Unusual Burials

Please, note that this is a working paper still under construction.
It is shared only for the purpose

of discussion and improvement. Do not circulate. Szeged, Global Religion lecture, 22.09.2022.
RECONSIDERING UNUSUAL BURIALS

Rafael A. Barroso-Romero
Max-Weber-Kolleg, Universität Erfurt
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Abstract
In this paper I present the starting premises of my project. I try to justify the relevance
of my research and why I consider that my approach is suitable. To this end, first I
describe the different theoretical approaches from which the recognition of funerary
diversity in the Archaeology of Death has been addressed and how from there the
popular notion of "deviant burial" along with every assumption it implies, as well as the
arguments that have been considered when applying it in the Roman funerary world (1).
Next, I briefly describe how the use of the concept of deviant in Religious Studies
suggests that it is not the most appropriate one to call this type of burial (mainly
necrophobia and paleopathologies) (2). In the following section I put the Roman
funerary world into a cultural context by explaining the main ideas that exist about the
fate of the deceased after death (both those that arise from ritual action and from the
texts) (3). In the final section, I suggest that the direct recognition of funerary diversity
is the most appropriate way to understand the Roman funerary world in all its
complexity, and I suggest an approach focused on the study of religious materiality of
grave goods and how the material culture transforms the way in which the self relates to
the world (4).
Keywords: Unusual burials, Archaeology of Death, diversity, ritual, belief.
Please, note that this is a working paper still under construction. It is shared only for the purpose
Introduction
This text is meant to be included (after some changes) in the first chapter of my Ph.D.
project, in which I want to use anomalous burials as a case study to analyse the Roman
funeral ritual in the light of the concepts of material religion (Droogan 2013), religious
communication and theory of self-word relations. However, I have considered it relevant
both for the reader and for my thinking and research process to make an introduction
focused on presenting the different problems that arise when dealing with the study of
these types of burials. Some of them have clearly already been noticed by some
researchers and others have hardly been considered, but in any case, not all these
difficulties are of a technical-archaeological nature, but they are also of a theoretical
nature, especially if they are considered from the perspective of Religious Studies. In
other words, I understand that the reflections, questions, and conclusions based on the
study of other religions can be useful in rethinking the anomalous nature of these burials
and justifying the nature of my approach.
The aim of this paper is essentially to identify the problem to be studied, to define it as it
has been done by archaeology and to reconsider it from the point of view of Religious
Studies. To this end, I will argue that it is a conceptual tool developed by archaeologists
as a "jumble or miscellaneus term" used to refer that which is outside the conventional
and which, therefore, is difficult to explain and classify for archaeologists.
At the same time, it is also my objective to historically contextualize burials within the
framework of the complex world of death and the afterlife in the Roman world. My main
assumption, and one that I wish to argue here, is that the relationships that are established
between the dead and the living must be understood as part of the idea of the afterlife in
the Roman world. To this end, I will try to outline in a general way what the Roman
funerary world was like, and how the different practices that were set in place at the time
of death (some of which were maintained afterwards) were focused on keeping the
deceased integrated into society, which shows that the dead had the status of active social
agents. This can be particularly well understood if the different existing narratives of
death are described and contextualised.
1. From the identification of funerary distinction to unusual burials
Unusual or deviant burials are a recently identified archaeological problem that remains
one of the emerging research themes in the Archaeology of Death (Nilsson Stutz &
Tarlow 2013). Usually, but not always, its study has been approached from archaeometry,
a subdiscipline that uses methods and techniques from the Natural Sciences to get as much
information as possible from the archaeological record, among which osteoarchaeology
or bioarchaeology stands out particularly. In fact, it has been argued very recently as being
of the greatest value in distinguishing funerary anomaly (Scott, Betsinger & Tsaliki
2020).
2
However, the variability of mortuary rites was already theorised before the appearance of
the Archaeology of Death, with the inauguration of the basic theoretical framework of the
New Archaeology or Processual Archaeology: the Saxe-Binford model (Saxe 1970;
Binford 1971; 1972). Both authors argue that the funerary context is closely related to the
social structure, and specifically that the social status of the deceased in life is reflected
in the burial. For them, the differences in the treatment of the corpse should be assumed
in stratified societies according to the criteria of kinship, status, gender, and age, reducing
it to something anecdotal in hunter-gatherer societies. The social person of the deceased
(i.e., the set of social identities that the deceased maintained during his or her lifetime)
and the composition and size of the social unit that recognizes the social position of the
dead through their involvement in the funeral ritual determine the phenomena symbolized
in the ceremony. However, they also acknowledge that the ritual may be altered
depending on the causes and place of death, both of which change the obligations that the
group would have with the deceased (Lull & Picazo 1989, 9-14; Rodríguez-Corral &
Ferrer Albelda 2018, 93; cf. Brown 1995).
The criticism of this interpretative system, which was not at all the end of it (for its current
validity see Chapman 2013), came in the 1980s from the hand of Post-Processual
Archaeology, which adopted a post-modern tone to claim the study of difference.
However, the recognition of that difference does not apply so much to burials in general
(including the body and the effect of the group on it), but exclusively to the study of the
monuments and grave goods, seeking to answer questions such as why certain artefacts
and not others appear in funerary contexts (Shanks & Tilley 1982, 152). These studies are
approached from the perspective of structuralism, which sees material culture as a
structured set of symbolic differences whose meaning must be sought in the relationship
between material signifiers within a specific context outside of which they are
meaningless (Hodder 1982, 7).
Outside this structural framework of post-processualism, the obsession for the study of
material burial culture led academics to become interested in the relationships between
this culture and individuals and their emotions. To this end, J. Hoskins (1998) develops
the term "biographical objects" to refer to the capacity that objects have to accumulate
meaning, to bring the past to the present and be vehicles for the creation of individual
identities, even going so far as "seen as surrogate selves" (ibid., 7). By interpreting the
objects of the tomb as biographical objects, it is possible to see how they are much more
related to individual life stories than to social institutions 1, as Saxe and Binford suggested.
It is in line with these biographies of death where the full recognition of differential
funerary treatment is inserted as one of the main research lines in the Archaeology of
Death. In this regard, J. Robb (2007) emphasizes that variations in burials should be
interpreted in the light of individual biographies (as opposed to the notion of the social
1
J. Whitley (2002) puts this notion into practice in his study of the warrior graves of the early Iron Age in
Greece.
3
person), that is to say, in relation to the when, the how and the why of each death and of
each grave. Individuals are constructed through cultural and social practices, and each
biography is the "story of a particular body" (Robb 2007, 288). Each biography implies a
certain degree of diversity and, with it, an appropriated way of dying, and at the same
time the way of dying affects how each person's biography is understood. The different
biographies arise through a personal history in which a relationship between the body and
the set of objects that give meaning to that individual's personality come together, so that
when it ends, body and objects will have a coherent way of coming to an end.
However, despite the gradual identification of funerary variability and its theorisation, it
was not until T. Shay (1985) that some burials began to be referred to as deviant. This
author takes the notion of deviance from sociology (specifically from Durkheim):
there exists a body of anthropological literature concerning special circumstances
surrounding a person's death or the manner of his conduct in life which are
perceived in certain social systems as having breached the special relationships of
rights and duties between the individual and his community, with the result that
the deceased is not treated in accordance with his normal social persona but in
relation to the deviant circumstances of his death or his deviant behavior in life.
(Shay 1985, 221).
In this fragment we can notice the great influence that Saxe-Binford's structuralist model
had, since for Shay (ibid., 223) these burials are a clear reflection of certain forms of
social marginality, which is to say that they involve individuals whose behaviour was not
accepted by their peers, but was seen as extreme, and therefore generates specific
sanctions on the part of the group when they felt threatened or saw that the individual was
ambiguous as to the limits of socially acceptable behaviour. Deviance would then be
useful to society and would help to preserve it by helping to draw the boundaries of the
group's experience while providing a contrast to the norms of behaviour, which in no
society are totally delimited and need to be tested.
Finally, based on the ethnographic comparison, the author concludes that the criteria that
determine what is anomalous varies depending on the society studied, and that the
evaluation of the actions as deviant depends on the social person of the deceased, that is,
she again assumes that the individual social features of the deceased are present in the
grave. However, it makes a methodological warning that I consider of great importance:
"archeological material fails to reflect directly the behavioral context" (ibid. 236). From
a historiographical point of view, Shay's contribution is important for several reasons:
first, she establishes a normative theoretical pattern to address the study of anomalous
burials, based on the structuralist model of Processual Archaeology and on the notion of
deviance of Durkheim. Second, despite explicitly recognising that each society can
configure its own concept of deviance, Shay is essentialist in that she dictates her own
criteria to determine what should be associated with a deviant burial and what should not:
4
murderers, people who provided public services, those who died from illness, suicides,
those who died in battle or in a violent manner.
The following great methodological contribution to the cross-cultural study of these
burials is made more recently by A. Tsaliki in her Ph.D. (Tsaliki 2008a), of which she
published the theoretical and methodological insights (Tsaliki 2008b). Here she reflects
on the difficulties involved in identifying these burials in all cultures and periods,
proposing the following criteria: primary or secondary burials in places and positions
considered to be out of the ordinary when compared with the period and cultural group
to which they belong; mass burials, especially when they are related to a historical crisis;
those "associated with indicators of unusual ritual activity" (ibid. 2) (although she does
not define how to distinguish this type of ritual activity); cremations found in burial sites
and vice-versa; and finally, corpses with signs of death by crime, torture or ritual murder.
But, in addition, she elaborates an argument to try to explain these burials that has become
a commonplace in subsequent studies, especially those relating to the Roman world: the
idea that these are individuals feared by society, which creates ritual strategies to seal
them, tie them up or stop them (ibid. 3-6). These individuals would be criminals, women
who died giving birth, unbaptized babies... The general explanation is that this is due to
a set of very complex conceptions of society and religious beliefs, sometimes subject to
“folklore” or “superstition” (Murphy 2008).
In the case of the Roman world, the elements that have been observed when talking about
funeral deviance are the following: bodies placed in a prone position, presence of nails
piercing the funerary urn or the joints of the skeleton, chains around hands or feet, peri or
post mortem mutilation of the body and/or placement of its extremities in specific areas
(the head between the legs, the hands at the sides of the torso, the displaced kneecaps, the
feet above the neck...), the deposition of enormous rocks on top of the body, the
appearance of mutilated or sacrificed animals to be buried together with the deceased, or
cases in which several of these elements are combined. There are several hypotheses
about the meaning of these rituals in the Roman world, such as the absence of
professionals dedicated to preparing the body for burial or the weight of exotic indigenous
cultural substrates within the framework of Roman burial culture (Taylor 2008; Sevilla
Conde 2011; Vaquerizo 2014; Quercia & Caluzzo 2016; Alfayé 2018).
However, the most popular hypothesis so far has been the fear of the dead (necrophobia),
observed or unquestionably accepted by a great number of authors (Vaquerizo 2014;
Alfayé 2018; Quercia & Caluzzo 2015). It is inferred from the abundant presence of ghost
stories and revenants in ancient literature (under different names like manes, larvae or
lemures), highlighting authors such as Plautus, Ovid, Propertius, Virgil, Lucan, Porphyry,
Pseudo-Quintilian or Pliny the Younger (Tsaliki 2008, 6). Some also connect it to beliefs
of indigenous peoples (Vaquerizo 2009: 220-222) or to the instrumentalization of the
dead through tabellae defixionum (Alfayé 2009: 189-191). The common denominator of
this interpretation is the violence used to seal the deceased ritually in the face of the fear
5
that they will rise up, or that they will be used by someone to cause harm to the
community. Therefore, the meaning given to these funeral rituals, considered magical-
religious, would be apotropaic or preventive (Alfayé 2009: 214; Sevilla Conde 2011: 967;
Taylor 2008; Vaquerizo 2009: 211-212; Belcastro and Ortalli 2010: 39-42, 94-102 and
128). From the arguments of these authors, we can draw the conclusion that the main
objective of the funeral ritual would not then be to ensure the correct transition of the
deceased by giving him/her a new identity that would allow him/her to integrate into
society as a divine ancestor, but to prevent him/her from returning to the world of the
living in the form of a revenant2 to cause damage that was already evident in life due to
his anomaly.
In addition, some archaeologists openly acknowledge that anomalous burials are

becoming more and more common (Vaquerizo 2009, 221). It is clear that this fact will
lead to a progressive relativisation of the supposedly unusual behaviour, as they will
become numerous in the archaeological record. A good example of this can be found in
the Gallo-Roman necropolis of Valladas (Saint-Paul-Troîs-Chateaux, Drôme), from the
High Imperial period, where the corpses buried in prone position are the majority: 74%
(Bel 2002, 103-104). Of course, archaeologists themselves try to explain this by
recognizing the influences of the ritual traditions of indigenous peoples. In that case, does
it make sense to speak of funerary anomaly in certain regions influenced by alternative
habits to the romans? Does it make sense to speak of non-normative when it is not clear
whether there was an actual norm? Paying attention to the studies on religious deviation
in Religious Studies can help to clarify this.
2. Deviance in Religious Studies
The use of the term “deviant” in Religious Studies is taken directly from the Social
Sciences and refers to an emerging area of study in behavioral psychology and especially
in sociology and criminology (see Adler & Adler 2006; Johnston 2015). The term is used
to identify characteristics, qualities, and behaviours of an individual or group considered
unusual and, in any case, out of the norm. It also applies to socio-cultural beliefs, practices
and traditions that are perceived by the dominant culture as different from accepted
consensus or conventional behaviour. This points to differences that have no place in the
framework of mainstream culture, to the extent that they are not only unacceptable
differences, but also have negative connotations (Dellwing, Kotarba & Pino 2014).
However, as is the case with the term religion, there is still no scientific consensus when
it comes to establishing a definition of what deviance is, which among sociologists
implies an explicit recognition of real-world diversity itself. It is a phenomenon socially
constructed “by the populace at large and by agents of social control” (Goode 2015a).
The study of deviance should then focus on understanding the processes through which
2
For the terminological problems of the use of that term on the ancient world, see Felton 1999, 25-29; cf.
King 2009; 2020, 13-14; and sources in Ogden 2014.
6
societies “carve” deviance in the same way that sociologists try to define the concept. For
example, laws are a major source for the study of deviance, although the problem arises
because not all wrongdoing is deviance (e.g., minor street crime versus pedophilia in the
Western world), which would imply that deviance is in virtually every attitude, time, and
place (Leitzel 2015)3.
The point is, then, the emic gaze of exclusion, which is the main perception that can really
determine the deviation or even the anomaly within a society that defines its own
normality. This conception, which in studies of religious deviation has been called
reactivist, contrasts with that used for the study of the unusual burials, which as we have
seen is markedly normativist (also called objectivist) in defending that differential funeral
treatment obeys the rupture, conscious or not, of the norm. In this way if there is no rule,
there is no deviation either (Perrin 2001, 136-143). Therefore, in consonance with the
theoretical stance of Shay (1985), Tsaliki (2008), Murphy (2008) or Vaquerizo (2014) (to
name some), the study of these funeral deviations should focus on explaining why
individuals violate social norms and how this is reflected in the alteration of the funeral
norm.
Again, deviation would be indissolubly associated with that of "normal", standard, or
acceptable, against which practices and phenomena in general are assessed. And so, it is
used by scholars of religion to analyse, for example, religious minorities, that is, to refer
to beliefs and practices not shared by most faith traditions, but only if those mainstream
traditions specifically punish or reject the theology, practices, or spirituality of the
minority group, for instance the satanism or the queer for some religions (Johnston 2020).
I claim that we should not speak about deviance or unusual, but about diversity and
funerary individuation as a form of religious individuation (see Rüpke 2016), which is
much more fruitful to describe and to analyse how death rituals and dead are shaped and
defined. The notion of deviant has a deep negative connotation attributed to
contemporaries that becomes evident by observing its use in religious studies and
sociology. At the same time, the archaeological studies that have been made so far are
based on unprovable inferences (the intentional and almost generalised social exclusion
of certain patients in all cultures, and specifically in the Roman one) and on the search
for bone pathologies to identify abnormal burials associated with patients or those who
have received violent treatment during the ritual.
To reinforce this argument, some socially reprehensible behaviours have also been
considered (Vaquerizo 2010, 112), for which the following 1st century BC inscription
from Sarsina (Forlì-Cesena) has been used:
Horatius Balbus gives from his money to his fellow citizens and other inhabitants
(excluding voluntary gladiators -auctorati-, those who have committed suicide
3
Some authors stand up for this argument and name it the “death of deviance”. For the discussion, see
Goode 2014.
7
and those who have made dirty profits) burial lands ten feet long and ten feet wide
located between the Sapis Bridge and the upper inscription on the edge of the
Fangonianus estate. There, no one who wants to make a living tomb will be buried,
only those who are already dead, whose descendants will be allowed to build a
monument4. (CIL XI, 6528; own trans.)
Despite the dominant argument, in this inscription the exclusion is marked by the absence
of the ritual, specifically of a space to celebrate it, and not by any kind of differential
ritual treatment. It is evident that in Roman society there was reprehensible behaviour
with a profoundly negative connotation (Rüpke 2016), but if there is any funerary practice
which reflects deviant behaviour this is the intentional absence of the burial 5. However,
the traditional explanation in archaeology is to reinforce the argument of exclusion by
alluding to eschatological beliefs, specifically how the vision of the deceased's destiny
after death envisaged the possibility that they would adopt a potentially harmful identity
in their relations with the living. It is necessary to review more carefully this vision of the
afterlife from a historical-cultural approach.
3. Unusual burials in context

Considering that understanding the so-called deviant burials as a form of religious
individuation helps us to have a broader idea of Roman funeral ritual and the ways in
which material culture is used in it to transform the individual, it is necessary to argue
why relations between the dead and the living should be understood as part of the idea of
the afterlife in the Roman world. A vision of Roman funerary behaviour and the written
sources that inform us about the different ways of understanding the fate of souls in the
classical Roman thought allows us to configure an alternative view of Roman burials
insofar as it allows us to understand them, within the framework of a broad system of
beliefs, not as singular acts of deposition (the dominant insight in archaeology 6), but as
complex sequences of actions around the dead and their monuments in the rituals that
precede, accompany and commemorate death.
In Italy, burials are the most ancient practices that provide us with a tangible vision of
religion from the earliest times, most notably cremation in urns from the 12th century BC.
(Rüpke 2018: 39). If we go forward more than a millennium in time until we reach the
4
Horatius Balbus municipibus sueis incoleisque loca sepulturae sua pecunia dat extra auctorateis et quei
sibei laqueo manum attulissent et quei quaestum spurcum professi essent singuleis in fronte pedes X in
agrum pedes X inter pontem Sapis et titulum superiorem qui est in fine fundi Fangoniani in quibus loceis
nemo humatus erit qui volet sibei vivous monumentum faciet in quibus loceis humati erunt ei dumtaxat quei
humatus erit postereisque eius monumentum fieri licebit.
5
Cicero (Leg. 2, 42) is pleased that his enemies were tortured for their crimes and, as if it were the ultimate
punishment, were denied burial and funeral rites (iusta exsequiae). Virgil (Aen. 6, 327-328): Nec ripas
datur horrendas et rauca fluenta transportare prius quam sedibus ossa quierunt.
6
For example, for the archaeologists Rasmus Brandt (2015) “The deposition of the dead body is the main
objective of all funerary practices”. However, the existence of cenotaphs and its ritual use seems to show
the opposite idea (e.g. when Aeneas promises Palinurus in the underworld that they will raise a mound to
which they will honour him in Ovid, Aen. VI, 373-381).
8
Rome of the end of the Republic, we can see that, when studying the funerary
archaeological record, it is always associated with the set of rituals carried out in honour
of the dead, either at the time of their death and burial or throughout the year, both in
periodic and daily public ceremonies. The preparation of the body, the construction of
monuments, the recurrent libations, and banquets in commemoration of the deceased
(Lindsay 2001), the care of the grave goods and, in short, all the minimum infrastructure
required for the funus and for the subsequent celebration of the cult, express from the
material point of view the relationship between the living and the dead.
To such an extent that this relationship materialised that an important economic sector of
the society was specialised in everything related to the funerary world (e.g. the funenary
collegia, Bodel 2004; Lindsay 2000: 156-160; Toynbee 1996: 43-55), and even their
public and private management left a considerable mark on legislation and administrative
regulation (visible, for example, in the standardisation of funeral space by means of 12 x
12 foot burial lots; Vaquerizo 2010, 110-112; see Bodel 1994; Remesal 2002). All these
attentions, together with the interest in preserving the individual identity of the deceased
through the name (Carroll 2011) and the festivals of commemoration (Rosalia, Violaria,
Parentalia... Hesberg, Nowak & Thiermann 2015, 246-248), lead us to assume that the
intense concern for the correct burial of the deceased and for his memory would be based
on a series of ideological-religious principles (cf. Abascal Palazón 1991, 206-208).
Ideological because, undoubtedly, they obeyed, at least partially, the social conventions
(Hope 2009, 171-181) and the sentimental and moral ideals that the Roman family had
been shaping since the middle of the Republic (Dixon 1991; 1992, 133-137; Barber 2011,
9-10, 131-132). And religious because, on the one hand, such social norms were linked
to the obligatory fulfilment of the duties that each Roman incurred towards his family,
towards the res publica and towards the gods, expressed through the religious concept of
pietas (Saller 1994, 105-114). And because, on the other hand, to honour the deceased,
the idea of some form of post-mortem existence had to prevail. Thus, we can say that the
funeral ritual acts under the premise that death is not the end, it is not the instantaneous
destruction of the individual, but that there is an after, a new reality for the deceased (and
for society), an idea defended for instance by Cicero (Tusc. I, 27).
It is widely known that in the classical world in general, there was no normative
eschatological doctrine to act as a reference, but rather a set of visions that are becoming
more and more extensive thanks to philosophical criticism. It was precisely to this theme
that the first works on the fate of the individual after death were devoted, under very
generic titles that were however restricted exclusively to analyses of the philosophical
(Moore 1918; Cumont 1922; cf. Knight 1958, 229-233; see Segal 2004). Veyne (1990)
suggests that most Romans conceived of death as nothingness, and the grave as the eternal
residence of the deceased, although the sources reflect a wide variety of views, which
makes such an assertion far from categorical. In general, there are a number of popular
myths and beliefs that frequently appear in the classical writings where the afterlife is
discussed, and which serve as a starting point for authors to position themselves in favour
9
or against it and then present their personal reflections, but it is worth bearing in mind
that, as Edwards (2007, 6) suggests when referring to the literary production on death by
authors such as Virgil, Lucanus, Seneca or Tacitus, “This literature was read by only a
small proportion of the Roman empire's population - those with a high level of literary
education. It was produced by an even narrower circle”.
Often, those dedicated to the study of the Roman afterlife focus their analyses almost
exclusively on the different spaces of destiny of the dead (León 2000; Zannini 1994),
deliberately omitting beliefs related to the soul, so that they seem to forget that the
development of a theory on a post-mortem form of existence requires a concept that
defines or alludes to that part of the individual that, although existing in life, remains once
the body is lost, and that determines to a great extent the new nature acquired by the
deceased. This notion, in the Latin language, is that of anima. However, its presence in
Latin texts lends itself to confusion with an identical noun, but opposite in its grammatical
gender: animus. What is the difference between the two? Does their semantic field
correspond to our field of “soul”?
Unfortunately, a monographic study on this term and its evolution throughout ancient
Latin literature and epigraphy, as well as its impact on the Roman religious mentality, is
still lacking. The reason for this may be found in the fact that, traditionally, it has been
assumed that the Latin notion of anima, especially from the 1st century BC onwards,
became a mere translation of the Greek concept of ψυχή because of the great influence
that the different philosophical schools of pre-Roman Greece had on Roman intellectuals.
Perhaps that is why the Oxford Classical Dictionary (Hornblower et al. 2012, 1387) refers
exclusively to the Greek term (starting with Homer) and especially to the schools that use
it and have very different characteristics7.
In any case, the marked scepticism about the immortality of the soul characteristic of the
Epicurean and Stoic schools must have made a mark on the mentality of the Roman elites
between the first centuries before and after the Christian era (cf. Bryan 2011, 20 ff.),
which explains the doubts and nihilism present in some funerary inscriptions (Toynbee
1996, 33-34) such as “si vivunt animae corpore condito vivet pater noster noster sed sine
nos” (CIL VIII, 27279); “omnia cum vita pereunt et inania fiunt” (CIL X, 2311); “nihil
sumus ut fuimus mortales dispice lector in nihil ab nihilo quam cito reccidimus” (CIL VI,
26003) or the common formula “non fui, fui, non sum, non curo” (e.g. CIL XIII, 530; CIL
VIII, 3463). However, since it is almost exclusively the elites who express eschatological
7
Pythagorism (and from it, Platonism), which sees it as an essential element in its theory of reincarnation,
hence making it live independently of the body (Bremmer 2002: 2); Epicureanism, which assumes that the
soul, being matter, disperses completely at the moment of death; and Stoicism, which understands that after
death the soul disappears when absorbed by the impersonal force of the universe (M. Aurelius,
Medit. IV, 21). The philosophical debate focused primarily on ethical issues rather than trying to define its
characteristics as disembodied entity (see Hope 2007: 212-215).
10
thought, it is only possible to trace a vague sketch of what most of the population of the
empire would believe, for as Toner (2009, 43) points out:
Funerary inscriptions can give us some idea about how those of the non-elite who
were wealthy enough to afford such things felt about life beyond the grave. Even
if these phrases are often formulaic, the formula did still have to be selected by
the customer and so in some way reflects his or her views.
Even so, the present problems in translating anima and animus can help us to get an idea
of the origin of both and the variation of their meanings (cf. Count 2014: 236). Similarly,
they exemplify very well the problems that arise when we try to project our way of
conceiving the soul (a notion with Jewish and Greek roots that considers it the spiritual
and immortal substance of each person, where the identity and character reside) onto
mental categories of societies different from our own and distant in space and time.
Among the first references that can be found in Latin literature on the ontological dualism
body/soul, those of the Roman historian Salustio stand out (Iug. 2.1)8, who separates and
confronts body and soul, and says that the affairs of the one do not belong to the other,
i.e., that they are different entities that attend to different aspects of the human being.
However, in the same text, but a little earlier, he had used the term animus with the same
meaning (Iug. 1.1): “Sed dux atque imperator vitae mortalium animus est”. This allows
us to exemplify that, as Conde (2014, 234-235) states, during the first century B.C. both
terms were confused and disputed the semantic field of “inner life” or “inner vital
energy”. But the point about these texts is that they reflect the idea that it is in the
animus/anima where life resides, and with this it becomes a defining element of death. In
fact, part of this meaning is due to the Greek concept, something that is evident in certain
fragments of the tragic poet Accius (Trag. 296), who, unlike Salustio, far from confusing
masculine and feminine, contrasts them: “Sapimus animo, fruimur anima: sine animo
anima est debilis”. The author subordinates the anima, an irrational and sensitive vital
energy that allows us to enjoy, to the animus, rational and intellectual faculty thanks to
which we can know. “Animus is concerned with consciousness and anima has nothing to
do with consciousness” (Onians 2000, 169). This notion of anima would therefore inherit
the Homeric ψυχή, also called "free soul" by Bremmer (1983, 22-24): a vital principle of
an aerial nature (of Indo-European origins and related to the Greek ἄνεμος, "wind"), the
breath that is expelled by the mouth at the moment of death: “Tum subinde leui dolore
hoc anima corpus liquerit” (Accius, Trag. 605). Conde (2014, 235) argues that this
eagerness on the part of certain authors from the Republican era to confront both terms is
explained by the fact that the meanings attributed to them “are not the usual business of
everyday language”.
8
“Nam uti genus hominum conpositum ex corpore et anima est, ita res cunctae studiaque omnia nostra
corporis alia, alia animi naturam secuntur. Igitur praeclara facies, magnae divitiae, ad hoc vis corporis et
alia omnia huiusce modi brevi dilabuntur; at ingeni egregia facinora sicuti anima inmortalia sunt”.
11
What was then usually meant by such terms? When Cicero (Tusc. I, 19, 6-9) briefly
explains the different conceptions of the soul which coexisted in his time, he assumes that
the confusion between anima and animus is a widespread situation among the Romans,
which seems to end in a predominance of the feminine word over the masculine one;
although later on the speaker explicitly distinguishes one from the other, but he deos not
rule out the possibility that they are equivalent (Tusc. I, 24, 1-4): “nam si cor aut sanguis
aut cerebrum est animus, certe, quoniam est corpus, interibit cum reliquo corpore; si
anima est, fortasse dissipabitur”.
What is clear in all these authors is that anima/animus is an element that is opposed to the
tangible and perishable body, and so it is stated in the funeral epigraphy of the first and
second centuries A.D., where the immortality of the soul, contained in the air, and the
subterranean destiny of the body, expressed as essential components of the human being,
constitute one of the most recurrent topics (cf. Hernández Pérez 2001, 108-114): “terra
tenet corpus nomen lapis atque animam aer quam melius fuerat” (CIL III, 3247); “non
est itura sub umbras caelestis anima mundus me sumpsit et astra corpus habet tellus et
saxum nomen inanae” (CIL VI, 12087); “corpus habent cineres animam sacer abstulit
aer” (CIL III, 6384). From these documents, it seems that the widespread belief (widely
nuanced by philosophers according to their thinking) is that the soul (anima) eventually
becomes the defining principle of death after its separation from the body, a conclusion
expressed by both Cicero (Tusc. I, 9, 18: “sunt enim qui discessum animi a corpore putent
esse mortem”), Accius and Plutarch (Cons. Apoll., 121D-E), who assumes the Platonic
idea that death is the separation of soul and body.
But, after that separation, was the survival of the anima an equally widespread belief?
Sources indicate that it was, and there seems to be agreement among scholars (Alfayé
2009, 182; Hope 2009, 119; Knight 1958, 233-235; Ogden 2001, xvii; Toynbee 1996, 34;
Vaquerizo 2014, 216-217…). In the face of this, there is no consensus on the space to
which souls were relegated. For example, Cicero (Tusc. I, 12, 27) mentions, referring to
the inhabitants of Latium at the beginning of the Republic, that they thought that the soul
remained in the tomb. However, in the 1st century B.C. the standard was different,
although the rituals that considered the tomb as the eternal home of the dead were still
observed.
It now rests to resolve how it was and where the place where the animae went once they
were separated from the body. What is certain is that, as with the soul, there was no unitary
conception of that space beyond the grave. Tradition transmitted a mythical, fabulous
vision, which was perpetuated above all by the poets. Lucian of Samosata ironically
claims that the beliefs in the Greek myths of the afterlife were deeply rooted in the Roman
world of the 2nd century AD (Luct. 2) to the extent that they were expressed in funeral
rites (Luct. 10) in the form of a coin placed in the mouth to pay Charon. However, this
rejection of the myths is only an implicit recognition of the pleasant reception they had
in the popular Roman imagination at least since the end of the 3rd century BC, for which
12
we have the testimony of Plautus, who in several of his works speaks of the underworld
and of paintings that mention its horrors: “nam me Acheruntem recipere Orcus noluit,
quia praemature vita careo” (Mos. 499-500); “Vidi ego multa saepe picta, quae Acherunti
fierent cruciamenta…” (Capt., 998-999). If it were not for this popularisation of mythical
visions, we cannot understand the intense concern of other intellectuals such as Cicero
(Tusc. I, 5, 10), and later Seneca (Cons. Marc. 19, 4-5), to distance themselves from them,
considered to be clearly implausible. Even so not all intellectuals dismissed the myths;
Plutarch (Cons. Ap. 121A-E) implicitly claimed their usefulness for consolation in the
face of the death of a beloved person.
This mythical universe (to which, as has been said, a large part of the scholars who link
the unusual burials with necrophobia or the dead in strange conditions allude) is
mentioned very infrequently in the epitaphs and is mostly presented in poetic
compositions, which may lead one to think that it is a recurrent poetic theme rather than
a well-established belief among the elite. In any case, the fact that it was the most
popularised vision does not mean that it was the most accepted among intellectuals.
However, the key element for my research (besides the funeral ritual), and in the
framework of which it is important to understand the unusual burials, is the cult of the
dead, who, especially in the annual festivities of the Parentalia and Lemuria, seem to
have adopted the name of manes. Likewise, almost all the epitaphs from the 1st century
BC to the 3rd century AD (and even many from the Christian period) refer to the manes
by means of the dedicatory formula Diis Manibus Sacrum or any of its variants (even
some epitaphs in Greek present the Latin dedication); the abundance of references can be
exemplified by the study by Tantimonaco (2017, 284), which gathers a total of 808
epigraphical records relating only to the Regio X Venetia et Histria, or from the study by
Pastor Muñoz (2004, 387-388) on Baetica, where 652 are recorded. The situation is the
same in the rest of the territories, to which are added constant references by classical
authors, especially poets such as Ovid, Virgil, or Statius. However, despite the relative
abundance of sources, there are not many monographic studies on the manes. According
to King (2009, 96-97), one of the causes of this is the conflict between Roman practices
and the religious categories with which today's academics work, who, influenced by
Christian models of death and the afterlife, tend to define the afterlife according to its
resemblance to Heaven or Hell (e.g. Hope 2009, 97) rather than according to the potential
interventions of the dead in the world of the living, which are directly misinterpreted as
exclusively negative, i.e. as “ghosts” or “ancestor spirits that remain among the living and
have negative connotations for them” (Guzmán Almagro 2013, 184). An argument
supporting this is a well-known etymology given by Varro that has led many authors to
interpret that the usual thing was to be afraid of the manes, and that their name would be
made by antiphrasis (Grimal 1991, 332) in order to keep them away: “Diei principium
mane, quod tum manat dies ab oriente, nisi potius quod bonum antiqui dicebant manum”
(Varro, Ling. lat. 6, 2: “The beginning of the day is called mane “morning”, because then
13
the day flows (manat) from the east, unless it is more because the ancients called manum
to that which is good”; own trans.).
This introduces the complex debate on the nature of the manes, which is further illustrated
by the various and controversial translations of the term: in English, it is customary to
pour it from Latin as “spirits of the dead” (Chioffi 2015, 642; Carroll 2006, 4; Hope 2007,
226; Gardner & Wiedemann 1991, 99-100). However, when translated into other
languages, the Latin term is usually kept as a noun used only in the plural, which has led
to the understanding that the manes constituted a community of the dead without identity
(Cumont 1922, 72; Toynbee 1996, 35). Each of these translations carries with it a
statement of the destiny of the souls and the nature and identity of these entities from
beyond. By qualifying them as spirits, the divine character represented by the term Dii is
abandoned and relegated to a mere title. Although some scholars have described them as
intermediate entities like the Greek heroes (Beard, North & Price 1998, 31; Tantimonaco
2017, 18), they were, above all and as King (2009; 2020, 5-14) has largely demonstrated,
gods. And they were not so because of a public declaration as such, but because of their
own conceptualisation, which allowed them to be named and treated as gods without
reservation and for all purposes, as was made clear in the legislation, which recognised
the rights of the manes gods as something sacred (“deorum manium iura sancta sunto”,
Cic., Leg. II, 22). It is precisely the ritual that I intend to study in my project that allows
a person to be conceived as a god, and for this it is necessary to understand it from a
relational perspective in which material objects and the body hold a key position.
4. Alternative questions, alternative discussions

The Saxe-Binford model is still today, in the last instance, the dominant theoretical
starting premise in the interpretation of anomalous burials, as the more generalised term
"deviant" itself shows. According to this approach, they are individuals who were feared
or rejected by their society, and therefore a reflection of the social person of the individual
in life, a notion founded on structuralist sociology. And although their illnesses could be
considered as "stories of particular bodies" (using again the individually focused
theoretical notion of Robb 2007), in the end they are reduced to conditions of the public
treatment they should have had. The most recent studies on such burials, although they
renounce the negative denomination of "deviant" and adopt that of "atypical" or "non-
normative" (Betsinger, Scott & Tsaliki 2020), They seek to apply osteoarcheological
analyses to detect pathologies that will reinforce this essentialist argument that people
with severe physical and psychic ailments, as well as particularly reprehensible
behaviour, were isolated from society or, in a similar explanation, placed on the limits of
what is acceptable and this was reflected in the ritual. However, while I do not reject the
possibility that many of the anomalous burials identified have an explanation of a
"magical-religious" nature (for me, the explanation is clear, for example, of the use of
14
nails to bind or seal the deceased in certain ancient contexts 9), I find that the obsession
with explaining unconventional funeral practices using necrophobia or fear of the dead
as the main argument is a (well established) sensationalist tradition. In fact, Morris (1992,
71) already commented several decades ago on the disproportionate attention paid by
archaeologists to the eccentricities of Roman funeral ritual. Also, Aspöck (2008) suggests
that because of the exceptionality of unusual burials, there has been a tendency to interpret
these rituals as anomalous because they are exotic to our Western perception.
I claim that such alternative ways of carrying out the ritual must be seen from the
acknowledgement of diversity in the interaction between the living and the dead. Such
interaction is not always ritualised, sometimes it is spontaneous, like the dismantling of
graves for the construction of houses10. Both ritualized and spontaneous relationships
have one factor in common: they are based on a specific attitude towards the deceased,
their space and their agency. However, in the ritual treatment of the body this attitude is
involved and brought into action through a system of relationships (sometimes resonant)
made up of space, artefacts, the body, divinity, and belief, in which all are connected and
in constant influence and transformation. The study of funeral ritual from the
Archaeology of Death has so far focused on analysing how objects are manipulated by
individuals and what the socio-economic and sometimes religious explanation is for these
behaviours. On the contrary, I do not attempt to explain the meaning or function of a
behaviour, but I start from the idea that ritual establishes a network of relationships whose
study can be enormously enriching for an alternative understanding of the world of death
in antiquity. In this sense, Robb (2013), recognising his deep fixation on the study of the
body, makes it very clear: until now archaeologists have not made an Archaeology of
Death, but an archaeology of dead bodies and grave goods. I suggest that, in order to
understand death, it is necessary to study how it was shaped through action, but also
through relationships.
Consequently, Roman unusual burials need to be reconceptualised, as they were neither
deviant nor infrequent, but were ritual strategies commonly developed by society to
reintegrate certain members of the community (the deceased) into the framework of its
worldview. Normativity is not a useful category for the study of these rituals.
Furthermore, these burials are privileged sources to study the diversity of material
elements that were integrated in the funeral ritual, individual innovations (personal
choices, inventions) that are adopted to face certain contingencies of life, and which in
this case would be a desired post-mortem fate for the deceased. It is a ritual that should
9
For the ritual use of nails on corpses, see Alfayé 2010.
10
The popular use of the epigraphic formula (h)oc (m)onumentum (h)eredem (n)on (s)equetur (“this tomb
will not pass to the heir(s)”) shows that it was a widespread practice (see Chioffi 2015, 639-640). In Colonia
Patricia Corduba two twin mausoleums (first half of the 1st century AD) are preserved. One of them was
built on top of an earlier small tomb (which was not destroyed), the other was removed a century later to
build a house (Ruiz Lara et al. 2002).
15
not be understood as static or fixed (standardised for some archaeologists), but rather
dynamic and subject to changes.
Each unusual burial shows a different type of individuality through material things. Our
understanding of the funeral ritual will be transformed by recognizing that the materiality
of the material things was a central point in the way of doing, in the execution of the ritual
activity, and that it conditions new forms of relationship between the world and the self.
The forms through which the individual relates to the world are defined by the materiality
of the ritual. In other words, we can better understand how these rituals are actively
carried out not only through the actions of the human agents in communication, but also
by the agency that is generated because of the active combination between participants
and the material things. The formers include rocks, nails, the goods of the tomb, the
cemetery, the body (which is not the only constituent element of the deceased, and which
adopts a new cosmos after death and a different one during the ritual). I will focus on
examining the relationships between human and more-than-human things established
during the ritual, with particular attention to how these engagements produced religious
agency. Therefore, I will suggest that certain changes occurred in the world when humans
and things come together in ritual, elements that we rationalise through the concept of
religion.
Finally, the review of sources and practices made here also allows for the introduction of
the argument (that will be extensively discussed in further colloquia) that the dead is an
“unbounded person” (Bloch 1988, 11-15; Waldner, Gordon & Spickermann 2016, 8) and
their constituent elements continued existing at different places and in different forms
after dead. The study of the ultimate rite of passage, the burial, will allow to identify what
is the active role of the contextualised objects in it, how it contributes to the multi-layered
identity of the dead and how the religious communication is agentically generated.
16
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RECONSIDERING UNUSUAL BURIALS

In addition, some archaeologists openly acknowledge that anomalous burials are

2. Deviance in Religious Studies

3. Unusual burials in context

4. Alternative questions, alternative discussions

(eds.) TRAC 2015: Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Theoretical Roman

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