The Materiality of Death - mikroarkeologi.se

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Figure 1. Isola Sacra, Tombs 75, 77. Photo Regina Gee. The general appearance of this type of mausoleum is as follows. They are aboveground chambers, barrel or crossvaulted, square or rectangular in plan, with niches for both inhumation and cremation burials lining the interior walls. By the middle of the second century, house tombs had fairly standardized dimensions, typically ten by ten, twenty by twenty, or ten by twelve Roman feet. The earliest examples date to the Trajanic-Hadrianic period (98-138) and feature concrete exteriors faced with a combination of opus reticulatum and brick, with an increasing number of brick-faced facades appearing by the Antonine period (139-180). The principle façade, usually faced with a fine–grained red brick, is typically arranged with a central door framed by a travertine jamb and sills, a marble titulus inset above the door, and splayed windows either flanking or cut into the titulus (Fig.1). Decorative architectural elements embellishing the tomb facades include projecting architraves above the door, marble insets for the windows, terracotta frames of varying degrees of elaboration around the titulus and windows, and an entablature, in some cases “supported” by pilasters of projecting brick. Several tombs from Isola Sacra and a single example from the Vatican Necropolis feature decorative terracotta plaques inserted into the facade near the top of the doorframe and the entablature (Fig. 2). Where extant examples of the upper section exist, a triangular pediment topped the façade. The most common facing materials for the interior of house tombs were reticulate and block work in the earliest examples from the Trajanic/Hadrianic period, changing to brick or brick and block work by the Antonine period, always covered with stucco and painted. Many feature the generous use of molded stucco to create architectural frames around individual loculi, figurative friezes, and coffered ceilings. Frescoes enliven the spaces between niches as well as their interiors, and draw from the established decorative repertoire for both house and tomb of simple floral/vegetal motifs, animals, birds, portraits of the deceased and mythological scenes. The majority of extant pavements are black and white mosaics of geometric and vegetal designs. Examples of black and white and, less frequently, polychrome mosaic pavements with more ambitious figural designs survive from both Isola Sacra and the Vatican Necropolis, and the subjects include hunt scenes, Nilotic landscapes with pygmies, mythological scenes, and representations of the seasons. The Tomb Owners Inscriptional evidence tells us the owners of these tombs were almost without exception male and the head of household, and the names suggest that for the most part the occupants were non-elite but prosperous Romans, often freedmen or descendants of freedmen. In the text of the titulus, the public record of who was and could be buried within, the builder identifies himself as the dedicant and names his blood kin and his freedmen and their descendents as the group for whom he is providing a tomb. Occasionally, the tomb owner gave a space within a tomb as a gift to a friend of the family, and there are 60
Figure 2. Isola Sacra, Tomb 100. Photo Regina Gee. also recorded instances of the sale of unused space within the family tomb as when at Isola Sacra, Valeria Trophime sold part of the enclosure in front of her tomb to C. Galgestius Helius. 1 The function of these monuments as a sort of architectural invitation to visit, dine and remember may have held increased importance for this group in Roman society, members of the libertini or freedman class. Legally, former slaves did not have a familia with its attendant history and thus lacked the personal and societal connection to ancestors Romans used as the foundation supporting the duties of creating and tending memory. Their response was to fashion a history for themselves to the best of their ability, using the immediate network of kin and dependents as the lynchpin holding together their post-mortem transformation into ancestral spirits needing tending and sustenance. In addition to relatives, the freedmen and freedwomen of the deceased, connected to the dead through ties of obligation 1 For the inscription see H. Thylander, Inscriptions du Port d’Ostie (Lund, 1951-2), 124. and loyalty, were often responsible for carrying out these visits to the tomb. There are also descriptions, like that of Artemidorus, of instances in which friends of the deceased, sometimes members of the same collegium, gathered at the “dwelling of the deceased” for a memorial dinner (Oneirocritica 5.82). The House Tomb as Monumentum The examination that follows considers these house tombs within the context of visitation, funerary ritual and activity relating to the cult of the dead in and around the tomb in the hope of elucidating the relationship between the appearance of these tombs and their function. This kind of analysis brings to the forefront the fundamental nature of the tomb as a monumentum, something built to evoke memory. As a monumentum, the house tomb functioned in several ways. It created a record of existence for a group of individuals. While the tomb itself did not architecturally resemble a Roman house, it did preserve the social hierarchy of familial relationships and in this sense, as Nicholas Purcell notes, the house tomb was more domus than insula in spirit (Purcell 1987:39). 61
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The Materiality of Death Bodies, bu
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Contents Chapter 1. The Materiality
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Fig. 1. Pieter Bruegel, The Triumph
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ather one has to emphasise the mate
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dead are often regarded as unfriend
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Fig 3. The old man Tei Tetuna by hi
Page 14 and 15: The Materiality of Social Change: H
Page 16 and 17: The Materiality of Eternity - The A
Page 18 and 19: FAHLANDER, F. & OESTIGAARD, T. 2004
Page 20 and 21: Susanne Kuechler-Fogden, Webb Keane
Page 23 and 24: Chapter 2 More than Metaphor: Appro
Page 25 and 26: discuss death and the treatment of
Page 27 and 28: had to deal with. This is not to sa
Page 29 and 30: hide that could be removed to expos
Page 31 and 32: pp111-123. Philadelphia: University
Page 33 and 34: Chapter 3 A Piece of the Mesolithic
Page 35 and 36: The main point is that the division
Page 37 and 38: A Piece of the Mesolithic: Skatehol
Page 39 and 40: question we need to construct some
Page 41 and 42: Fig. 4. Skateholm I (above) and Ska
Page 43 and 44: visible many years after the origin
Page 45 and 46: Phase Area Properties Interpretatio
Page 47 and 48: phase of one site with a contempora
Page 49: MILNER, N. & WOODMAN, P. 2005. Meso
Page 52 and 53: with dead people belonging to other
Page 54 and 55: Fig. 2. Due to the extraordinaire c
Page 56 and 57: As with all cremations in Hinduism,
Page 58 and 59: Based on the amount of scattered bo
Page 60 and 61: To have an ethical approach involve
Page 63: Chapter 5 From Corpse to Ancestor:
Page 67 and 68: Figure 4. Isola Sacra, Tomb 87. Pho
Page 73: 69 Burials
Page 76 and 77: through careful recording of the or
Page 78 and 79: Figure 4: Pencraig Hill: Distributi
Page 80 and 81: focussed on use of partial sets of
Page 83 and 84: Chapter 7 Ritual and Remembrance at
Page 85 and 86: urial (tomba a doppio loculo tipo M
Page 87 and 88: ‘original’ walls of the tomb. L
Page 89 and 90: chambers cut into two earlier trenc
Page 91: Madison: Prehistory Press, Monograp
Page 94 and 95: Well-organized cemeteries or messy
Page 96 and 97: influenced who was buried inside th
Page 98 and 99: it was quite short, which could ind
Page 100 and 101: References ARTELIUS, TORE 2004. Min
Page 103 and 104: Chapter 9 Life and Death in the Bro
Page 105 and 106: Fig. 5.1. Cremation necropolis at P
Page 107 and 108: place. These burials were very simp
Page 109 and 110: Chapter 10 Norwegian Face-Urns: Loc
Page 111 and 112: The recurring themes in the debate
Page 113 and 114: The local context of the Norwegian
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Death is the inevitable conclusion
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OESTIGAARD, T. 1999. Cremations as
Page 119 and 120:
Chapter 11 The Use of Ochre in Ston
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Ochre was used so intensively that
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Fig. 5. Zvejnieki burial ground. Th
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grave has been dated to 5690±45 BP
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Khanty of northern Siberia, the col
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125 Beliefs
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Chapter 12 ”Death Myths”: Perfo
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Variation within the same cist Bø,
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Variation within the same mound Lyd
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Figures 6 and 7. Modvo, Luster muni
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To what extent there have been corr
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when they die, a probable explanati
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fragmented spindles, iron weaving s
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Chapter 13 Reproduction and Relocat
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may be questioned, and analysed mor
Page 149 and 150:
References Andersson, G. 1997: A st
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Chapter 14 A Road for the Viking’
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Figure 2. The Jarlabanke Bridge tha
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Chapter 15 A Road to the Other Side
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Fig. 4. Clearing the bridge on an e
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Chapter 16 Stones and Bones: The My
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Fig. 4. An Iron Age scene at Sylta
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Fig. 7. The resemblance between cru
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