Funerary Patterns in Late Roman Cities (3rd to 7th c.): Reviewing Archaeological Data in Northern Italy

Alexandra Chavarría Arnau

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Funerary Patterns in Late Roman Cities (3rd to 7th c.): Reviewing Archaeological Data in Northern Italy

In: Burial and Memorial in Late Antiquity

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Alexandra Chavarría Arnau

Alexandra Chavarría Arnau
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 692–704

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004687974_008

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Abstract

One of the principal transformations underlined by researchers analysing urban landscape during Late Antiquity concerns changes in funerary patterns and the progressive development of intramural burials. It is a phenomenon that has traditionally been linked to processes of Christianisation, the construction of churches inside cities and particularly a change in the relationship between people and the bodies of the dead, especially those of martyrs and saints. In this paper, I shall try to demonstrate that between the 4th and 6th c., burials inside city walls are rare and almost never related to Christian buildings. At least in northern Italy, Roman and Ostrogothic populations continued respecting Roman traditions, burying their dead in existing cemeteries located in suburban areas outside the city walls. Some of these burial areas had existed since Republican and Imperial times and contained pagan and Christian burials alike. Others seem to have been created, again in the suburbs, during the 3rd c. and developed a century later into large Christian areas. Real changes in burial practices inside the city would only begin from the end of the 6th c. with the multiplication of scattered burials and still later the development of intramural cemeteries linked to private chapels and, more rarely, episcopal churches.

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Burial and Memorial in Late Antiquity

Volume 2: Regional Perspectives

Series: Late Antique Archaeology, Volume: 13/2

Cover Burial and Memorial in Late Antiquity

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004687974

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 18 Sep 2024

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Funerary Patterns in Late Roman Cities (3rd to 7th c.): Reviewing Archaeological Data in Northern Italy

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Burial and Memorial in Late Antiquity

Volume 2: Regional Perspectives

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