SIT

TIBI TERRA GRAVIS: MAGICAL-RELIGIOUS PRACTICES AGAINST RESTLESS

DEAD IN THE ANCIENT WORLD1.

SILVIA ALFAY
University of Oxford
When Van Helsing suggests that Dr. Seward decapitate Lucys corpse in the renowned book
Dracula by B. Stoker, he asks:
But why do it at all? The girl is dead. Why mutilate her poor body without need? And
if there is no necessity for a post-mortem and nothing to gain by it no good for her, to
us, to science, to human knowledge- why do it? Without such it is monstrous2.

These questions are raised by the unusual burials of ancient chronology with bodies interred
in prone position (figs. 1 and 25), mutilated or decapitated cadavers (fig. 2 and 6), skeletons with
the skull and other parts of the body pierced by nails (figs. 3, 19, 23, 28-29), nailed cinerary urns,
corpses deliberately crushed under the weight of huge rocks (figs. 4-6, 13-15 and 27), and even
graves with a combination of these (figs. 5-6, 14 and 27). All these finds allow us to visualise, through
the archaeological record, a different, twisted and disturbing aspect of the standard funerary ritual
practices in the Ancient world and more specifically in the Greek-Roman context, which is the
This article has been translated by Rosa Ana and Noel Murphy. This study has been carried out within the research project
Espacios de magia, supersticin y poder en el Occidente del Imperio Romano, financed by DGICYT (HUM 241-29).
2
B. STOKER, Dracula, Oxford, 1983, 165.
1

181

chronological and cultural framework of this study. When faced with such unsettling funerary finds,
numerous questions arise: both physical uncertainties how and when were these practices carried
out-, and reflections on their social-religious significance, the identity of the executors and of the
interred. And, above all, one wonders about the reasons why a person or a group decide to perform
this type of funerary practice of such a drastic nature which unquestionably, as I. Morris points out,
were carried out because it seemed like a good idea at the time3. The main question arising from
these anomalous finds is, therefore, their meaning and interpretation, and the purpose of this paper is
none other than to try to find an explanation for these deviant burials.
By the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, several scholars already
connected these singular burials to immobilising ritual practices aimed at physically and symbolically
fixing the restless dead to their tombs, and thus preventing them from returning and disturbing the
living, an exegesis which has been recently revitalized again by scholars such as D. Ogden or S.I.
Johnston4. We must then wonder whether there was necrophobia or fear of the malign potentiality
of the dead in the Ancient world which may account for carrying out such drastic funerary measures.
Belief in the existence of the restless dead in the Graeco-Roman world may be inferred from ancient
phantom literature which collects stories about ghosts, apparitions and wandering dead, popular topics
from which our contemporary ghostly imagery derives, as studied by E. Jobb-Duval, D. Felton, D.
Ogden, and A. Straramaglia, amongst others5. The very existence of the festival of the Lemuria (Ov.,
Fast. 5. 419-492) also implies an acknowledgement of the presence of restless spirits amongst the
living, whose return to the world of the dead was facilitated through purification, appeasement and
aversion rituals performed in May. The larvae or lemures, described by Porf., Schol. Ad. Hor. Epist.
2. 2. 209, as lemores, umbras vagantes hominum ante diem mortuorum et ideo metuendas umbras
terribiles biothanatorum, could cause accidents, plagues, bad harvests, miscarriages, death, disease
and other misfortunes, so it is hardly surprising that the living wished to keep them away6.

I. MORRIS, Death-Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge 1992, 108.
D. OGDEN, Greek and Roman necromancy, Princeton 2001. ID., Magic, witchcraft and ghosts in the Greek and Roman
world, Oxford 2002. S.I. JOHNSTON, Restless dead. Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece,
Berkeley-Los Angeles-London 1999.
5
E. JOBB-DUVAL, Les morts malfaisants. Larves, lmures, daprs le droit et les croyances populaires des Romains,
Chambry 2000 (1924). D. FELTON, Haunted Greece and Rome. Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity, Austin 2000. D.
OGDEN, Greek and roman, 2001. ID., Magic, witchcraft, 2002, 146-178. A. STRAMAGLIA, Res inauditae, incredulae.
Storie di fantasma nel mondo greco-latino, Bari 1999. Cf. also K. HOPKINS, Death and Renewal, Cambridge 1985, 234235. V. ZANGARA, Exeuntes de corpore. Discussioni sulle apparizioni dei morti in epoca agostiniana, Firenze 1990. G.
ANDERSON, Fairytale in the Ancient World, London-New York 2000, 112 and followings.
6
On Greco-Roman ghost terms lemures, larvae, Manes, eidlon, phantasma, phasma, umbra, imago, simulacrum, etccf. D. Felton, Haunted Greece, 2000, 22-37. On the Lemuria and the meaning of larva and lemur, cf. J.A. HILD, Larvae,
DAGR, III.2, Paris 1904, 950-953. ID., Lemures, in DAGR, III.2, 1904, 1100-1101. J.G. FRAZER, The Fasti of Ovid. Volume
IV, London 1929, 36-54. M. SIMON, De statu mortuorum: an historical- theological dissertation concerning the state of the
dead. London 1723, 3-13, 31 and following, for whom the lemures are departed souls, whereas the larvae could be souls
of vicious, wicked people, that is, those guilty of crimes, unburied corpses, those who had suffered violent or unfortunate
deaths who expiate their sins in life through a wandering existence after their death and are offensive to the gods and to men.
On the harm that these wandering souls caused to the living, cf., amongst others E. JOBB-DUVAL, Les morts malfaisants,
2000, 119-201. M. BARTELHEIM AND V. HEYD, Cult after burial: patterns of post-funeral treatment in the Bronze and Iron Ages
of Central Europe, in: P. Biehl, F. Bertemes and H. Meller (eds.), The Archaeology of Cult and Religion, Budapest 2001,
267-268. J.G. FRAZER, The fear of the dead in primitive religion, I, London-New York 2003 (1933-1936), 132-176. E. COUTO,
Los espectros furiosos como causa de enfermedad en Mesopotamia, Historiae, 2, 2005, 27-53. J. SCURLOCK, Magico-Medical
Means of Treating Ghost-induced illness in Ancient Mesopotamia (Studies in Ancient Magic and Divination), Leiden 2006.
A.M. DI NOLA, La muerte derrotada. Antropologa de la muerte y el duelo, Barcelona 2007, 23-28.
3
4

182

1. DEATH AS A PROCESS
As R. Hertz, A. van Gennep, J. Maurin or L. Nilsson have studied, death is a process not
an event. The funus is, above all, a rite of passage which is organised around rituals of separation
from the world of the living and rituals of integration within the world of the dead, going through
an intermediate or liminal period (fig. 7). The work of these and other anthropologists reveal that
this period of transit between one state and another is extremely critical, both for the living, who are
exposed to the contamination resulting from their contact with death, and for the dead, who, unable
to access the beyond or reluctant to accept their new status, may want to rejoin a reality which they
can no longer be part of. They then become hostile and resentful and turn into restless dead, dead
insufficiently dead, wandering souls, revenants, larvae o lemures, spirits who interfere in the world of
the living and who cannot or do not wish to- be part of the Otherworld that awaits them7. According
to R. Lizzi, the funeral rituals in the Ancient world would be dominated by the acknowledgement of
that intermediate phase of passage from the status of the living to that of the dead, and by the idea
of the living corpse (lebender Leichnam, lebender Leiche), a belief which creates a feeling of
ambivalence as the corpse is and is not the person which it once was8.
The reasons why a dead person could be potentially dangerous and become restless vary
with each society, but research by J.G. Frazer, P. J. Ucko, T. Shay or S. I. Johnston shows that, in
all cultures, the harmful potential of the deceased is due mainly to two factors: the behaviour of
the individual during his life (modus vivendi), and the circumstances surrounding his death (modus
moriendi). The Ancient World was no exception to this9.

Figure 7.- The death as a process: tripartite structure of a transitional period,

by L.M. DANFORTH and A. TSIARAS 1982.
R. HERTZ, Contribucin a un estudio sobre la representacin colectiva de la muerte, in: Id., La muerte y la mano derecha,
Madrid 1990, 13-102. A. VAN GENNEP, The rites of passage, London 1977, 160-162. L.M. DANFORTH AND A. TSIARAS, The
death rituals of rural Greece, Princeton, 1982, 35-70, figs. 1. J. MAURIN, Funus et rites de sparation, A.I.O.N., 6, 1984, 191208. L. NILSSON, Embodied Rituals & Ritualized Bodies. Tracing Ritual Practices in Late Mesolithic Burials, Stockholm
2003, 95-105, 343-367. C. FOWLER, The Archaeology of Personhood. An anthropological approach, London 2004, 79-100.
A.M. DI NOLA, La muerte derrotada, 2007, 23-33, 280-310.
8
R. LIZZI, Il sesso e i morti, in: F. Hinard (ed.), La mort au quotidien dans le monde romain, Paris 1995, 58. Cf. also V.M. HOPE, The
treatment of the corpse in Ancient Rome, in: V.M. Hope and E. Marshall, (eds.), Death and disease in the Ancient City, LondonNew York 2000, 126-127. A.M. DI NOLA, La negra seora. Antropologa de la muerte y el luto, Barcelona 2006, 275-297.
9
Cf. J.G. FRAZER, The fear of the dead, I-III, 2003 (especially vol. III, 103-311). P.J. UCKO, Ethnography and archaeological
interpretation of funerary remains, World Archaeology, 1, 1969, 262-280. T. SHAY, Differentiated Treatment of Deviancy at
Death as Revealed in Anthropological and Archaeological material, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 4, 1985, 221241. Also cf. B. BARTEL, A historical review of ethnological and archaeological analyses of mortuary practices, Journal of
Anthropological Archaeology, 1, 1982, 32-58. M.J. BECKER, An ethnographical and archaeological survey of unusual mortuary
procedures as a reflection on cultural diversity, La parola del passato, 41, 1986, 31-56. S.I. JOHNSTON, Restless dead, 1999.
M. BARTELHEIM AND V. HEYD, Cult after burial, 2001, 267-274. A.M. DI NOLA, La negra seora, 2006, 93-261.
7

183

1.1. Categories of restless dead in the Greek-Roman world

Thanks to literary sources such as Virg., Aen., 6. 315-534, Sil. It., Pun., 13. 532-562, Lucian.,
Kataplous, 6-7, and Tert., De anim., 56-57, amongst others, we know of the existence of various
categories and subtypes of restless dead in the ancient world, as well as of the places reserved for
them in the geography of the Afterlife10. These categories, which are not closed but overlap each
other, have numerous connections with similar beliefs which have been attested to in cultures of wide
chronology and geographic scope, and are determined by the conduct of the individual during his/her
life private behaviour, individual attributes (unusual features, severe physical or mental diseases,
foreign status), type of profession, etc.- and/or by the circumstances surrounding his/her death as a
result of violence, disease, suicide, accident, combat, childbirth, etc.-.
1.1.1. The Unburied Dead: ataphoi, atelestoi, insepulti
In the Greek-Roman world, the main although reversible- category of potential restless
dead was made up by the ataphoi, atelestoi or insepulti, deceased people who lacked a burial or who
had not received the appropriate funerary rituals. Due to this they were forced to roam erratically,
trapped on this side of the river Styx between the world of the living and the Hades, awaiting to be
buried, or for the normal duration of an existence imposed by Fate to elapse, or for one hundred years
to pass -centum errant annos (Virg. Aen., 6.329), a period considered as the maximum duration of a
human life-, after which they were allowed access to the Otherworld11. These dead could appear to
the living to demand a suitable funeral, as narrated by Pliny the Younger, Ep. 7. 27. 4-11, and Lucian.,
Philops., 30-31, in their stories of haunted houses where the spirits of the unburied dead used to
terrify successive dwellers overnight until their bones were exhumed and properly interred; then the
dead could rest, and the house was freed from their supernatural presence12.
1.1.2. The Premature Dead: the aroi
Another group of potentially dangerous dead was formed by the aroi, those who had a premature
death, mors immatura, mors cruda. This category comprises stillborns, perinatal death and infants
(figs. 8-9 and 26), but also all those who died at a young age, before due time (mors ante diem fatalem),
including youths deceased before marriage (agamoi, innupti) and women who died in childbirth13.
Ancient literary sources attest to the existence of a specific funerary ritual the funus acerbumCf., amongst others, F. CUMONT, After Life in Paganism, New Haven 1922, 64-69, 128-147. A.D. NOCK, Tertullian and the
ahori, in: Id., Essays on religion and the Ancient World. II, Oxford 1972, 712-719. J. BREMMER, The early greek concept of
the soul, Princeton 1982, 70-124 (especially 83-108). A. NOVARA, Les imagines de llyse virgilien, in: F. Hinard (ed.), La
mort, les morts et lau-del, Caen 1987, 321-349. S.I. JOHNSTON, Restless dead, 1999, 127-199. E. JOBB-DUVAL, Les morts
malfaisants, 2000, 37-107. D. OGDEN, Greek and Roman, 2001, 225-230. ID., Magic, withcraft, 2002, 146-178.
11
On the hundred-year wait, cf. S. REINACH, Awroi biawq anatoi, Archiv fr Religionswissenschraft, 9, 1906, 315. J. VTERVRUGTLENTZ, Mors immatura, Groningen 1960, 70-71, 75-76, 80. A.D. NOCK, Tertullian, 1972, 712. I. RAWSON, Children and
Childhood in Roman Italy, Oxford 2003, 358. Cf. also A.M. DI NOLA, La negra seora..., 2006, 160-164. On the insepulti, cf.
E. JOBB-DUVAL, Les morts malfaisants, 2000, 60-68. J.G. FRAZER, The fear of the dead, III, 2003, 260-283.
12
On these and other ancient literary testimonies of haunted houses and ghostly apparitions of unburied or dead persons
who did not receive a proper funeral, cf. A. STRAMAGLIA, Res inauditae, 1999, 119-183. D. FELTON, Haunted Greece,
2000, 38-97. D. OGDEN, Magic, witchcraft, 2002, 154-161.
13
Cf. J. VTERVRUGT-LENTZ, Mors immatura, 1960. J. BREMMER, The early greek, 1982, 96-99. J.P. NRAUDAU, La loi, la
coutume et le chagrin. Rflexions sur la mort des enfants, in : F. Hinard (ed.), La mort, les morts, 1987, 195-208. L.
MONTANINI, Nascita e morte del bambino, in: N. Critini (coord.), Gli affani del vivere e del morire. Sciavi, soldati, donne,
bambini nella Roma Imperiale, Brescia 1991, 89-107. S.I. JOHNSTON, Restless dead, 1999, 161-202. E. JOBB-DUVAL,
Les morts malfaisants, 2000, 68-73. S. MARTIN-KILCHER, Mors immatura in the Roman World a mirror of society and
10

184

Figure 8.- The infant grave n 40 in the

Gallo-Roman cemetery of La Calade,
in Cabasse (Var), shows a singular magicritual layout of the nails, which were
intentionally placed around the gravegoods and the childs skull and transfixing
several pottery objects. G. BRARD 1963.

Figure 9.- The 2-3 year-old infant buried

in the grave IB36 of the childrens
necropolis in Poggio Gramignano, in
Lugnano in Teverina (Italy), has a
stone placed in each hand and a hefty
tegula on his feet. D. SOREN and
N. SOREN 1999, fig. 251.

Figure 26.- An infant chalk burial in the Eastern roman

cemetery of London. B. BARBER and D. BOWSHER 2000
tradition, in: J. Pearce, M. Millett and M. Struck (eds.), Burial, society and context in the Roman World, Oxford 2000,
63-77. N. BAILLS, Statut et place de lenfant dans la socit romaine, in: D. Gourevitch, A. Moirin and N. Rouquet (dirs.),
Maternit et petite enfance dans lAntiquit romaine, Bourges 2003, 85-89. I. RAWSON, Children and childhood, 2003,
336-363. V. DASEN (ED.), Naissance et petite enfance dans lAntiquit, Fribourg 2004. M. CARROLL, Spirits of the Dead.
Roman Funerary Commemoration in Western Europe, Oxford 2006, 168-175.

185

destined to these aroi, and the archaeological

register also reveals the celebration of
special ritual practices linked to child burials
as happens in the Roman necropolis of La
Calade (Cabasse, Var) (fig. 9), Sucidava
(Rumania), Auvergne, Argentomagus (SaintMarcel, Indres), Colonia Patricia Corduba
(Crdoba), Poggio Gramignano (Lugnano in
Teverina) (fig. 10), amongst other examples-,
which have been unanimously interpreted as
rituals destined to appeasing and/or repelling
these premature dead14. The harmful potential
of these animas immaturas et innuptas et pro
conditione aetatis puras et inocuas, as defined
by Tert. De anim., 56. 8, can also be noted in
a monumental inscription from Puteoli, dated
to the first half of the 1st century B.C., where it
is ordered that these dead have priority when
buried, which, according to I. Rawson, implies
a special fear of the contamination from these
dead and the physical and religious harm that
they may cause to the community if their burial
was not carried out promptly and with due
attention15. In this sense, Anthropology offers
various examples which show a general belief
in the malign potential of the premature dead
and the need to perform special funerary rituals
in order to neutralise it16.

Figure 10.- Carving of a fossor or gravedigger and a corpse wrapped in a shroud

in the Christian catacomb of Commodilla,
in Rome. M. CARROLL 2006, fig. 76.

1.1.3. The Bad Dead: the biaiothanatoi.

A different category of potentially restless dead was that of the biaiothanatoi, those who had
suffered a bad death, a violent death. This category comprises those who committed suicide, the
Cf., respectively, P. BOYANC, Funus acerbum, Revue de tudes Anciennes, 54, 1952, 275-289. G. BRARD, La ncropole
gallo-romaine de la Calade, Cabasse (Var). Deuxime campagne de fouilles, Gallia, 21, 1963, 297-306. N. HAMPARTUMIAN,
Child-burials and Superstition in the Roman Cemetery of Sucidava (Dacia), in: M.B. de Boer and T.A. Edridge (eds.),
Hommages Maarten J. Vermaseren. I, Leiden 1978, 473-477. C. MONDANEL AND D. MONDANEL, Spultures et ncropoles
gallo-romaines en Auvergne, s.l. 1988, 98-100. J. ALLAIN, I. FAUDUET AND M. TUFFREAU-LIBRE, La ncropole gallo-romaine du
Champ de lImage Argentomagus (Saint-Marcel, Indre), Saint-Marcel 1992, 128-129. D. VAQUERIZO, Immaturi et innupti.
Terracotas figuradas en ambiente funerario de Corduba, Colonia Patricia, Barcelona 2004, 169-199. D. SOREN AND N. SOREN
(EDS.), A Roman villa and a late Roman Infant Cemetery. Excavation at Poggio Gramignano, Lugnano in Teverina, Roma
1999, 461-652. F. LAUBENHEIMER, La mort des touts petits dans lOccident romain, in V. Dasen (ed.), Naissance et petite,
2004, 302-303. S. ALFAY, Nails for the Dead: a polysemic account of an ancient funerary practice, in: R. Gordon, F. Marco
and H. Versnel (eds.), Magical practices in the Latin-Speaking Empire (Late Republic-Late Antiquity), Leiden, forthcoming.
15
On the law from Puteoli, cf. NRAUDAU, La loi, la coutume, 1987, 195-208. J.C. DUMONT, Lenlvement du cadavre,
in: F. Hinard (ed.), La mort au quotidien, 1995, 181-187. I. RAWSON, The express route to Hades, in: P. McKechnie (ed.),
Thinking like a lawyer, Leiden 2002, 271-288.
16
Cf. J. SIMPSON, The Folklore of Infant Deaths: burials, ghosts and changelings, in: G. Avery and K. Reynolds (eds.), Representations
of Childhood Death, London 2000, 11-28. J.G. FRAZER, The fear of the dead, vol. III, 2003, 175-199 (for women who died in
childbirth); and 235-260 (for children and young single people). A.M. DI NOLA, La negra seora, 2006, 160-167, 241-245.
14

186

executed, the murdered and the fallen in battle, and those who died by accident, of plague or terrible
disease (morbus indignus)17. In Greek-Roman literature we know of references to the apparition of
spirits of the murdered, who interfere in the world of the living to terrify their murderers or to demand
their arrest. Thus, for example, Liv., Ab urb., 3. 58. 11, recounts that the spirit of murdered Virginia
was wandering from house to house until she managed to obtain justice. Suet., Nero, 34, tells that
Nero, terrified by the apparitions of his mother Agripina -murdered in the year 59 AD by his order-, and
probably also due to his own remorse, hired magicians to perform magic rituals to put an end to such an
uncomfortable and disquieting presence, although he does not detail what the rituals consisted of. Also
Suet., Calig., 59. 2-3, informs us that the spirit of this murdered emperor appeared around the horti
Lamiani until his sister disinterred the corpse, cremated it and performed the suitable funeral rites18.
As regards suicide victims, we know of the funerary regulations for various Roman cities
such as those by Horatius Balbus for the city of Sarsinia (CIL XI 6528), dated to the 1st century BC
- which forbid their burial in the communal necropolis, a restriction which was particularly severe for
those who chose to put an end to their own life by hanging themselves19.
We know that in the Greek world there were different ways of disposing of the remains
of criminals. In Athens, the bodies of those who were contaminated by certain crimes such as
parricide- were deposited at crossroads and lapidated there, and they were then left unburied outside
the limits of the community (Plato, Lg. 873b-c)-20. In that city, the bodies of criminals who died
in captivity or were executed could be given to their families or thrown into the infamous pit of
Barathron; in Sparta, prisoners of war and criminals convicted by the city were thrown into the
cavern of Kaiadas. In the Roman world, from the Augustean period onwards, relatives could bury
those who were executed, although their burial could also be arranged by the relevant authority21.
As regards soldiers fallen on the battlefield, it may be pointed out that in their death a series of
unfortunate events come together, since it is a premature death (ante diem), a violent death, and also they
lack a burial, which unquestionably turned them into potential wandering souls, as narrated by stories
about armies of ghosts and apparitions of spectral fighters studied by A. Stramaglia and D. Ogden22.
1.1.4. The Deviant Dead
Besides, in the Ancient world the persons who were distinguished in life by their social
deviancy either due to their social origin or to the infamous nature of their profession -, were
also stigmatised on their death and received different funerary treatment from the standard, which
Cf., amongst others, A. GUNNELLA, Morti improvvise e violente nelle iscrizioni latine, in: F. Hinard, (ed.), La mort au
quotidien, 1995, 9-23. S.I. JOHNSTON, Restless dead, 1999, 127-160. E. JOBB-DUVAL, Les morts malfaisants, 2000,
87-90. D. OGDEN, Greek and roman, 2001, 233-236. ID., Magic, withcraft, 2002, 149-151. J.G. FRAZER, The fear of the
dead, vol. III, 2003, 103-175. A.M. DI NOLA, La negra seora, 2006, 167-196.
18
A. STRAMAGLIA, Res inauditae, 1999, 176-179. D. FELTON, Haunted Greece, 2000, 8-12. D. OGDEN, Greek and Roman,
2001, 233-236. ID., Magic, witchcraft, 2002, 166. M. REQUENA, Nern y los manes de Agripina, Historiae, 3, 2006, 83-108.
19
Cf. P. DESIDERI, Il trattamento del corpo dei suicidi, in: F. Hinard, (ed.), La mort au quotidien, 1995, 189-204. E. JOBBDUVAL, Les morts malfaisants, 2000, 82-87. V.M. HOPE, Contempt and respect, 2000, 118-120.
20
R. PARKER, Miasma: pollution and purification in Early Greek Religion, Oxford 1983, 30-31. S.I. JOHNSTON, Crossroads,
ZPE, 88, 1991, 217-224.
21
Cf. P. DUCREY, Le traitement des prisonniers de guerre dans la Grce antique des origines la conqute romaine, Paris 1999,
201-215. L. M. LITTLE AND J.K. PAPADOPOULOS, A social outcast in Early Iron Age Athens, Hesperia, 76. 4, 1998, 393-394. F.P.
RETIEF AND L. CILLIERS, Health and healing, disease and death in the Graeco-Roman world, Bloemfontein 2005, 142-143.
22
A. STRAMAGLIA, Res inauditae, 1999, 339-435. D. OGDEN, Greek and roman, 2001, 12-16. ID., Magic,
witchcraft, 2002, 151-152.
17

187

perpetuated their social marginalisation. Thus, there were a series of funerary taboos regarding
gladiators and undertakers (fig. 11), undoubtedly caused by their habitual contact with blood and
death and by the contamination caused by it; and also, in the case of gladiators, by the violent context
of their demise23. For example, in the abovementioned inscription from Sarsinia, where Horatius
Balbus donates cemetery plots to the inhabitants of the city (CIL IX 6528), the auctorati (contract
gladiators) are denied burial. As V.M. Hope has analysed, the business of other professionals such
as prostitutes, actors, pimps, magicians, etc. - also involved infamia, which implied legal and social
disadvantages, amongst which could be included denial of a burial or their interment in different
zones from the rest of the community at the outskirts of the communal cemetery, at the boundaries
of the settlement, at the crossroads, etc.-, a marginal location of the graves which topographically
visualized after death the social segregation of these deviants during their lifes.
It is also possible that individuals with a physical malformation or mental disease equally
deserved a different funerary ritual and/or a segregated position of their graves given that they were
also socially stigmatised.24 Thus, denial of burial to these individuals prevented them from having full
access to the community of the dead, which paralleled in the Otherworld the position they had had in
life: always on the margins of society while alive, they continued outside it once they were dead.
For those who were buried following a funerary ritual different from the standard, their
tombs went on to exhibit signs of their misfortune, ignominy and social exclusion, since their
identity in life defined their otherworldly identity: a deviant burial for a deviant dead25. Therefore, it
is hardly surprising that there was a fear that this type of dead person could reappear after their death
as vengeful larvae or lemures wishing to perturb the living.

Figure 11.- A 3rd century lead figurine from Athens identified as a voodoo doll showing
several magical practices of immobilisation: decapitation, hands tied behind the back,
twisted feet, and stomach and heart pierced by a nail. C. FARAONE 1999, fig. 7.
On these professions and the resulting contamination due to their contact with death, cf. J. BODEL, Dealing with the dead:
undertakers, executioners and potters fields in ancient Rome, in: V. Hope and E. Marshall (eds.), Death and disease,
2000. 128-151. H. LINDSAY, Death-pollution and funerals in the city of Rome, in: V. Hope and E. Marshall (eds.), Death
and disease, 2000, 152-173.
24
On the relationship between physical disability, mental disease and social marginalisation in the Ancient World, cf. R.
GARLAND, The eye of the beholder. Deformity and disability in the Graeco-Roman world, London 1995. L.M. LITTLE AND
K.J. PAPADOPOULOS, A social outcast, 1998, 375-404. T. MOLLESON, Archaeological Evidence for Attitudes to disability
23

188

1.2. On the survival of the dead

These categories of restless dead demonstrate that, despite sceptical reflections-such as that
of Lucr., De rer. nat. 3. 879-891, who denies that the spirit may survive death-, in the Ancient World
there does seem to be a popular belief that, somehow, the deceased continued their existence in the
Afterlife, miserable as it may have been, and not quite like the full existence enjoyed in life. As
pointed out by V.M. Hope, the extent to which people actually believed in ghosts, spirits and the
existence of an afterlife is unclear, but tales that told of the discontented dead reinforced the idea that
the corpse should be treated with respect26. Although the purpose of this article is not to dwell on
scatological disquisitions, which have been extensively studied by researchers such as F. Cumont27,
I would like to point out that the idea of permanence of the deceased was linked to the perception of
the tomb as the dwelling, the resting place of the essence of the dead metaphorically called domus
aeterna (CIL II 6435), sedes quieta-, and, of course, also as his memoria and his memorial28. The
belief in the permanence of the spirit of the dead in the tomb is perceived in the practices of magical
operations developed around the burial and the corpse: depositing tabellae defixionum and magical
dolls inside tombs and in cemeteries, manipulation of the remains for magical purposes, necromancy,
etc. Furthermore, we know that a specific type of dead were considered particularly suitable for
magical manipulation: those who had died recently, especially if their death had been violent or
premature, as stated by Lucan., Phar., 6. 712, when describing how a magician uses a man, whose
throat had been recently cut and was not yet used to darkness, as an involuntary assistant29.
Likewise, numerous funerary epigrams show various utterances that imply a belief that the
existence of the dead person, somehow, continues in the tomb. That survival of the spirit of the deceased
after death and the consideration of the tomb as a place of permanence of their essence, mean that, in a
certain way, the dead could continue to feel and, therefore, notice the weight of the earth, a thought that
immediately provokes a sensation of discomfort amongst the living in the face of the possibility that
their dead could feel oppressed or crushed by the earth deposited on top of them. The expression sit tibi
terra levis becomes thus an act of pietas, and although it is documented for the first time by Euripides,
in the Past, Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 15. 2, 1999, 69-77. J. HUBERT (ED.), Madness, disability and social
exclusion. The archaeology and anthropology of difference, London- New York 2000. M. PARKER PEARSON, The
archaeology of death and burial, Stroud 2003, 67-71. Cf. several archaeological examples of deviant burials of physically
disabled individuals in the 8th-11th century Britain in D.M. HADLEY AND J. BUCKBERRY, Caring for the dead in Late AngloSaxon England, in: Pastoral care in Late Anglo-Saxon England. Anglo Saxon Studies 6, Woodbridge 2005, 145-146.
25
Cf. V.M. HOPE, Contempt and respect, 2000, 116-120. M. BALTER, Deviant burials reveal death on the fringe in
Ancient societies, Science Magazine, 310. 28, 2005, 613.
26
V.M. HOPE, Contempt and respect, 2000, 106 y 122.
27
F. CUMONT, After Life, 1922. ID., Recherches sur le symbolisme funraire des Romans, Paris 1942. X.F.M.G. WOLTERS,
Notes on antique folklore. On the basis of Plinys Natural History. L. XXVIII. 22-29, Amsterdam 1935, 35-36. R. LATTIMORE,
Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs, Illinois 1942. J.M.C. TOYNBEE, Death and burial in the Roman World, Baltimore 1996,
33-39. J. BREMMER, The early greek, 1983, 70-124. E. JOBB-DUVAL, Les morts malfaisants, 2000, 21-35.
28
F. CUMONT, Recherches, 1942, 351 y ss. (esp. 373ss). On the euphemistic designations of death and its metaphoric uses,
cf. J. URA VARELA, Tab y eufemismo en latn. Amsterdam 1997, 203-333. Cf. also H. LAVAGNE, Le tombeau, mmoire du
mort, in: F. Hinard (ed.), La mort, les morts et lau-del dans le monde romain, Caen 1987, 159-165. G. SANDERS, Lapides
Memores. Paens et chrtiens face la mort : le tmoignage de lpigraphie funraire latine, Bologna 1991.
29
On the magic use of the dead, cf. J. VTERVRUGT-LENTZ, Mors immatura, 1960, 43-80. M. LE GLAY, La magia et la mort, in:
F. Hinard (ed.), La mort, les morts, 1985, 245-248. R. GARLAND, The Greek Way of Death, New York 1985, 77-88. A.M.
TUPET, Rites magiques dans lAntiquit romaine, ANRW, II, 16.3, Berlin-New York 1986, 2657-2668. C. FARAONE, Binding
and burying the forces of evil: the defensive use of voodoo dolls in Ancient Greece, Classical Antiquity, 10.2, 1991, 165221. D. OGDEN, Binding Spells: Curse tablets and Voodoo dolls in the Greek and Roman Worlds, in: V. Flint et alii, Witchcraft
and magic in Europe. Volume 2. Ancient Greece and Rome, London 1999, 15-23, 127-138. ID., Greek and Roman, 2001
(especially 225, n. 21). E. JOBB-DUVAL, Les morts malfaisants, 2000, 109-118. V.M. HOPE, Contempt and respect, 2000,
120-122. F. GRAF, Malediction, in: VVAA, Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum. III, Los Angeles 2005, 269, fig. 105.

189

Alc., 463-464, its use is generalised in the High Empire period30. The inverse idea is also documented
in funerary epigraphs, where it is used as a curse from the dead aimed at deterring possible tombs
violators. Thus, in a Greek inscription in the city of Rome (CE 2170) it is desired that those who loot a
tomb nec superis comprobetur nec inferi recipiant et sit ei terra gravis (CIL VI.2, 7579)31.
2. MAGICAL-RITUAL PRACTICES AGAINST RESTLESS DEAD
Given that, except in the case of the insepulti or ataphoi, the burial in itself did not grant
enough protection against the return of the spirit, the living could perform various magical-ritual
practices aimed at preventing potentially dangerous dead people from becoming restless dead32. In
order to neutralise the malign potential of the larvae and to seek protection against the disastrous
consequences of their presence in this world such as madness, disease and death-, it was necessary
to create a prophylactic barrier through certain appeasement and aversion rituals, which would
protect the community from the return of a vindictive soul and which would, at the same time, grant
rest and repose to the restless spirit, thus easing its integration into the Afterlife33.
We know of some of these practices thanks to ancient literary sources. Thus, for example, we
have already mentioned the festival of the Lemuria (Ov., Fast. 5. 419-492), celebrated in May in the
private sphere. But, above all, it is the X Declamatio Maior written by Pseudo-Quintilian in the 4th
century AD, and titled De sepulchrum incantatum, the most comprehensive literary source available
on funerary magico-ritual practices performed against the restless dead34. In this text is described
the ghost-banning performed by a sorcerer on the cremated remains of an unmarried youth, who had
died of illness and who appeared to his mother every night to comfort her in her loss, talk to her and
hug her. When the husband and the father of the youth- becomes aware of these nightly visits he
decides to hire a magician so that he ensures, through the performance of an inverse necromancy revocator animorum (DM 10.16 and 19)- with which a second death is caused, that the young man
is confined forever to the land of shadows. In the practices used by the Pseudo-Quintilian wizard
we can perceive a gradation in the violence exerted upon the remains of the dead depending on the
reluctance of the ghost to leave this world (DM 10.15). The magician starts off with the recitation of
magical formulae (barbarum murmur, horridum carmen) (DM 10.2, 7, 15 and 19) around the grave
(circumdantur), and when he verifies that his ars contra naturam is not enough to neutralise the dead
man, he goes on to the closure of the tomb with chains (catenae) (DM 10.8 and 16), stones (lapis)
(DM 10.8 and 15) and ferro magico, and nailing mucrones on the tomb and on the remains of the
Cf., for instance, Martials Ep. 5.34 dedicated to puella Erotion: () Mollia non rigidus caespes tegat ossa nec illi,
terra, gravis fueris: non fuit illa tibi. On the biography and the symbolic implications of the formula sit tibi terra levis,
cf., amongst others, G. HARTKE, Sit tibi terra levis formulae quae fuerint fata, Bonn 1901. J.P. JACOBSEN, Les Manes.
Tome I. Les morts et la vie humaine, Paris 1924, 86-88. R. LATTIMORE, Themes, 1942, 65-74. A.-M. VRILHAC,
M. Posie funraire. Tome Premier. Textes, Athens 1978, 68-70, 252-256. M. MASSANO, Epigrafia metrica latina di
et republicana, Bari 1992, 190-194.
31
A. BRELICH, Aspetti della morte nelle iscrizioni sepolcrali, Budapest 1937, 12-13. Cf. also R. LATTIMORE, Themes, 1942, 66.
32
Cf. E. JOBB-DUVAL, Les morts malfaisants, 2000, 165-201.
33
On the ambivalence of these practices, cf. J.C. LAWSON, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion. A study in
survivals, Cambridge 1910, 410-412, 504-506. A.M. DI NOLA, La muerte derrotada, 2007, 280-286.
34
On this work, cf. R. ELLIS (TRAD.), The Tenth Declamation of (Pseudo) Quintilian. Oxford 1911. L. HKANSON (ED.),
Declamationes XIX Maiores Quintiliano Falso Ascriptae, Stuttgart 1982, 199-219. H. WAGENVOORT, Sepulcrum incantatum,
Mnemosyne, 55, 1927, 425-448. A. STRAMAGLIA, Res inauditae, 1999, 293-299, 308-323. C. SCHNEIDER, Quelques
rflexions sur la date de publication des Grandes dclamations pseudo-quintiliennes, Latomus, 59, 2000, 614-632. D. OGDEN,
Greek and roman, 2001, 6-7, 178-180. ID., Magic, witchcraft, 2002, 164-166. C. SCHNEIDER AND C. URLACHER, Rationnel
et irrationnel dans le Sepulcrum incantatum du Pseudo-Quintilien. Les enjeux dune dialectique, in: O. Bianchi and O.
Thvenaz (eds.), Mirabilia. Conceptions et reprsentations de lextraordinaire dans le monde antique, Bern 2004, 99-113.
30

190

dead (DM 10.8, 16 and 19) until he finally manages to definitively confine the ghost of the young man
(DM 10.15)35. As D. Ogden points out, the means by which the ghost is bound into its grave is not
entirely clear: there is one reference to the use of stones, another to the use of bars, numerous ones to
the use of iron bands or chains, apparently knotted, and one reference, apparently, to swords being
driven down into the grave, no doubt to pin the ghost down into it (compare the pinning of voodoo
dolls and curse tablets)36.
Although the Pseudo-Quintilian magician uses his skills a posteriori, once the restless dead
has appeared to his relatives, it is possible that some of the measures used by him may have been
used as a prevention at the time of the burial to avoid undesired returns. In any event, as pointed
out by D. Ogden, all these magical actions aimed at pinning both physically and symbolically the
remains of the dead in his grave either the ashes or the corpse-, show interesting similarities to the
practices of immobilisation documented by voodoo dolls (fig. 11), tabellae defixionum and ancient
magic papyri with which them are also intended to tie, reduce and constrain the victim following the
principle of similia similibus37.
The information reported by Pseudo-Quintilian is complemented by the data supplied by
other literary sources, and it becomes the literary correlative and the framework for interpretationof the unusual practices of immobilization of the corpse attested to in the archaeological record and
mentioned at the beginning of this article (figs. 1-6). Due to this, I believe it is interesting to study
them altogether, with the help of anthropological parallels, which when used with due caution, may
help us to understand the symbolical, social and emotional dimensions of these ancient magic-ritual
practices aimed at neutralising the restless dead.
2.1. Sit tibi terra gravis!
As the Pseudo-Quintilians text asserts (DM 10.8, 10, 15-16 and 18), amongst the methods
used by the magician to definitively pin the ghost of the young man to his sepulchre the placing
of big stones over his grave is included, aimed at creating an impassable physical barrier between
him and the world of the living, impeding thus his escape from the tomb (fig. 12). This ritual of

Figure 12.- A modern caricature of ancient rituals of immobilization:

a man weights down his mother-in-laws tomb to avoid her unwished
return to the world of the living. A. Forges, Historias de aqu, Barcelona 1980.
This brings to mind the medieval Jewish formula for confining the dead collected by J. TRACHTENBERG, Jewish magical
and superstition. A study in folk religion, Cleveland- New York- Philadelphia 1961, 66: Your body must lie in its grave
until Resurrection, your soul must rest in that place where it belongs. I command this upon you with a curse and with an
act, now and forever. On this formula, cf. also E. GOUREVITCH, Corps et me face la morte, in: D. Tollet (ed.), La mort et
ses reprsentations dans le monde judasme, Paris 2000, 75.
36
D. OGDEN, Magic, witchcraft, 2002, 164-166.
37
Cf. C. FARAONE, Binding and burying, 1991, 165-221. D. OGDEN, Binding spells, 1999, 71-79.
35

191

immobilisation of the corpse must not be confused with the external marking of the tomb or with
the desire to armour the tomb in order to protect it from violators, since, as E.W. Black points out,
the whole procedure looks not so much like protecting the dead as confining the dead to their proper
resting-place until the time came for the journey from the grave into the other-world38. Actually, the
placing of stones over the corpse is widely documented in Medieval and Modern European ghostly
literature as an efficient method of prevention/neutralisation of revenants39.
Besides, this practice which is but the practical materialisation of the curse sit tibi terra
gravis 40- is extensively documented in the archaeological record (figs. 4-6,13-15 and 27), although
to date it has not been systematically studied as regards ancient necropolis.

Figure 4.- Grave n 3 of the ancient inhumation

cemetery in Aguilar de Anguita (Guadalajara),
which was discovered and excavated by E.
AGUILERA Y GAMBOA. The skeleton had his/her
head weighted-down by a huge rock. Photo
from the Archivo fotogrfico Juan Cabr,
Instituto de Patrimonio Histrico Espaol
(I.P.H.E.), n inv. 3932.

Figure 6.- Inhumation tomb of the 7th century

Merovingian necropolis in Audun-le-Tiche
(Moselle) showing several practices of
immobilisation of the corpse. The head of
the skeleton was placed in an anatomically
incorrect position, a huge block was placed on
his/her knees and smaller stones were collocated
over his/her feet. A. SIMMER 1988, 145-147.

E. W. BLACK, Romano-British burial customs and religious beliefs in South-East England, Archaeological Journal, 143,
1986, 227.
39
Cf. P. BARBER, Vampires, burial and death. Folkore and Reality, New Haven-London 1988, 78-79, n. 72. N. CACIOLA,
Wraiths, Revenants and Ritual in Medieval Culture, Past and Present, 152, 1996, 20.
40
Thus suggested by J.G. FRAZER, On certain burial customs as illustrative of the primitive theory of the soul, Journal of
the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 15, 1886, 65, who provides various anthropological examples.
According to J. MACDONALD, Pagan religions and burial practices in Roman Britain, in: R. Reece (ed.), Burial in the Roman
world, Oxford 1977, 36, one of the reasons for Roman care in burial was fear of ghosts: a man without the minimum
covering of earth at burial could haunt, an idea which we also find in the Pseudo-Quintilians text DM 10.7.
38

192

Figure 5.- The 25-45 years-old woman of the grave B459 of the cemetery of the East of
Londinium was buried face down, with two stones over her lumbar region and another block
on the top of the grave. B. BARBER and D. BOWSHER 2000, fig. 114.

Figure 13. Grave with the skeleton of an adult whose head was crushed by three big stones, in
the Roman necropolis of Baelo Claudia, in Bolonia (Cdiz). P. Paris et alii 1926, 90-91, fig. 57.

193

Figure 14.- The bizarre arrangement of the

chalk burial B7333 in the Eastern cemetery
of Londinium: a great number of rough
stones were collocated on the grave of a
decapitated woman, who had her skull
deliberately collocated over the pelvic
cavity. On her coffin, in the place where the
head should have been, a ceramic recipient
containing a key was deliberately placed,
and the casket and the pottery were covered
by a large amount of stones. B. BARBER
and D. BOWSHER 2000, 134-135.

Figure 15.- Tomb of the ancient cemetery of

Pithekoussai (Ischia) showing larges stones
placed on the head, stomach and feet of
the skeleton. G. BUCHNER and D. RIDGWAY
1993, fig. 64.

Thus, amongst other examples, I would like to mention the skeleton of an adult whose head
was crushed by three big stones (fig. 13) found in Baelo Claudia (Cdiz). Its location in an area of the
necropolis where other skeletons with physical signs of execution were found led G. Bonsor to identify
this corpse as that of a criminal, although this exegesis is questioned by P. Paris41. Another example of
deliberate crushing appears in tomb 6 of the Necrpolis Ballesta in Ampurias (Gerona) used from
P. PARIS, G. BONSOR, A. LAUMONIER, R. RICARD AND C. MERGELINA, Fouilles de Belo (Bolonia, province de Cadix), 19171921. Tome II. La ncropole, Paris 1926, 90-91.
41

194

the 1st century BC to the 2nd century AD-, where

the skeleton had a great square block fixed with
mortar on its chest42. And also in Hispania, in
the grave A19 of the 4th century AD cemetery
of Bodegones de los Murcianos, in Emerita
Augusta (Badajoz), a medium-size pebble
was placed on the knees and legs of the child
interred there. However, I would like to point
out that J. Mrquez does not interpret the
presence of the stone in this tomb as a magical
measure to prevent him from haunting the
living, but as a way to keep the infant corpse
in a supine position: los individuos menores
de tres meses no tienen an tono muscular en
el cuello para poder mantener las piernas y
los brazos estirados, y la posicin natural es
la fetal, as en algunos casos como la A19 se
fuerza la posicin de las piernas colocando
cantos rodados sobre las rodillas43.
In the Roman grave 104 of the necropolis
Figure 27.- Tomb 120 of the 7th century
of Pithekoussai (Ischia), a pile of stones 75 cm
Merovingian necropolis of Audun-le-Tiche.
high was placed over the legs of the corpse but
The 3-4 year-old child buried in this grave
the rest of the body was not covered with any
has his skull pierced by a nail and his femurs
form of protection; and in the grave 129 of the
weighted-down by a large stone slab. This
same cemetery dating from the 5th century
infant was buried reusing the tomb of an
BC-, two large stones were arranged over
adult whose legs were also immobilised
the chest and the femur of the young woman
with a stone. A. SIMMER 1998, 142.
buried there. According to G. Buchner and D.
Ridgway, in both cases the intention was to
magically immobilise the dead by placing stones over their corpses, thus preventing them returning and
disturbing the living. These researchers suggest that this explanation could also be applied to the rough
stones placed on coffins in tombs of interment in the 8th and 7th centuries BC in the same cemetery44. A
similar exegesis is provided by M. Petit as regards the large stones placed on some coffins in the Roman
cemetery in Lutecia (Paris)45. Also J. Davies and R. Hachlili suggest that the arrangement of a stone
of 25x14 cm on the stomach of the young man buried in the necropolis of Ramot (Jerusalem) could be
one of the protective measures to keep the dead in place documented in Hellenistic Jewish studies,
amongst which are the engraving of keys and locks on tombs, the tying of coffins to pin down hostile
powers, and the intentional placing of nails on the graves. However, these researchers do not deny that
the crushing of the corpse of Ramot may have had Jewish punitive or penitential purposes46.
M. ALMAGRO BASCH, Las necrpolis de Ampurias. II, Madrid 1955, 22, 90. The skeleton, whose head was pointing south,
was accompanied by a conical lid deposited next to the skull.
43
J. MRQUEZ, Enterramientos infantiles. Restos arqueolgicos exhumados en un solar de la zona conocida como los
bodegones murcianos, Mrida Excavaciones Arqueolgicas. Memoria 6, 2000, 64-65, 69, lm. 4.
44
BUCHNER AND D. RIDGWAY, Pithekoussai. I. La necropolis: tombe 1-723 scavate dal 1952 al 1961, Roma 1993, 123, 140141. The individual of tomb 104 was buried along with an unguentary, a lamp and a brass nail.
45
M. PETIT, Les ncropoles de Lutce, in: VVAA, Lutce : Paris de Csar Clovis, Paris 1984, 348.
46
J. DAVIES, Death, burial and rebirth in the Religions of Antiquity, New York 1999, 82-83. R. HACHLILI, Jewish funerary
customs, practices and rites in the Second Temple Period, Leiden-Boston 2005, 486. In a tomb of the medieval Jewish
42

195

The British Isles also provide numerous examples of confinement of corpses with piles of
stones . For example, in the Roman cemetery in East London, mainly used during the 3rd and 4th
centuries AD, a great number of rough stones were arranged on the grave of the decapitated body B733,
amongst which a key was deliberately placed, an object which, according to B. Barber and D. Bowsher,
symbolically strengthens the objective of confining the dead (figs. 2 and 14). In the same necropolis,
two large stones were thrown onto the back of the corpse interred in prone position B459 (fig. 5); and
the individual who was buried face down in the Roman cemetery of Arlington Avenue (Dorchester)
appeared weighted down by a pile of stones48. In tombs VI, X, XVII and XVIII of the Gallic-Roman
necropolis of Gratte Dos (Cte-dOr), stones were placed on the knees, head, stomach and limbs of
the buried bodies; such practices are seen by R. Ratel as rituals of immobilisation of the skeletons49.
47

Figure 2.- Chalk burial B7333 in the Eastern cemetery of Londinium. The woman
buried in this grave was probably decapitated and she had her skull intentionally
placed over her pelvic cavity. B. Barber and D. Bowsher 2000, fig. 109.
A similar layout is documented in numerous burials of the abovementioned necropolis of
Pithekoussai, presenting a large stone on the head, stomach and feet of the skeleton (fig. 15). However,
the fact that the number of tombs with stones placed in this form is so high makes us wonder whether
their placing was due to a form of covering the graves typical of this area, or whether it was indeed
a magical-ritual practice of a preventive nature intended at pinning the dead, which for reasons not
clarified yet would be extraordinarily generalised and well documented in that cemetery50. In this
cemetery of Teruel a similar practice was also detected, since the skeleton had a large stone on the abdomen, although an
explanation for this finding has not been provided; cf. F. CANTERA, Cementerios hebreos en Espaa, Sefarad, 13, 1953,
366. Regarding the funerary magic practices intended at symbolically confining the dead identified by R. Hachlili in the
Hellenistic Jewish context, I would not like to omit that in some Polish Jewish tombs of the Modern Age padlocks and locks
were included in the tomb with an identical purpose, as studied by P. FIJALKOWSKI, Les crmonies denterrment des juifs
de Pologne, in: D. Mollet, La mort et ses reprsentations, 2000, 342.
47
Cf. E. W. BLACK, Romano-British burial, 1986, 225-227.
48
Cf. B. BARBER AND D. BOWSHER, The Eastern Cemetery of Roman London. Excavations 1983-1990, London 2000, 99,
134-135, 230, 317, 320, fig. 109 (tomb B733); and 87, 323-324, fig. 114 (tomb B459). Regarding the burial in Arlington
Avenue, cf. R. PHILPOTT, Burial practices in Roman Britain. A survey of grave treatment and furnishing. A.D. 32-410,
Oxford 1991, 72, 77.
49
R. RATEL, La ncropole gallo-romaine de Gratte Dos , Commune de Meuilley, Cte-dOr, Revue Archologique
delEst et du Centre-Est, 28, 1977, 92-93, 96.
50
G. BUCHNER Y D. RIDGWAY, Pithekoussai, 1993, 123, 140-141.

196

sense, it may not be incidental that most of these burials correspond to infants or young teenagers,
whose deaths may be classed as immaturae and who were accompanied by abundant grave goods, so
it is not preposterous to think that the stones were deliberately placed to magically constrain a type
of potentially dangerous dead person in their tomb, the aroi. In fact, although of later chronology
and different cultural context, I would like to point out that A. Simmer and R. Perrot link the burials
of women and children of the Merovingian necropolis in Audun-le-Tiche and Roanne (Loire) 6th to
7th centuries AD - whose limbs and/or heads are crushed by great stones (figs. 6 and 27), to a ritual
of immobilisation of the dead51. Likewise, regarding the 2-3 year-old infant buried in the childrens
cemetery of the 5th century AD in Poggio Gramignano (Lugnano in Teverina) a stone was placed
in each hand and a hefty tegula on the feet (fig. 9), a ritual which, according to D. Soren and N.
Soren, may have been caused by the fear of his ghost being used in necromantic practices or else
by the wish to prevent him from rising after dying. To these explanations which do not necessarily
exclude each other-, another one could be added since, in my opinion, we must not rule out that
this crushing, performed only on the eldest of all the children buried there, may have been done to
magically contribute to stopping the epidemics of malaria that swept this rural community, since in
that cemetery other evidence of magical practices connected with buried infants has been found all
of them died because of this disease- and such rituals were aimed at appeasing them or repelling their
potential pernicious influence over the living52.
We may wonder who placed the stones and when on the corpse or the grave in the
aforementioned instances. In some cases, the placing of the rough stones seems to have been done
at the time of the burial, so it may have been the relatives or the undertakers (fig. 10) perhaps at
the specific orders of the family- who carried out the immobilisation of the cadaver. However, in
other cases, as narrated by the Pseudo-Quintilians text, the constraint of the deceased with stones
may have been done a posteriori, after the dead had shown their presence in the sphere of the living.
Nonetheless, as pointed out by H. Williams, it seems that although the placing of stones corresponds
to a wish to physically constrict the dead in their graves, the inclusion of grave goods in many of
these tombs and their location in communal necropolis show that these individuals maintained the
respect and support of the community, so that these weighted-down burials, which materialise the
formula sit tibi terra gravis, may be part of socially accepted strategies of disposing of the dead53.
2.2. Magic iron bindings
Besides the placing of stones on the grave, Pseudo-Quintilian repeatedly narrates in his X
Declamatio maior that the magician used various bindings of magic iron -like catenae or mucrones-,
to prevent the restless soul of the youngster from escaping his grave (DM 10.8, 16 and 19). The use of
ferro magico to confine this restless dead is not surprising since we know that in the Graeco-Roman
world it was believed that iron was a metal which repelled and could fix down supernatural powers54.
A. SIMMER, Le prlvement des crnes dans lEst de la France lpoque mrovingienne, Archologie Medievale, 12, 1982,
43-44. ID., Le cimetiere merovingien dAudun-le-Tiche (Moselle), Paris 1988, 145-147. R. PERROT, Note anthropologique
sur lhistoire medievale du departement de la Loire: la ncropole merovingienne de Roanne, Revue Archologique de lEst
et du Centre-Est, 25, 1974, 20.
52
D. SOREN Y N. SOREN (EDS.), A Roman Villa, 1999, 508, 518, 526-527, 631, fig. 251, tomb IB 36.
53
H. WILLIAMS, The emotive force of early medieval mortuary practices, Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 22.1, 2007,
117-119, also provide an early medieval example - tomb 154 of the cemetery of West Heslerton (England)-, corresponding
to the burial of a girl upon whom large blocks of stone were placed. Cf. other medieval (10th-11th century) instances of
deliberate weighting-down of corpses in D.M. HADLEY AND J. BUCKBERRY, Caring for the dead, 2005, 139-140, 145 -146.
54
On the magical power of iron cf., amongst others, J. NEWTON, Iron in Antiquity, London 1926, 91-98. E. MASSONEAU, La
magie dans lAntiquit romaine, Paris 1934, 115-116. F. LAUGHTON, Catos Charms for Dislocations, The Classical Review,
51

197

2.2.1. Catenae
The use of chains as a magical element for binding (defigere) supernatural powers in the
ancient world is documented by numerous literary and iconographic sources55. An example is
provided by a hexametric Greek inscription of the 1st century BC which describes how, following
the indications of the oracle of Apolo Clario, the inhabitants of Syedra pinned with the iron chains
of Hermes a statue of Ares, in the hope of thus putting an end to attacks from the pirates, whose
protecting deity was Ares. According to C. Faraone, the binding of Ares image is expected to
persuade Ares and the pirates to be restrained in similar fashion56.
However, in the funerary archaeological record the presence of chains intended at magically
constraining the dead has not been detected so far, since the burials of eight adults with chains found
in the Hellenistic Greek cemetery of Akanthos were identified as slaves, war prisoners or convicts57.
And although it may be tempting to connect with the magical practices of the Pseudo-Quintilian
wizard the cinerary urn surrounded by chains (fig. 16) which was found at the beginning of the 20th
century in the Celtiberian-Roman cemetery of Luzaga (Guadalajara), its dubious chronology makes
us cautious regarding its interpretation58.
2.2.2. Mucrones.
The prophylactic iron belt created
by the Pseudo-Quintilian magician is
complemented with the nailing of mucrones
on the tomb and on the remains of the
deceased (DM 10.8 and 16). There are
discrepancies about the exact identification
of what type(s) of sharp objects made of ferro
magico were used to pierce the grave and the
dead. Thus, R. Ellis translates as iron bars
and clamps, solid fastening and chains of
iron, enclosing bars, and iron spikes59.
To M. Cary and A.D. Nock those mucrones
could be spears or staples equally used to fix
the emerging ghost or render it powerless,
whereas D. Ogden identifies in the text a
reference to swords being driven down into

Figure 16.- Cinerary urn surrounded by a

chain which was found in the CeltiberianRoman necropolis of Luzaga (Guadalajara)
by E. Aguilera y Gamboa. Photo Archivo
Fotogrfico J. Cabr, I.P.H.E., n inv. 1243.

52.2, 1938, 52-53, n. 1. R. MERRIFIELD, The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic, London 1987, 162-175. G. VELTRI, The
Rabbis and Pliny the Elder: Jewish and Graeco-Roman Attitudes toward Magic and Empirical Knowledge, Poetics Today,
19, 1, 1998, 74-75, 79-81. D. OGDEN, Greek and Roman, 2001, 180.
55
C. FARAONE, Binding and burying, 1991, 197-198, n. 1. ID., Talisman and Trojan horses. Guardian statues in Ancient
Greek Myth and Ritual, New York-Oxford 1992, 136-140. S.I. JOHNSTON, Restless dead, 1999, 59-60, 157-158. N. ICARDGIANOLIO, Statues enchanes, in: VVAA, Thesaurus Cultorum et Rituus Antiquorum, II, Los Angeles 2004, 468-471.
56
C. FARAONE, Binding and burying, 1991, 168-170.
57
Cf. L.M. LITTLE Y J.K. PAPADOPOULOS, A social outcast, 1998, 394.
58
Vid. J. F. BLNQUEZ AND B. RODRGUEZ, El arquelogo Juan Cabr (1882-1947). La fotografa como tcnica documental,
Madrid 2004, negative n 1243 of the Photographic Archive of Juan Cabr, deposited at the Instituto de Patrimonio
Histrico Espaol (Madrid).
59
R. ELLIS, The Tenth Declamation, 1911. K. HOPKINS, Death and Renewal, 1985, 235, n. 43; and D. FELTON, Haunted
Greece, 2000, 5, 9, also translate iron bars.

198

the grave, no doubt to pin the ghost down into it (compare the pinning of voodoo dolls and curse
tablets)60. In this sense, we have various funerary finds which provide evidence of the spearing of
corpses in a funerary context, although most of them are dated to the Protohistoric period or to Early
Medieval times. Thus, in the cemetery of the Second Iron Age of Garton Station (North Yorkshire),
four corpses accompanied by valuable grave goods- were speared when they had been deposited
in their tombs, act which according to I. Stead corresponds to a ritual killing aimed at preventing
these dead from returning to the world of the living61. Another example comes from the Merovingian
necropolis of Audun-le-Tiche (Moselle), dating from the 7th century AD, where the two teenagers
buried in tombs T145 and T178 were speared in their respective graves62. And in Dalstorp (Sweden),
a woman was buried in the 10th century AD with four spearheads and ten knives. According to T.
Artelius, the inclusion of these objects in the funerary grave goods is part of a magical ritual intended
at fixing a revenant, since in Scandinavian folklore it is believed that the inclusion of spears and
knives in the grave prevents the dead from appearing63. Although none of these particular examples
are part of the Roman world, they are all rites of immobilisation of the spirit in the tomb aimed at
preventing them from disturbing the living and, for this reason, they could serve as an archaeological
correlation to the Pseudo-Quintilians text.
2.3.- Nails for the dead
But, in my opinion we must also
consider the possibility that the sharp tools
used by the literary magician to fix the
dead could have been nails, objects which
in the ancient world had an unquestionable
and extremely rich symbolic valence, as I
analysed in a recent work64. Actually, from
the examination of the archaeological record
of several necropolis of the Occidental part of
the Roman Empire, mostly dating from the 1st
to 3rd centuries AD, it may be concluded that
the use of the nail within the funerary context
transcends its use as an element of assembly
for coffins or stretchers and served as an
amulet and/or magic obstacle. Although this
is not the purpose of this article, I would like
to point out that in those ancient cemeteries
the existence of standardised funerary grave
goods is documented where the nail is
included, frequently linked to coins (figs. 1718)65. And also the deliberate inclusion of nails

Figure 17.- Grave furniture of the tomb 7 in

Via Nomentana1119 (Rome): an olletta with
a lamp, two nails and a republican coin
inside. CECI 2001, fig. 5.

M. CARY AND A.D. NOCK, Magical spears, The Classical Quaterly, 21.3/4, 1927, 27. D. OGDEN, Magic, witchcraft,
2002, 164-166.
61
I. STEAD, Garton Station, Current Anthropology, 103, 1987, 234-237.
62
A. SIMMER, Le cimetiere merovingien..., 1988, 147.
63
T. ARTELIUS, The revenant by the lake. Spear symbolism in Scandinavian Late Viking Age burial ritual, in: T. Artelius and
D. Svanberg, Dealing with the Dead. Archaeological Perspectives on Prehistoric Scandinavian Burial Ritual, deshg
2005, 261-276.
64
S. ALFAY, Nails for the Dead, forthcoming.
60

199

Figure 18.- Nails as intentional grave-goods in the Roman cemetery of Pithekoussai: the funerary
furniture of the tomb 109 -a lamp and a pottery vessel with a nail inside-, and of the tomb 110
-one ceramic vessel, two nails, a lamp and two coins. BUCHNER and RIDGWAY, 1993, pl. CXI.
in cremation tombs is attested to, either inside objects of the grave goods or lamps or small vessels,
or even thrust into the urn itself, where the size of the nail leaves no doubt as regards its deliberate
inclusion (figs.17-18).
Moreover, we can detect in the ancient funerary record that, as happens in the abovementioned
Gallic-Roman necropolis of Argentomagus and La Calade, the singular distributions of nails are
particularly linked to child burials (fig. 8), that is, to premature death, an association which I definitely
do not believe to be accidental66. Likewise, a singular and not accidental layout of nails can be
noted, both in tombs of inhumation and of cremation. For example, the archaeological record shows
the existence of nails placed outside the graves in various areas of the Roman Empire, which has been
interpreted as a magical-ritual action of prophylactic nature. That is how it has been construed by M.
Petit the presence of big iron nails on the graves of Lutecia; J. Remesal and P. Sillires regarding the
nails placed with the tip pointing out between the stones surrounding the graves of the necropolis
of Baelo Claudia; and A.M. Giuntella those found outside Late Antiquity graves of Sardinia67.
Also R. Hachlili and A.E. Killebrew defend a magical use as amulets- of the nails deliberately
placed outside some tombs of Hellenistic Jewish necropolis, basing their interpretation on a later
Rabbinical source which speaks of throwing iron between or inside the tombs against spirits. In this
sense, I would like to point out that J. Trachtenberg includes amongst the Jewish magical practices
F. CECI, Linterpretazione di monete e chiodi in contesti funerari: esempi dal suburbio romano, in: VVAA, Rmischer
Bestattungsbrauch und Beigabensitten/ Culti dei morti e costumi funerari romani, Wiesbaden 2001, 87-97. S. ALFAY,
Nails for the Dead, forthcoming.
66
J. ALLAIN ET AL., La ncropole gallo-romain, 1992, 128-129. F. LAUBENHEIMER, La mort des touts petits, 2004, 302-303.
65

200

regarding the preparation of the body of the deceased, the custom of putting metal on the corpse as a
means of magically protecting it68.
All this data allows us to suggest that there was a magical use of nails within the funerary
context as a practice of defensive nature intended at creating a prophylactic barrier, that would
protect the deceased from the supernatural threats that may await them in the Afterlife serving the
nails as protecting amulets, as proposed by P. Testini, C. DAngela and D. Nuzzo for those found in
Late-Antiquity tombs69. And, at the same time, the nails were used as magic obstacles that prevented
the dead from returning to disturb the living, symbolically fixing them to the tomb, as maintained by
J. Annequin, P. Wernet or S. Perea, amongst other scholars70.
2.4.- Nailing of corpses
Taken to an extreme, and perhaps reserved only for reluctant ghosts, this preventive practice
of defensive magic which consisted of placing nails in the tombs could explain the finding of ancient
cadavers with the skull and/or other parts of the body pierced by nails (figs. 3, 19, 23 and 28-29), whose

Figure 19.- Supposed nailed burial from an ancient inhumation cemetery in Luzaga excavated
by E. AGUILERA Y GAMBOA. Photo Archivo Fotogrfico J. Cabr, I.P.H.E., n inv. 4068.
M. PETIT, Les ncropoles, 1984, 348. J. REMESAL, La necrpolis sureste de Baelo, Madrid 1979, 41. P. SILLIRES, Baelo
Claudia, une cit romaine de Btique, Madrid 1995, 98. A.M. GIUNTELLA, Sepolture e rito: consuetudini e innovazioni, in:
VVAA, Le sepolture in Sardegna dal VI al VII secolo, Oristano 1990, 221, n. 10.
68
Cf. R. HACHLILI AND A.E. KILLEBREW, Jericho. The Jewish Cemetery of the Second Temple Period, Jerusalem 1999, 139-140,
169. R. HACHLILI, Jewish funerary, 2005, 494, 511-512. J. TRACHTENBERG, Jewish magical, 1961, 174-180. Regarding the
Talmudic texts mentioned by Hachlili and Killebrew, see also G. VELTRI, The Rabbis and Pliny, 1998, 80-81.
69
Cf. P. TESTINI, Archeologia cristiana, Bari 1980, 149. C. DANGELA, Contesti tombali tardoantichi e altomedievali,
La parola del passato, 50, 1995, 322-323. D. NUZZO, Amulet and grave in late Antiquity: some examples from Roman
cemeteries, in: J. Pearce, M. Millett and M. Struck (eds.), Burial, society, 2000, 253.
70
Cf. S. ALFAY, Nails for the dead, forthcoming. J. ANNEQUIN, Recherches sur laction magique et ses representations
(Ier et IIIme sicles aprs J.C.), Paris 1973, 21. P. WERNET, Les crnes clous de la Butte Saint-Michel Strasbourg,
Cahiers Alsaciens dArchologie, dArt et dHistorie, 14, 1970, 5-26. S. PEREA, El sello de Dios (2): ceremonias de la
muerte. Nuevos estudios sobre magia y creencias populares greco-romanas, Madrid 2002, 282-283. Cf. also P. GALLIOU
AND M. JONES, The Bretons, Oxford-Cambridge, 1991, 113-114. D. DUNGWORTH, Mystifying Roman Nails: clavus annalis,
defixiones and minkisi, in: VVAA, Trac 97, Oxford 1998, 153, 156. J. ORTALLI, Il culto funerario della Cispadana romana.
Rappresentazione e interiorit, in: VVAA, Rmischer Bestattungsbrauch und Beigabensitten 2001, 236-237.
67

201

Figure 23.- Skull pierced by a nail found in

the roman cemetery of Alcantarilla, a village
close to Italica (Sevilla). F. OLRIZ, 1883.

Figure 3.- Skull pierced by three nails found

in a tomb under Casa Reali, in Veroli (Italy).
L. QUILICI and S. QUILICI 1998, fig. 67.

Figure 28.- The distribution of the nails

found in two supposed nailed burials
of the Jewish medieval cemetery in Deza

Figure 29.- Alleged nailed burial

discovered by Marqus de Cerralbo in the
inhumation necropolis in Aguilar de Anguita
(grave n 4) Photo Archivo Fotogrfico J.
Cabr, I.P.H.E., n inv. 3955.

(Soria), by B. TARACENA 1933.

202

detailed study is dealt with in another work71.

These nailed burials inevitably evoke the
Pseudo-Quintilians scene where the magician
in corpus et in membra descendisse mucrones.
In this sense, I would like to point out the
parallel between the crescendo in the magic
crafts used by the literary magician to subdue
the spirit, which ends up with the nailing of the
tomb and the remains, and that attested to in
other ancient magic rituals of immobilisation
such as the defixio tablets or the voodoo dolls
(fig. 11)-, in which a sequence of rhetorical
expressivity can be detected where the most
aggressive action, the nailing, constitutes the
climax of the magical process72.
Figure 20.- Skull pierced by nail discovered
close to the walls of the Iberian settlement
of Puig Castellar, in Santa Coloma de
Gramenet (Barcelona). H. OBERMAIER 1928.

These finds of nailed corpses within

the funerary context must not be mixed up
with the discoveries of skulls pierced by nails
found in structures and settlements from the
5th to the 1st centuries BC in Gallia, Germania,
Britannia and Iberia (figs. 20-21). These
skulls of enemies or of executed people were
nailed on walls, gates of settlements, cultic

Figure 21.- The enemies nailed skulls exhibited on the gate of the oppidum of La Cloche,
in Les Pennes-Mirabeau (Bouches-du-Rhne). L. Chabot 1982, fig. 12.
S. ALFAY, Dreadful burials: corpses and skulls pierced by nails in the Ancient World, in: R. Fisher and S. Morris (eds.),
Monsters and the Monstruous. Myths and Metaphors of the Enduring Evil, Oxford, forthcoming.
72
Cf., amongst others, F. GRAF, Magic in the Ancient World, Cambridge -London 1997, 134-137.
71

203

areas and domestic contexts, as exemplified by the nailed skulls from Puig Castellar (Santa Coloma
de Gramenet, Barcelona) (fig. 20), Ullastret (Gerona), Entremont (Aix-en-Provence) or La Cloche
(Les Pennes-Mirabeau, Bouches-du-Rhne) (fig. 21). They were displayed as war trophies, turning
them also into unquestionable exemplifying symbols, both deterrent and apotropaic73.
In favour of the interpretation of the nailing of corpses in the Ancient world as a magic ritual
of immobilisation to prevent the dead from disturbing the living, I would like to recall that various
ancient literary sources mention the nailing as an efficient form of ghost-banning. Thus, for example,
C. Faraone identifies the nailing of Oedipus feet as a preventive ritual designed to cripple a ghost
in its efforts to gain revenge74. Besides, Paus., 9. 38. 5, tells us that the inhabitants of Orchomenos,
following the directions of the Delphic oracle, neutralised the malign ghost of Actaeon, who had
been devastating their crops, by erecting a statue of him in bronze and fixing it to a rock with iron75.
However, the archaeological visualisation of these practices is controversial. Due to the fact
that most of the possible nailed burials were discovered towards the end of the 19th century and the
beginning of the 20th, the information about them is extremely scarce and, besides, it is impossible to
carry out anthropological analysis on the remains, which has provoked doubts on the level of credibility
that ought to be given to the original descriptions of these findings, often very brief76. These problems
have led researchers such as G. Halsall and B. Effros to categorically deny the existence of tombs
with corpses pierced by nails in the Merovingian sphere, and J.M. Guijo to follow suit as regards the
presumed documented cases in the Hispanic Jewish world77 (fig. 28). It is certainly possible that the
Cf. L. CHABOT, Loppidum de la Cloche aux Penner.Mirabeu (Bouches-du-Rhne), Revue Archologique de Narbonnaise,
16, 1982, 49-51, figs. 10-12. J. SANMART, Elments de type celtique du nord-est de la Pninsule Ibrique, Aquitania, 12, 1994,
344-346. E. MAHIEU, Lanthropologie Entremont, Documents dArchologie Mridionale, 21, 1998, 62-66. M.C. ROVIRA I
HORTAL, Lexhibici darmes i cranis enclavats en els hbitats ibers septentrionals, Cypsela, 12, 1998, 167-182. EAD., Las
armas-trofeo en la cultura ibrica, Gladius, 19, 1999, 12-32. J. WAHL, Anthropologische Untersuchung der menschlichen
Skelettreste aus den Grabungen bei Mengen, in: VVAA, Archologie im Umland der Heuneburg, Stuttgart 1999, 63-67, figs. 4547. S. ALFAY, Rituales de aniquilacin del enemigo en la estela de Binfar (Huesca), in J. Alvar y L. Hernndez (eds.), Actas
del XXVII Congreso Internacional Girea-Arys IX. Jerarquas religiosas y control social en el mundo antiguo, Valladolid 2003,
63-74. A. HERMARY, Grecs et Barbares cloueurs de ttes: complments au tmoignage de Poseidonios, Revue Archologique de
Narbonnaise, 2003, 525-530. C. STERCKX, Les mutilations des ennemis chez les celtes prchrtiens, Paris 2005.
74
C. FARAONE, Binding and burying, 1991, 182, n. 62, y 194, n. 103.
75
On this text, cf. C. FARAONE, Binding and buying, 1991, 168-179, 187, 197-198, n. 111. ID., Talismans and trojan horses
, 1992, 83, 136-140. S.I. JOHNSTON, Restless Dead, 1999, 59-62, 157-158. EAD., Delphi and the Dead, in: S.I. Johnston and
P. T. Struck (ed.), Mantik. Studies on divination, Leiden-Boston 2005, 303. D. FELTON, Haunted Greece, 2000, 27.
76
Cf., amongst others, A. DE LA PASTORA, Antigedades prehistricas del partido de Molina de Aragn, Boletn de la Real
Academia de la Historia, 3, 1883, 154-159. H. GRIN-RICARD, Las pyramides de Provence, Bulletin Archologique du Comit
des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, 1902, 49-50. C. JULLIAN, H. GAIDOZ AND T. VOLKOV, Cadavres percs de clous, Revue de
tudes Anciennes, 4, 1902, 300-301. C. JULLIAN AND J. DCHELETTE, Cadavres percs de clous, Revue des tudes Anciennes, 8.1,
1906, 65-66. ANONYMOUS, Cadavres perces de clous, Revue de tudes Anciennes, 17, 1915, 217. M. MENNDEZ PIDAL, Historia
de los heterodoxos espaoles. I, Madrid 1933, 134-140. B. TARACENA, Cadveres atravesados por clavos en el cementerio judo
de Deza, Investigacin y Progreso, 7.3, 1933, 65-71. E. Salin, La civilisation mrovingienne. Daprs les spultures, les textes
et le laboratoire. Deuxime partie. Les spultures, Paris 1952, 354-355. S. ALFAY, Dreadful burials, forthcoming.
77
G. HALSALL, Settlement and Social Organization: the Merovingian Region of Metz, Cambridge 1995, 160.162. B. EFFROS,
Merovingian mortuary archaeology and the making of the Early Middle Ages, Berkeley-Los Angeles-London 2003, 8284, 168-171. J.M. GUIJO, Inhumaciones de grupos marginales en Sevilla. La minora hebrea, in: www.legadosefardi.net/
enterramientos.pdf, 2003, 12, n. 20, considers that the ceremony of placing nails on the skeletons or piercing them is a
figment of the imagination rather than a verified fact, and he explains the presence of nails in tombs as part of the coffins. A
more moderate opinion is given by E. PREZ HERRERO, Apuntes para el estudio de las necrpolis judas de poca medieval,
Sefarad, 38, 1978, 347-348, who considers that the nailing of corpses in the Jewish cemetery of Deza (Soria) is a proven
fact due to the repetition of the nails in certain places and to their vertical position (fig. 28 of this paper), discarding the
possibility that they might have slipped inside the coffin, although he admits that de ninguna de las necrpolis de Teruel y
Crdoba se puede decir con seguridad cientfica que tuvieran enterramientos con clavos atravesando los cadveres, ya que
no han sido estudiadas y publicadas con cierto rigor cientfico, sino breves notas que no nos ilustran lo suficiente.
73

204

wishful thinking of some archaeologists led them to provide sensationalist interpretations of these
finds and identify them as nailed burials (figs. 19 and 29), instead of proposing a more logical
explanation for the bizarre and unusual position of the nails around the skeletons and/or on them. As
F. Blaizot and his team point out in a recent study of the cemetery of Sainte-Barbe, in Strasbourg,
the problematic presence of nails on skeletons might be due to the decomposition and collapse of the
wooden coffins and to an unusual rigor mortis, which could have caused macabre positions of the
corpses in an enclosed space78. The disappearance of organic elements from the grave goods such
as leather sandals (sandapilae)-, may have also led the scholars into error, for they might have left
nails on or about the corpse79. Such seems to be the case of one tomb in the necropolis of Aguilar de
Anguita (Guadalajara) of uncertain date between the 1st century BC and the 4th century AD-, where
the feet of the buried individual are covered with nails (fig. 22), which, according to its discoverer
E. Aguilera y Gamboa, sin duda alguna se clavaron sobre la carne del muerto80. However, the
distribution of the nails on the feet seems to be in fact due to the tacks or hobnails (clavi caligae) of
some decomposed sandals; therefore, at least in this case, it does not appear to be a corpse pierced
by nails81. This is one of the inhumation graves on Celtiberian territory identified as nailed burials
by the Marqus de Cerralbo, and where the corpses not only had nails going through the skull, sino
tambin alrededor de toda la cabeza, por el
cuerpo y a veces en los brazos y sobre todo
en las extremidades de los pies82 (figs. 19 and
29). It is therefore possible that some of the
instances identified as corpses pierced by nails
might be archaeological illusions but, although
caution is necessary, it would be hypercritical
and too simplifying to deny the existence of
nailed burials dating from ancient and earlymedieval times, which is unquestionable in the
case of the corpses whose skulls are pierced by
one or several large sized nails, such as those
found in Italica (Sevilla) (fig. 23) and Veroli
Figure 22.- Skeleton with the feet covered
(Italy) (fig. 3) and, amongst other examples83.
with nails found in an inhumation grave in
In view of such macabre finds,
historiography has been offering different

the Roman necropolis of Aguilar de Anguita

(Guadalajara). Photo Archivo Fotogrfico
J. Cabr, I.P.H.E., n inv. 3931.

F. BLAIZOT ET ALII, Lensemble funraire de lAntiquit Tardive et du Haut Moyen ge de Sainte-Barbe Strasbourg (BasRhin), Revue Archologique de lEst, 53, 2004, 93-96, 146, figs. 6-8.
79
On the footwear with hobnails in the Roman funerary record, cf. G. CLARKE, The roman cemetery of Lankhills
(Winchester), Wichester 1979, 178-181, 322-325, 370-371, 406-408, fig. 65. B. BARBER AND D. BOWSHER, The Eastern
cemetery, 2000, 137-138, 354, fig. 99, tab. 132.
80
On this graveyard, cf. E. AGUILERA Y GAMBOA, Pginas de la Historia Patria. Tomo III. Aguilar de Anguita, Madrid 1911,
unedited manuscript. J. CABR, Catlogo monumental de la provincia de Soria. Volumen III, unpublished manuscript 1917,
97-98. Although the graphic and manuscript documentation claims that these tombs belong to the necropolis of El Altillo,
they actually come from the cemetery area of Los Pradales or Los Esqueletos, as evidenced by M. BARRIL AND SALVE,
Reexcavando Aguilar de Anguita a travs de los documentos escritos y los materiales depositados en el M.A.N., Kalathos,
17, 1998, 47-90. See the photographs of these graves taken in the years 1910-1912 by J. Cabr in J.F. BLNQUEZ Y B.
RODRGUEZ, El arquelogo Juan Cabr, 2004, negatives n 3927-3955.
81
Vid. these images in J.F. BLNQUEZ Y B. RODRGUEZ, El arquelogo Juan Cabr, 2004, negatives 3931 y 3934 from the
Archivo fotogrfico de Juan Cabr of the I.P.H.E.
82
J. CABR, Catlogo monumental, 1917, 97.
83
Cf., for example, F. OLRIZ, Estudio de una calavera antigua, perforada por un clavo, encontrada en Itlica, Boletn de la Real
Academia de la Historia, 3, 1883, 257-306. L. QUILICI AND S. QUILICI, Richerche di topografia per la forma urbana di Veroli, in:
78

205

interpretations, which vary substantially depending on whether we think that the nailing of the corpse
was done ante mortem or post mortem, although explanations also differ depending on the identity
we may attribute to the buried individual.
2.4.1. Nailing ante mortem
The most reasonable explanation for the nailed corpses assumes that the nailing was done
ante mortem on criminals, martyrs or enemies, and that they were buried with the tools that caused
or accelerated their death. We may wonder whether this method of torture or capital punishment was
connected to some specific crime. Although the revision of ancient Roman sources does not attest to
nailing as a punitive measure84, in my opinion it is possible that it was indeed used as a Roman capital
punishment included within what J.-P. Callu calls le jardin des supplices au Bas Empire85. Such
supposition is based on the finding, at the end of the 19th century, of skeletons whose skulls were
pierced by nails (fig. 23) and stuffed with liquid lead in the Late-Antiquity cemetery of the town of
Alcantarilla (Sevilla), near Italica86. Thanks to article 9.24.2 of Codex Theodosiaunus, written in the
4th century A.D., we know that pouring liquid lead into the mouth of the convicted criminal was a
method of capital punishment destined to those who induced virgins to commit sinful acts. Bearing
this in mind, I believe it is plausible that the presence of the nail and the molten lead in the skulls from
Alcantarilla is not a coincidence, and that we could therefore be faced with the burial of individuals
who were executed using two forms of torture the nailing and the pouring of lead-, a hypothesis that
seems to confirm the topographic concentration of these burials within that Roman necropolis, in an
area which was possibly destined for criminals.
A variant of the punitive interpretation of the nailing is offered by researchers such as M.A.
Boldetti or J.A. Martigny who, under the influence of an apologetic and hagiographic tradition,
identified the nailed skulls as belonging to Christian martyrs87. Thus, in the 17th century, the nailed
skull found in the Roman catacomb of Santa Agnes was attributed to a martyr; and the 18 nailed skulls
discovered in 1847 in the German city of Cologne were identified as the remains of members of the
Theban Legion, executed by the emperor Diocletian in the 3rd century AD88. The martyrial explanation
matches the late-Antiquity date of a great deal of these burials, and also the descriptions of torture or
Passio clavorum provided by the martyrial acts and in the lives of saints. However, that information
must be assessed with caution since, although on historical basis, they are literary works intended at
emphasising the Roman crudelitas through the contrast between the brutal violence of the imperial
torturers and the pious opposition of Christians. In spite of this, it does not seem unreasonable to
Ead. (dir.), Citt e monumento nellItalia Antica. Atlante Temtico di Topografia Antica 7, Roma 1998, 194-195, 208-210, fig.
67. H. OBERMAIER, Leichennagelung in Altspanien, in : W. Koppers (dir.), Festschrift Publication dhommage offerte au P.W.
Schmidt, Wien 1928, 943-949. A. BLANCHET AND R. LANTIER, Crnes perces de clous, Bulletin Archologique du Comit des
Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, 1943-1945, 391-395. P. WERNET, Les crnes clous, 1970, 5-26. F. FACCHINI, E. RASTELLI
AND M.G. BELCASTRO, Peri mortem cranial injuries from a medieval grave in Saint Peters Cathedral, Bologna, Italy, International
Journal of Osteoarchaeology, article on line in advance of print, 2007. S. ALFAY, Dreadful burials, forthcoming.
84
Cf. J.A. BUENO, Prcticas funerarias, tormento y penalidad romana, Anuario de la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad
de Alcal, 2004, 6-28.
85
J.P. CALLU, Le jardin des supplices au Bas Empire, in: VVAA, Du chtiment dans la cit. Supplices corporels et peine de
mort dans le monde antique, Rome 1984, 313-359.
86
A. GALI, Historia de Itlica. Municipio y colonia romana, Sevilla, 1892, 151-153. F. OLRIZ, Estudio de una calavera
antigua, 1897, 260-277.
87
M.A. BOLDETTI, Osservazioni sopra i cimiteri deSanti Martiri, ed Antichi Crsitiani de Roma. I, Roma 1720, 319-326. J.A.
MARTIGNY, Dictionnaire des antiquits chrtiennes, Paris 1877, 531-533.
88
J. A. MARTIGNY, Dictionnaire, 1877, 533. ANNIMO, Miscellanea Anthropologica, Anthropological Review, 1.2,
1863, 335-336.

206

assume that some may have been tortured or

executed by the nailing of the skull or other
parts of their body, and it is certainly reflected
by Christian imagery, where the nail is an
attribute of martyrs such as Santa Engracia of
Zaragoza (fig. 24), whose head was allegedly
nailed by order of Dacian89. Yet, it does not
seem reasonable to extend this martyrial
explanation to all the nailed burials.
2.4.2.- Nailing post mortem
The hypotheses seen so far assume
that the nailing was done on a living body,
but we must also ponder the possibility that
the nailing was done post mortem. Based
on anthropological parallels, from the 19th
century various researchers -such as E. JobbDuval- maintained that the fear of the restless
dead, of the larvae, was the cause of the ritual
Figure 24.- Modern painting depicting
transfixion of the corpses. The nailing could
the martyr Santa Engracia, in the
have been a magical practice intended at
Basilica de Santa Engracia (Zaragoza).
fixing that living corpse to its tomb, since
through this second death it could no longer
return to the world of the living90. Besides the aforementioned literary sources regarding Oedipus
and Actaeon, research carried out by A. Calmet, J.C.Lawson, P. Barber and A. Tsaliki on Greece and
the Balkans offer numerous anthropological parallels which attest that the corpses of those dead who
could become revenants or who had already given signs of it- were decapitated and pierced by stakes
and nails with the purpose of eradicating their malignant nature; and in the popular imagination it is
well known that the only way of killing a vampire is by driving a stake through his heart91.
In my opinion, the theory of the nailing of restless dead could be supported by the fact
that some of these deviant burials are accompanied by grave goods: the deceased were buried
with grave-goods following the standard funerary customs of the time, but their malign behaviour
and their reluctance to abandon the world of the living forced the performance of these drastic
magical measures. As the Pseudo-Quintilians text narrates, the nailing may have been ordered
by the relatives who wanted to prevent or avoid the unsettling apparitions and also to help in this
manner their loved ones to rest in peace, facilitating or, rather, forcing- their integration into the
world of the dead. However, as shown by Paus., 9. 38. 5, regarding the conduct of the inhabitants of
Orchomenos, it is equally possible that the entire community demanded such magic actions for safety
L. REAU, Iconographie de lart chrtien, 3 vols., Paris 1955-1959.
E. JOBB-DUVAL, Les morts malfaisants, 2000, 179-181. M. AMAND, Folklore et archologie belgo-romaine,
Latomus, 28, 1969, 201.
91
A. CALMET, Treatise on vampires and revenants. The Phantom World, Brighton 1993 (1850), 48-52. J.C. LAWSON, Modern
Greek Folklore, 1910, 361-384. P. BARBER, Vampires, burial and death, 1988, 52-53, 61-73, 71-73, 79. A. TSALIKI,
Vamp Beyond Legend: Necrophobia, a Bioarchaeological approach, in: M. L. Verghetta and L. Capasso (eds.), Proceedings
of the XIII European Meeting of the Paleopathology Association, Terano 2001, 295-300. Cf. other examples in J.G. FRAZER,
The fear of the dead, 2003, vol. I, 75-87, and vol. III, 176, 189-190. B.A. MCCLELLAND, Slayers and their vampires: a
cultural history of killing the dead, Michigan 2006.
89

90

207

and public health reasons. As analysed by N. Caciola regarding the medieval world and A. Calmet
regarding Oriental Europe in the Modern Age, under the influence of a situation of collective panic,
and stirred by a generalised fear of the spread of the plague, serial ghostly murders or other critical
situations, the terrified members of a group may have decided to carry out extreme measures against
the supernatural agents who caused all those situations92. I consider that we should not underestimate
the traumatic effect of deaths en masse amongst the members of a community in the Ancient World.
Actually, as J-C. Scmidtt and N. Caciola have already pointed out, all these practices of funerary
immobilisation nailing, weighting-down, decapitation, mutilation- must also be understood as a
problem of Social History, since the monstrosity of those measures is socially sanctioned as much as
they are used to eliminate the danger and the social tension that some individuals represent for the
community, even after they are dead93.
3.- OTHER POSSIBLE MEASURES AGAINST THE RESTLESS DEAD ATTESTED TO THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD
Although Pseudo-Quintilian does not mention them, the archaeological record documents
other unusual and deviant funerary rituals which, once again, revolve around the idea of immobilising
the deceased, and may equally correspond to magical practices aimed at fixing the restless dead.
3.1.- Burial in decubito prono
One of the possible preventive magical practices carried out in the Roman world against
the potential restless dead was burying them face down (figs. 1, 5 and 25), a minority position
in ancient necropolis for which various explanations have been given94. Thus, it is possible that
occasionally the prono position of corpses buried in tombs irregularly dug and without a coffin,
grave-goods or signs of funeral preparations, may be due to a lack of care in the interment and
may not be due to ritual motives. Such could be the case of tombs or mass graves linked to
mortality crises caused by epidemics, or of burials linked to executions or to war or massacre

Figure 1.- Prono burial 2936 in the Roman

necropolis of Calle del Quart, in Valencia
(Spain). M. POLO and E. GARCA PRSPER
2002, fig. 7.

Figure 25.- A general view of the prono

inhumation area of the Roman necropolis
in the Calle del Quart, in Valentia. M. POLO
y E. GARCA PRSPER 2002.

N. CACIOLA, Wraiths, revenants,1996, 15-34. A. CALMET, Treatise on vampires, 1993.

J.-C. SCMIDTT, Les revenants. Les vivants et les morts dans la socit mdivale, Paris 1994, 252. N. CACIOLA, Wraiths,
revenants, 1996.
94
Cf. a summary in R. PHILPOTT, Burial practices, 1991, 71-76. M. POLO Y E. GARCA PRSPER, Ritual, violencia y enfermedad.
Los enterramientos en decbito prono de la necrpolis fundacional de Valentia, Saguntum, 34, 2002, pp. 144-145, fig. 13.
92
93

208

zones, where those buried in a prone position are usually also beheaded95. However, other facedown inhumations not only show elements of normalised funerary rituals tomb, shroud, grave
goods-, but also they are located inside the necropolis, so it seems reasonable to presume that their
unusual position is deliberate and that it may respond to socio-religious reasons that justify the
alteration of the norm. Examination of the prone interments recently found allows us to conclude
that a significant number of those buried in a decubito prono position are situated in the peripheral
zones of the necropolis for instance, the Southern area of the Early-Empire cemetery in Calle del
Quart, in Valencia (figs. 1 and 25), or the Eastern corner of the Late necropolis (4th 5th centuries
A.D.) of Lankhills (Winchester, England)96. These zones were possibly reserved for marginal
people, either stigmatised persons due to their social background or to their jobs, people who
died as a result of a plague, mental or physical disease, or executed people. In this sense, it is
remarkable that a great number of the individuals buried face down show signs of coercion such as
fractures peri mortem, hands tied behind their back, severe injuries caused by sharp weapons, or
even decapitation ante mortem, which leads us to believe that they may have been criminals who
were given a proper burial after their execution possibly by their families, who were allowed
to retrieve the bodies of criminals from the time of Augustus onwards-, but who were buried
face down as a visual metaphor of their marginalisation, both during their lifetime and in death.
Thus, the corpse becomes a powerful tool in the hands of the living, and its position in the tomb
perpetuates in the Afterlife the social segregation of that individual97.
But also, in various Roman necropolis in Greece, Turkey and Hungary, in Romano-British
cemeteries of the 4th century A.D. such as Cirencester, Kempston and Derby Racecourse, or in
Hispanic necropolis such as the one in Calle del Quart in Valencia (fig. 25), the paleopathologic studies
reveal a certain connection between face-down burials and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis
or leprosy-, respiratory diseases such as pneumoconiosis or anthrax-, and others such as rabies and
porphyria98. These facts allow us to interpret the equation prone burials/ infectious disease as a social
reflection of the fear of this kind of pathologies which caused a more or less sudden and unpleasant
death (morbus indignus), and which, possibly, required the performance of special magic funerary
rituals in order to appease those who died tortured by a terrible and unmerited disease (CIL II/7, 287)
and, in this way, also preventing the disease from spreading99. In that sense, although there are no facedown burials, I believe it is interesting to recall the magic rituals linked to infants who had died as a
result of a malaria epidemic in Poggio Gramignano, who were buried in an ancient villa, alongside
whom 13 puppies which had been sacrificed ad hoc were found, as well as vessels buried face down
Cf. an example of prone burials in an ancient mass grave caused by epidemics in P. BLANCHARD ET ALII, A mass grave
from the catacomb of Saints Peter and Marcellinus in Rome, second-third century AD, Antiquity, 314, 2007, 989-998
(especially 993-994, fig. 4). On examples of ancient and early medieval cemeteries of executed persons, cf. T. MOLLESON,
The archaeology and anthropology of death: what the bones tell us, in: S.C. Humpreys and H. King (eds.), Mortality and
immortality: the anthropology and archaeology of death, London 1981, 27-28. R. WHIMSTER, Burial Practices in Iron Age
Britain. A discussion and gazetteer of the evidence. C. 700 B.C.A.D. 43, Oxford 1981, 420-426. G. HAYMAN Y A. REYNOLDS,
A Saxon and Saxo-Norman Execution Cemetery at 42-54 London Road, Staines, The Archaeological Journal, 162, 2005,
215-255. J.L. BUCKBERRY AND D.M. HADLEY, An Anglo-Saxon Execution cemetery at Walkington Wold, Yorkshire, Oxford
Journal of Archaeology, 26.3, 2007, 309-329 (without prone inhumation burials).
96
M. POLO Y E. GARCA PRSPER, Ritual, violencia y enfermedad, 2002, 137-148. Cf. E. GARCA PRSPER, P. GURIN,
M. MART Y M. RAMREZ, La necrpolis romana de la Calle Quart. Resultados recientes, XXV Congreso Nacional de
Arqueologa, Valencia 1999, 298-299. G. CLARKE, The roman cemetery, 1979.
97
V.M. HOPE, Contempt and respect, 2000, 120, 122, 126-127.
98
Cf. A. TSALIKI, Vamp beyond legend, 2001, 295-300. M. POLO Y E. GARCA PRSPER, Ritual, violencia y enfermedad,
2002, 144-145.
99
There are several examples in 17th century England where the victims of a plague were buried face down to appease the
devil, who was considered responsible for the disease, and to prevent it from spreading; cf. S.M. HIRST, An Anglo-Saxon
inhumation cemetery at Sewerby, East Yorkshire, York 1985, 36-37.
95

209

and the remains of ravens and toads, amongst other peculiarities (fig. 9), which seem to be connected
with a wish to appease the dead and the supernatural powers related to the disease100.
Amongst the individuals buried in prone position, persons who suffered mental disease or
serious physical disabilities such as blindness, deafness or spina bifida- have also been found, as is
the case in the Roman necropolis of Poundsbury (England), and although to T. Molleson physical
deformity does not qualify for prone burial, () mental disturbance may have been one of the
reasons for prone burial in Roman and Early Medieval society 101.
All of this allows us to consider the existence of peripheral areas in Roman necropolis destined
for individuals who died violently possibly executed criminals-, for the ill persons, physically and
mentally disabled people, and perhaps also undesirable people who had infamous occupations
prostitutes, pimps, gladiators, undertakers themselves,-, who may have been buried in simple
graves, with plain grave-goods and face down. This act constitutes a reflection of the social exclusion
of these individuals, and it is a deliberate act, denigrating and even punitive, reserved for those who
were unpopular, different or had attacked the community102. But it is also possible that this position
also involved a magical feature and it was intended at preventing the spirit of those outsiders who
had all the more reasons to feel resentful against the group due to their social marginalisation from
returning and disturbing the living, since, if they wished to leave their tombs they could only dig
further down and sink lower in their tombs, as explained by numerous anthropological parallels103.
I would not like to leave unmentioned the fact that some researchers consider that in late
Antiquity Christian prone burials, and particularly from the early Middle Ages - for example in the
7th and 8th centuries AD Merovingian Normandy-, the prone position may be a penitential sign, since
Pippin the Short died 768 AD- was buried face down as a penance for his fathers sins104.
3.2.- The post mortem mutilation of corpses
The post mortem mutilation of corpses, where decapitation to be referred to later on- should be
included, may also be interpreted as a magic action intended at preventing the spirit of the dead, by means
of its immobilisation, from taking revenge from the Otherworld, since there are numerous anthropological
parallels which document its funerary use with this purpose105. Mutilation of corpses in the Ancient world
has been linked by several scholars to the idea of the Greek maschalismos, a selective amputation exerted
D. SOREN AND N. SOREN, A Roman villa, 1999, 619-652.
R. PHILPOTT, Burial practices, 1991, 72, 74-75. T. MOLLESON, Archaeological Evidence, 1999, 69-77. Cf. an example
of an unusual funerary ritual linked to an individual suffering from a permanent neurological deficit in L.M. LITTLE AND
J.K. PAPADOPOULOS, A social outcast, 1998, 395-398. On Early Medieval deviant burials -but not prone burials- of
disabled individuals who suffered spina bifida, tuberculosis, poliomyelitis or physical severe injuries, cf. M. HADLEY AND
J. BUCKBERRY, Caring for the Dead, 2005, 145-146. On funerary segregation of the lepers in the Ancient and Medieval
World, cf. V. MARIOTTI ET ALII, Probably Early Presence of Leprosy in Europe in a Celtic Skeleton of the 4th-3rd century
BC (Casalecchio di Reno, Bologna, Italy), International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 15, 2005, 322. On mental diseases,
physical disabilities and social exclusion in the Ancient World, cf. footnote 25 in this paper.
102
As V.M. HOPE states, Contempt and respect, 2000, 112, death itself did not always mark the end of the spectacle. () For
some, violent death was not the end of indignity; display of the corpse and post-mortem insults could form part of a punishment.
103
Cf. S. M. HIRST, An Anglo-Saxon, 1985, 36-37.
104
E. SALIN, La civilisation merovingienne, 1952, 220-222. Cf. other Medieval funerary practices with a penitential
meaning in C. DANIELL, When penance continued in the grave, British Archaeology, 19, 1996, 7. J. HOLLOWAY, Creating
identities of death: charcoal burial in early medieval England, Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 22.1, 2007, 6-23.
105
On the mutilation of the corpse as a magical practice intended at preventing the dead from returning to disturb the
living, cf., amongst others, E. JOBB-DUVAL, Les morts malfaisants, 2000, 182-193. J.G. FRAZER, The fear of the
dead, vol. II, 2003, 63-96.
100
101

210

on the defeated or the murdered person which, apart from having an unquestionably vexing nature, prevents
the dead from returning from the tomb and taking revenge on the living106. The idea of immobilisation
both physical and symbolical- of the individual by means of their mutilation is also present in the ancient
voodoo dolls who were beheaded and/or whose limbs were amputated or twisted107 (fig. 11).
Besides, thanks to several anthropological studies we know that the dismemberment of the
dead, the act of cutting the tendons and to tear the limbs, is a form of confirming the genuine death of
the cadaver and of preventing it from rising and returning to the world of the living108. In this sense,
within the mutilations intended at stopping the dead from returning to this world, we could include
the removal of the kneecaps, a peculiar practice that can be archaeologically documented by three
Late-Antiquity interments found in different parts of the city of Crdoba (feminine tomb 56 of Calle
Ambrosio Morales, feminine grave 7 of Avenida de Olleras, and a grave found in the Corte G del
RAF-TAV 1991). According to A. Ventura, this selective mutilation could have been performed by
the relatives during the burial probablemente para evitar as, con magia simptica, que su espritu
pudiera nuevamente levantarse109. However, from the anthropological studies carried out by M.D.
Garralda and T. Cabellos on the remains of the two women buried in Crdoba -in Avda. de Olleras
and Calle A. Morales-, it can be concluded that none of the analysed skeletal remains show signs of
cuts that may indicate a deliberate manipulation of the corpse or a particular quartering ritual110.
On regarding the absence of feet in eleven inhumation burials from another 4th century AD
Cordovan necropolis, A. Molina and I. Snchez suggest its interpretation as a possible magic-ritual
practice. Unfortunately we lack paleopathologic studies which allow us to determine if the loss
of the feet was fortuitous - due to accidental circumstances which disturbed the graves and the
remains- , or if the non existence of the lower extremities of the skeletons was in fact an intentional
amputation, which could be linked to immobilizing magic-religious activities or to judicial punitive
measures. Therefore, considering the problems of conservation of some of these burials and the lack
of an osteological study, I think that we should evaluate with caution the attribution of a magic-ritual
explanation to the absence of feet in these skeletons111.
3.3.- Decapitation
Archaeological evidence of decapitation in funerary contexts may take three forms: the head
may be placed in an anatomically incorrect position, usually between the legs or on the feet (figs. 2,
On the various meanings of the machalismos, cf. J.E. LENDON, Homeric vengeance and the outbreak of Greek Wars, in:
H. van Wees (ed.), War and violence in Ancient Greece, London 2000, 1-30. D. OGDEN, Magic, witchcraft, 2002, 162.
107
Cf. C. FARAONE, Binding and burying, 1991, 172-180, 189-205, figs. 3, 6-7.
108
Cf., for example, J. ORTEGA, Consideraciones sobre el descuartizamiento ritual, Verdolay, 3, 21-32.
109
A. VENTURA, Magia en la Crdoba romana, Anales de Arqueologa Cordobesa, 7, 1996, 150. ID., Magia y supersticin:
tabellae defixionum, in: D. Vaquerizo (coord.), Funus Cordobensium. Costumbres funerarias en la Crdoba romana,
Crdoba 2001, 194-195. On the three alleged cases of magic-ritual removing the kneecaps from corpses found in Crdoba,
cf. J.M. BERMUDEZ ET ALII, Avance de los resultados de la excavacin de urgencia en la calle Ambrosio de Morales 4,
recayente a la calleja de Munda (Crdoba), Antiquitas, 2, 1991, 58-59. F. PENCO ET ALII, Resultados del estudio de la
necrpolis romana excavada durante las dos fases de intervencin arqueolgica de urgencia desarrolladas en Avenida de las
Olleras n 14 de Crdoba, Antiquitas, 4, 1993, 49, 53. D. VAQUERIZO (COORD.), Funus Cordobensium, 2001, 169-171.
110
M.D. GARRALDA Y T. CABELLOS, Bioantropologa de la poblacin de la C.P. Corduba: primeros resultados, in: D.
Vaquerizo (ed.), Espacios y usos funerarios en el Occidente romano, Crdoba 2002, 377-378, pl. 2.
111
A. MOLINA AND I. SNCHEZ, Una aportacin a las necrpolis tardorromanas de Corduba: el sector funerario de la Calle
Lucano n 7 y 9 de Crdoba, Anales de Arqueologa Cordobesa, 13-14, 2002-2003, 377. On the explanation of the absence
of hands and feet in inhumations graves as a consequence of possible juridical amputation of body members, cf. J.L.
BUCKBERRY AND A.M. HADLEY, An anglo-saxon execution, 2007, 324-325.
106

211

6 and 14); it may be correctly placed although separated from the torso; or the head may be missing.
It is more complicated to ascertain whether the amputation of the head took place ante mortem or
post mortem, or even if it was a decapitation in the strictest sense, since the manipulation of the
head may have taken place when the body was already in the phase of decomposition. Contradictory
explanations have been given for this practice which, undoubtedly, had different meanings and was
caused by different causes depending on the chronological period and the cultural atmosphere.
According to R. Philpott, the fact that the tombs of beheaded persons found in Roman Britain
which are notably more frequent from the 4th century AD onwards-, mainly belong to infants and
old women who were buried in coffins with rich grave-goods, makes him interpret the decapitation
as a beneficial magic ritual intended at liberating the spirit of the dead, which would be related to
traditional beliefs of indigenous background. On the other hand, other scholars suggest that it may be
a punitive act since this was the method used to execute criminals and martyrs112. And there are some
scholars, like S. Chadwick and A. van Doorselaer, who interpret the decapitation of elderly women
as magic funerary rituals against witches113. For E. OBrien it could be a magic practice aimed at
preventing the ghost of a potential larva from causing disturbance, citing a text from the 12th century
AD which describes how, in an English town, the souls of two foreigners struck by lightning near the
village appeared to the inhabitants causing a serious epidemic, which stopped when the members of
that community, after asking the bishop for permission, opened their graves, decapitated the corpses,
put their heads between their legs, removed their hearts and covered their cadavers with earth. OBrien
also compiles other modern and medieval parallels: thus, for example, in the 19th century Gotland
the criminals were decapitated and were buried with their head between their legs to stop them from
appearing; and in 19th century Connecticut a person suffering from tuberculosis was beheaded when
buried to stop the disease from spreading114. In this sense, the hypothesis that the decapitation may have
been a magical action used as a precautionary measure or a posteriori- against larvae may be supported
by the fact that several of the decapitated corpses also shown other forms of immobilisation.
3.4.- Burials with multiple immobilisation rituals
For example, the 25-45 year-old woman of tomb B459 of the Late-empire cemetery (3rd 4th
centuries AD) of the East of Londinium was buried face down, with two great stones over her lumbar
region and another stone on top of the grave (fig. 5), possibly with the purpose of preventing the
body or the spirit of the deceased from abandoning her final resting place115. In the same cemetery the
woman of chalk burial B733 who was probably decapitated-, had her skull deliberately placed over
the pelvic cavity (figs. 2 and 14). And on her coffin, in the place where the head should have been, a
ceramic recipient containing an iron key was placed, and the casket and the ceramic urn were covered
by a large amount of stones whose size and number seem to indicate that they were meant to confine
the burial in the ground in some physical way (fig. 14). This interpretation would be reinforced by
the symbol of the key, since according to B. Barber and D. Bowsher, it could be a cult symbol of

On the different interpretations about the meaning of this practice in a funerary context, cf. G. CLARKE, The roman
cemetery, 1979, 414-421. R. PHILPOTT, Burial practice, 1991, 77-89. A. BOYLSTON, C.J. KNSEL AND C.A. ROBERTS,
Investigation of a Romano-British Rural Ritual in Bedford, England, Journal of Archaeological Science, 27, 2000, 244-253.
113
Cf. S. CHADWICK, Soldiers and settlers in Britain, Fourth to Fifth Century, Medieval Archaeology, 5, 1961, 8-9. A. VAN
DOORSELAER, Les ncropolies depoque romaine en Gaule Septentrionale, Brugge 1967, 131-132.
114
E. OBRIEN, Post-Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England: Burial Practices Reviewed, Oxford 1999, 6-7, 54-55. Cf.
other examples in R. PHILPOTT, Burial practices, 1991, 84-87; and P. ARIS, Historia de la muerte en Occidente. Desde la
Edad Media hasta nuestros das, Barcelona 2005 (1975), 171-175.
115
B. BARBER AND D. BOWSHER, The Eastern cemetery, 2000, 87, 323, fig. 114.
112

212

Epona or another deity, but is perhaps more likely to be a symbolic act to ensure the deceased entered
through the gates of the afterlife, or even given the elaborate grave parking and apparent post-burial
rearrangement of the corpse to ensure that the spirit remained locked in the tomb116.
In tomb X of the aforementioned Gallic-Roman necropolis of Gratte Dos an individual
was buried face down, and stones were placed over his limbs, knees and head, and a nail on the right
thigh, in what appears to be an unquestionable attempt at immobilising the corpse. Likewise, the
person buried in tomb XVIII of the same cemetery had also a nail on the right knee and stones on top
of him117. In the 7th century AD Merovingian necropolis of Audun-le-Tiche, the 3-4 year-old child
buried in tomb T120 had his skull pierced by a nail, and over his femurs a large stone slab of 70 x
40 cm was placed (fig. 27). This infant was buried re-using the tomb of an adult whose legs had also
been immobilised with a stone, which leads A. Simmer to wonder whether these two individuals may
have belonged to the same family which was stigmatised by the community. In the same cemetery, on
the knees of the person buried in tomb T158, whose skull was found surrounded by 3 nails, numerous
stones were also placed; and three large stones were placed on the speared adolescent of tomb T178,
who was buried with abundant grave-goods and with three stones placed around the pelvic cavity.
Both cases are, according to A. Simmer, magic-ritual practices of immobilisation of corpses118 (fig.
6). All these funerary practices recall, due to their aggressiveness and accumulation, the magical acts
performed on voodoo dolls (fig. 11), curse tablets and magic papyri to immobilise the subject of the
spells, which also combine various acts of immobilisation hands tied behind the back, decapitation,
twisted feet, stomach pierced by a nail, etc.; except that, on this occasion, it seems that the subject
and the recipient of such magical practices could be the dead person buried there.
3.5.- Chalk-burials
Several scholars have suggested that some of the chalk burials may have been intended at
magically fixing the spirit of the dead in their tomb. This type of burial is typical of 2nd to 4th century
AD Britain, where the corpses have a white substance similar to chalk around their body either
surrounding and/or covering the entire corpse or only along the edges of the coffin or urn made up
of calcium carbonate (calcite), small amounts of quartz, magnetite and gestite (figs. 2 and 26). There
is no consensus on the interpretation of these burials, since according to E. W. Black this doughy and
whitish mixture could be used to protect the living from the spirits of infants who had died prematurely
(fig. 26). Whereas, scholars like B. Barber and D. Boshwer suggest that the use of this funerary ritual
could simply be due to a fashion, whereas others like R. Philpott- argue that the choice of this type
of burial was linked to Christian scatology regarding the physical resurrection of the body, since by it
was intended for better preservation of the corpse, a problematic exegesis since in various cemeteries
it has not been established that this practice was exclusive to Christian groups119.
3.6.- Other practices
Finally I would not like to disregard other practices against the restless dead attested to by
Medieval and Modern anthropology and literature, which perhaps may have also been performed in
the Greek-Roman period: burying the corpse in an aquatic context or outside the community borders;
B. BARBER AND D. BOWSHER, The Eastern cemetery, 2000, 99, 134-135, 230, 317, 320, fig. 109.
R. RATEL, La ncropole gallo-romaine, 1977, 90, 96.
118
A. SIMMER, Le cimetire merovingien, 1988, 58, 145-147.
119
Cf. E. W. BLACK, Romano-British burial, 1986, 227. R. PHILPOTT, Burial practices, 1991, 93-95. B. BARBER
BOWSHER, The Eastern Cemetery, 2000, 99, 101-104, 320-332.
116
117

D.

213

boiling it in vinegar; cremating it and throwing the ashes into an aquatic context; blessing and/or
giving absolution to the corpse; and other acts which involve a progressive combination of all these
practices in case of reluctant spirits120.
4.- DISCUSSION
Taking into consideration all of the abovementioned, I think that both the archaeological
record and the ancient literary sources are eloquent enough by themselves to maintain that in
the Ancient world at least in the Roman Empire- magico-religious practices were performed in
funerary contexts revolving around the idea of immobilisation of the restless dead, and that they have
unquestionable parallels with other contemporary magical actions, such as curse tablets and voodoo
dolls (fig. 11). Some of these practices served as precautionary measures in order to prevent the dead
from becoming a larva and disturbing the living, whereas other actions possibly the more drastic
ones- seem to have been performed just after the larvae or lemures showed their malignant nature.
However, I do not claim by this that these practices were immutable or that they maintained the same
meaning in time and space throughout the Greek-Roman world. Actually, I believe that we should
rule out univocal explanations and favour polysemic approaches to this barely studied complex
world of magic-religious practices which have an unquestionable social dimension, and which are
invested with an emotional and affective impact that should not be underestimated or ignored121.
If, as pointed out by H. Williams, mortuary practices can be regarded as multi-vocal symbolic
performances by the living in response to, and interacting with, selective aspects of the deceaseds
identity, including age, gender, status, household and ethnicity, and according to V.M. Hope, the
normative rites were something to be adopted, adapted, elaborated, exaggerated or denied, the
deviant burials studied in this article may be considered as the response of mourners unable to
manage the abject emotions caused by the death. Perhaps when the orchestrated transformation of
the dead failed, the cadaver required distinctive, perhaps sometimes improvised, mortuary provisions
to deal with the situation122. Burials at the margins of a culture have much to say about the core values
of the society that interred them: as much as the normative provision of grave goods, these unusual
burials defined socially-accepted strategies for grieving and commemorating the dead, and reflected
the emotions, fears, believes and anxieties of a group and its individuals.
At least, with this study of what S. I. Johnston defines as magical solutions to deadly
problems123, I hope to have given a different although undoubtedly disturbing- perspective on the
traditional and stereotypical image of the Greco-Roman funerary rites, which only serves to highlight
its complexity and heterogeneity.

Cf. P. BARBER, Vampires. Death and burial..., 1988, 52-55, 71-73, 78-79, n. 72. N. CACIOLA, Wraiths, revenants, 1996,
15-23, 26-34. E. JOBB-DUVAL, Les morts malfaisants, 2000, 179-193.
121
As warned by V.M. HOPE, Contempt and respect, 2000, 126, yet, in speaking of the relationship between the living
and the dead in terms of power and control, there is perhaps a risk of losing sight of individuality and that every corpse was
unique. In fact individuality was the very key of this process: to honour the corpse or to abuse it was tied to the preservation
or destruction of individual identity.
122
H. WILLIAMS, The emotive force, 2007, 118-119. V.M. HOPE, Contempt and respect, 2000, 108.
123
S.I. JOHNSTON, Songs for the ghosts: magical solutions to deadly problems, in: D. Jordan, H. Montgomery y E. Thomassen
(eds.), The world of Ancient Magic. Bergen 1999, 83-102.
120

214