuller integration
of their study, including the new insights from biomolecular analysis, especially of
stable isotopes, with the archaeological evidence for burial rituals, has given key new
insights into diet, mobility and identity. Our volume benefi ts from both developments,
but it takes further the development in Roman funerary archaeology as its primary
focus, the exploration not just of burial practice as a single act of deposition, but
vi Preface
rather as a complex sequence of acts on and around corpses and monuments in the
rituals preceding and following death.
The Roman funeral has always attracted the attention of historians and
anthropologists, not only for its spectacular character, the processions and pyres of
emperors reminiscent of later royal rituals, but also because it lends itself to analysis as
a rite of passage. It could be suggested that archaeological cemetery evidence, derived
usually from the interment alone, is unlikely to be fully representative, or could even
be misleading as a basis for extrapolating to the wider ceremony. We contend that
this is too limited a view; stages of ritual before, during and after burial are also
archaeologically accessible and a richer understanding of death as a process can be
established from archaeological fi eldwork in various contexts, including development-
led and research excavations, as well as from texts. This, we argue, allows for a much
fuller description and richer interpretation of Roman funerary rituals as practiced in
their diversity across the empire.
Our shared interest in Roman funerary ritual and in the possibilities for
documenting and interpreting ritual sequences prompted the starting point for this
book, a session organised by us at the Roman Archaeology Conference in London
in 2007. With subsequent expansion by additional contributions, we seek in it to
assess what kinds of insights are being derived from this new work on cemetery
excavations and the re-evaluation of older projects. New fi eldwork results and the
insights from osteological analysis feature prominently among the contributions,
but we wish to bring to particular attention the reconstruction and interpretation
of ritual sequence and to allow for comparison of the diff erent perspectives taken
by archaeologists working in diff erent contexts. Since insights into methods for
obtaining a richer documentation of a ritual sequence have emerged from projects
in both a research- and development-led contexts, we have invited contributors
who work in both spheres, with a view to considering how study might be further
advanced, especially in the practice of development-led projects, from which the
vast majority of today’s data derive. The contributors also include specialists in
particular methods and materials. In funerary archaeology in particular it seems
useful also to compare the diff erent approaches across Europe, where the study is
marked by distinctive national traditions. This also provides a useful opportunity to
bring to the wider attention of an English-reading audience important new work from
continental Europe, including the results of projects at Rome, Pompeii, Kenchreai
near Corinth and the site of the Varian disaster with its particular resonance in
Roman memory. While the conference session took place at a time of a boom in
information from development-related archaeology, work on its publication has
coincided in the UK and elsewhere with a recession that has led to a greatly reduced
volume of archaeological fi eldwork. As and when the pace of new fi eldwork linked
to development quickens again, we hope that the volume will raise questions for
consideration in the planning and execution of new projects as well as off ering new
insights into ancient behaviour and society.
Preface vii
We are delighted that Joe Rife and Melisa Morison, Achim Rost and Susanne Wilbers-
Rost, Stijn Heeren and Joris Aarts, and Sebastien Lepetz all responded positively to the
invitation to contribute to the volume alongside Jackie McKinley, Paul Booth, Jacopo
Ortalli and Paola Catalano and colleagues who contributed to the original conference.
As well as contributing a case study Jake Weekes considers approaches interpreting
the meaning of ritual sequences in a fi nal paper. The chapters were prepared in their
present form between 2009 and 2012–2013, and then revised in late 2014. We would also
like to thank our other speakers in the original conference session, Rebecca Gowland
and Colin Wallace, and Peter Garnsey as respondent in the session.2 We express
our gratitude also to the RAC organising committee for accepting and facilitating
the session, especially Ian Haynes, and the British Academy for supporting costs of
non-UK based speakers, and to Federico Ugolini for much-appreciated practical help
with preparing the volume. Above all we thank our contributors and Oxbow Books
for their patience in bearing with the vicissitudes of its preparation where outside
circumstances impinged on the editors’ work and have meant a longer gestation than
we had intended.
Notes
1. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1289603/Romans-killed-100-unwanted-babies-
English-brothel.html. S. Greenhill, 26.6.2010 [Accessed 28.06.2010].
2. Rebecca Gowland’s paper is published elsewhere: Gowland, R. and Garnsey, P. (2010) Skeletal
evidence for health, nutritional status and malaria in Rome and the empire. In H. Eckardt (ed.)
Roman diasporas; archaeological approaches to mobility and diversity in the Roman Empire, 131–156.
JRA Supplement 78, Portsmouth RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology.
List of contributors
JORIS AARTS SÉBASTIEN LEPETZ
Archaeological Centre VU University, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle/UMR 7209
Faculteit der Letteren du CNRS
De Boelelaan 1105 Archéozoologie, Archéobotanique:
1081 HV Amsterdam sociétés, pratiques et environnements
The Netherlands Case postale 56
[email protected] 55 rue Buff on
75005 Paris (France)
PAUL BOOTH [email protected]
Oxford Archaeology
Janus House JACQUELINE MCKINLEY
Osney Mead Wessex Archaeology
Oxford (UK) Portway House
OX2 0ES Old Sarum Park
[email protected] Salisbury UK
SP4 6EB
CARLA CALDARINI [email protected]
Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma
Via di S.Apollinare 8, 00186, Rome, Italy MELISSA MOORE MORISON
[email protected] Department of Classics
Grand Valley State University
PAOLA CATALANO 260 Lake Huron Hall
Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma One Campus Drive
Via di S.Apollinare 8, 00186, Rome, Italy Allendale, MI 49401
[email protected] [email protected]
FLAVIO DE ANGELIS JACOPO ORTALLI
Lab. of Anthropology, Centre of Molecular Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici,
Anthropology for Ancient DNA Studies Sezione di Storia e scienze dell’antichità
Department of Biology; University of Rome Università di Ferrara
Tor Vergata via Paradiso 12, 44100 Ferrara Italy
Via della Ricerca Scientifi ca 1, [email protected]
00133 Rome, Italy
fl [email protected] WALTER PANTANO
Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma
STIJN HEEREN Via di S.Apollinare 8, 00186 Rome, Italy
Archaeological Centre VU University, [email protected]
Faculteit der Letteren
De Boelelaan 1105 JOHN PEARCE
1081 HV Amsterdam Department of Classics, King’s College London
The Netherlands Strand
[email protected] London UK
List of contributors ix
WC2R 2LS JAKE WEEKES
[email protected] Canterbury Archaeological Trust Ltd
92A Broad Street
JOSEPH L. RIFE Canterbury
Program in Classical and Mediterranean Studies, Kent UK
Vanderbilt University CT1 2LU
PMB 0092 [email protected]
230 Appleton Place
Nashville, TN 37203-5721
SUSANNE WILBERS-ROST
[email protected]
Museum und Park Kalkriese,
Department of Archaeology
ACHIM ROST
Venner Str. 69
Universität Osnabrück, Alte Geschichte:
49565 Bramsche-Kalkriese
Archäologie der Römischen Provinzen
Germany
Schlossstr. 8
[email protected]
49069 Osnabrück,
Germany
[email protected]