The Archaeology of Death in Roman Syria: Burial, Commemoration, and Empire
Cambridge University Press, 7/20/2017
EAN 9781107131415, ISBN10: 1107131413
Hardcover, 355 pages, 25.4 x 17.8 x 2.2 cm
Language: English
In the first centuries of the Common Era, an eclectic collection of plain and embellished underground and aboveground tombs filled the cemeteries of the Roman province of Syria. Its inhabitants used rituals of commemoration to express messages about their local identity, family, and social position, while simultaneously ensuring that the deceased was given proper burial rites. In this book, Lidewijde de Jong investigates these customs and the belief systems that governed the choices made in the commemoration of Syrian men, women and children. Presenting the first all-inclusive overview of the archaeology of death in Roman Syria, this book combines spatial analysis of cemeteries with the study of funerary architecture, decoration, and grave goods, as well as information about the deceased provided by sculptural, epigraphic, and osteological sources. It sheds a new light on life and death in Syria and offers a novel way of understanding provincial culture in the Roman Empire.
Introduction
1. Locating the dead
space, landscape, and cemetery organization
2. The tomb
architecture and decoration
3. Gifts for the dead
function and distribution of grave goods
4. The dead
bones, portraits, and epitaphs
5. Funerary beliefs
differentiation, continuity, and change in ritual
6. The global and the local
Romanization, globalization, and the Syrian cemetary
Postscript
Appendix 1. Sites
Appendix 2. Tomb types
List of online appendices.