Claudia Moser

Final Project Proposal

In the Roman world of the late first and early second centuries A.D., a time of territorial expansion, increasing political enfranchisement, and infiltration of foreign customs, Roman burial practices enter a period of thoroughgoing change. Romans began favoring inhumation, a practice whose increasing popularity and status can be seen in the large collections of diverse, extant sarcophagi, over cremation, the more standard method of burial in Republican and Early Imperial times, the “Romanos mos” as described by Tacitus in 65 A.D.

The shift to inhumation from cremation was not a sudden, simple exchange or replacement. For many years cremation co-existed with inhumation: tombs were receptacles for both cinerary urns and sarcophagi; elaborately carved ash chests and effigies honoring the cremated and the inhumed lay adjacent; sarcophagi even contained ashes of the deceased. In Rome and its immediate environs, cemeteries and tombs from this time period ---Isola Sacra, the Vatican necropolis, the Via Latina tombs of the Pancratii and Valerii, and the tombs under San Sebastiano--- clearly reveal these cotemporaneous burial practices. It is through the study of tomb architecture and building techniques, iconography and decorative motifs, specific materials, and ritual practice, that the reactions of the contemporary society and culture to this significant change in burial practice can be better understood.

Throughout the semester, we have been investigating different peoples’ interactions with ‘things,’ and more specifically, the human/thing interaction. I plan to investigate how the Roman public interacted with the change from cremation to inhumation in the second century A.D.. This shift in burial practices in the second century A.D. Roman world has often been remarked on, but there have been few investigations into the reason for and reaction to the change from cremation to inhumation. Since cremation had been the more standard method of burial from about 400 B.C., what prompted this change to inhumation? To what extent was the change brought on by foreign, outside influence? Did the change to inhumation and the resurgence of the house-tomb type have anything to do with Etruscan custom, such as the layout, style and structure of the necropolis at Orvieto? Was cremation reserved for those members of society who resisted the change or did cremation connote a more general nostalgia for past customs and methods, a nostalgia that underlay a rich final flowering of the arts associated with cremation? How did Romans approach this development through ritual, belief and action?

Through an in depth study of the second century necropoli (especially the excavations at Isola Sacra), I will examine the interplay between cremation and inhumation, investigating the physical and material arrangement and layout, along with the religious and cultural aspects of the rituals and customs that accompany each method of burial. I also plan to investigate the Imperial Roman belief in afterlife (through literature and art) in order to examine the differing paths a cremated or an inhumed body might take after death (what appears to be a change from the dissolution to the preservation of the individual after death). Study of the excavated remains of cult and ritual (wells, benches, ovens, altars) on the exterior and interiors of tombs, should reveal differences in funerary customs.

Isola Sacra, the necropolis to the Roman port city Ostia, spreading out over three hundred and fifty meters, preserves around 200 excavated tombs, many in the shape of houses, for both the rich and poor, holding both cremated and inhumed remains. The elaborate decoration on both the exteriors and interiors of these tombs depicts aspects of the craft, character and life of the deceased: mosaics illustrate a task or profession, pediments and plaques include inscriptions identifying the dweller, hinting at his nationality, or even warning trespassers. This city of the dead, with no earlier parallels in the Roman world, is laid out along many of the same lines as its neighboring city, Portus Trajani. Does this similar plan imply that similar rituals, beliefs and customs were carried out in the cemetery as in the town?

Other second century A.D. cemeteries also present cremation along side inhumation: the Vatican necropolis, the closest parallel in layout, structure and time period to Isola Sacra, also contains elaborate, lavish house tombs filled with ashes and inhumed bodies alike; the tombs of the Pancratii and Valerii on the Via Latina in Rome are extravagant columbaria, holding cremated remains in many beautifully stuccoed niches; the three house tombs under the church of San Sebastiano on the Via Appia in Rome, planned as a single unit, contain inhumations in lavishly decorated and brightly painted interiors. A study of the necropolis at Isola Sacra, complemented by an examination of and exploration into each of these other contemporary cemeteries, will reveal the Roman people’s beliefs in and rituals connected to the cult of the dead. And it is through this study of Roman ritual and custom in this time period that a better understanding of the Roman reaction to the major change in burial method can be reached.