1. Presentation

1From the 3rd until at least the 8th century CE, an individual might be buried in a diverse range of locations, either in or around towns and in the countryside. In general, most researchers insist on a considerable topographical continuity with respect to previous Roman burial areas which were located outside settlements (cities, villages and villas) and often close to main roads (Graham, Hope 2016 for a recent synthesis). In the cities, cemeteries were located outside the walls, generally following the main roads which connected the city with its territory. However, some changes can be discerned during the late Roman period. These consist, firstly, of a transformation from industrial or residential use of some suburban sectors outside city walls into their use as new funerary areas during the 3rd century; and, secondly, the penetration of burials into the intramural spaces of the cities, beginning in the 4th century, but most commonly in subsequent centuries.

2Both of these two phenomena, widely detected in the Western provinces, are connected to the more general subject of urban transformations in Late Antiquity and therefore have been widely debated since the 1980s (Harries 1992; Lambert 1997; Brogiolo, Cantino Wataghin 1998). However, no single explanation has been formulated, and the topic is further complicated by the quite vigorous debate on questions such as the 3rd century crisis, the extent of Christianity before Constantine (and even later), as well as the effects of destructions caused by barbarians and of their settlement in Roman cities.

3The aim of this paper is to look again at both processes of change, taking into account both old and new archaeological evidence, and new methodologies and interpretations - in some cases drawn from innovative analyses of bioarchaeological data – in order to illuminate their possible causes and interpretations.

2. Outside cities: the transformation of suburban sectors from industrial or residential use into funerary areas

4Although since the late 20th century it has become less fashionable to talk about the “3rd century crisis”1, archaeological indications suggest a decrease in new urban building projects from the first decades of the 3rd century and the first hints of a failure to maintain the existing public infrastructure, a situation which was aggravated by internal political turmoil and external invaders (Loseby 2020: 94-95). In the third quarter of the 3rd century, most urban centres show widespread evidence of fire damage and a more or less significant contraction of urban space, visible through the erection of new fortifications that generally encompassed only part of the urbanised areas of earlier centuries and continued through the 4th century and into the 5th. The immediate suburbs of the city, which were until then densely occupied and used for residential and productive activities, show, in many territories, signs of destruction and abandonment, followed by their conversion into new funerary areas.

5Recent excavations at Verona (Italy) attest, for example, that entire residential quarters outside the city, which had developed in the proximity of the city walls in the early imperial period, were abandoned and destroyed during the reign of Gallienus (253-268), in order to rebuild the fortifications and to create open space around them for security (Cavalieri Manasse, Bruno 2003: 51). The construction of the new wall - ordered by the emperor, as is recorded in an inscription (CIL V, 3329 = ILS 544) - was carried out in only eight months under the direction of Julius Marcellinus, possibly the urban curator, and the curator dux ducenarius Aurelius Marcellinus (Brogiolo 2011: 90-92). The city’s funerary areas also seem to have been reorganised at this point. Excavations at Piazza Corrubio (2011-2013), in the eastern suburb along the Via Gallica connecting Verona to Brescia, have brought to light a large monumental area originating sometime during in the 3rd century (Cavalieri Manasse, Meloni 2012; Cavalieri Manasse 2017). Excavations have uncovered some 450 burials comprising simple earth graves, stone or brick structures, and amphora burials (mostly for infants), as well as some mausolea and areae (delimited funerary spaces). A church dedicated to San Procolo was built later, at the end of the 5th century, perhaps as an evolution of an earlier cult space which could have developed around an important Christian tomb. It is difficult to say whether this area was conceived as a Christian cemetery from the outset (3rd century) or whether the delimited spaces inside the cemetery indicate some kind of religious differentiation among the graves. The burial in this area of St. Zeno, 8th bishop of Verona, and the nearby presence of a church devoted to one of Verona’s first martyrs, St. Procolo, the 4th bishop of Verona, could suggest a Christian character of the funerary area from an early stage.

6At Vienne (France), a suburban residential area and public baths of the ancient city, located at the Place de l’Egalité on the right bank of the Rhône, were abandoned and destroyed during the 3rd century (traces of partial fire are noted) and later occupied by a large cemetery (Granier et al. 2011 and in this volume). The necropolis was discovered and partially excavated during four excavation campaigns between 1982 and 1985 and has been the subject of bioarchaeological and archaeothanatological analysis in the 2000s. Examination of the health status of 219 preserved burials reveals that signs of trauma and infectious disease are extremely rare and there is only scattered evidence of caries and abscesses. The activity markers, which are generally very infrequent, mainly concern the lower limb: a large proportion of individuals, all of them males, present with a syndrome associated with horse riding. Most of the pathologies consist of hypoplasia of the dental enamel and degenerative joint damage, the latter linked to age rather than to activities. The funerary complex ceased to function in the first half of the 5th century, when a monastery (the Convent of the Ladies of Sainte-Colombe), attested by Sidonius Apollinaris and in the Life of Saint-Clare, was installed immediately to the east of the cemetery. Archaeological evidence suggests a link between the founding of this monastery and a small mausoleum or martyrium-type building under the preserved remains of the abbey.

7At Tarragona (Spain), a large suburban residential quarter 700 m west of the city walls was abandoned and reused as a funerary area from the 3rd century CE (López Vilar 2006). The thousands of tombs which developed from this initial area, including mausolea, sarcophagi, mosaic slabs, and inscriptions, all have a strongly Christian character. The multiplication of graves is attributed to the burial there at some point of Bishop Fructuosus, and the ecclesiastics Augurius and Elogius, all three of whom were martyred in the amphitheatre in 259 CE. A church with a baptistery was constructed by the year 400 CE and in the 5th century CE a larger funerary basilica (24.00 by 15.20 m) with a monumental atrium (20.75 by 17.50 m) and a number of subsidiary buildings were built to the north of the first Christian church, possibly becoming the 6th-century CE monastery mentioned in some sources.

8Archaeological data indicate that in the northeast suburb of Merida (Spain) a sector of suburban domus was abandoned between the end of the 3rd century and the beginning of the 4th and later reused as a burial ground. A rectangular shaped mausoleum with an apse and vault (Mateos, Sastre 2009) has been identified as the funerary monument in which the martyr Eulalia was buried according to the poet Prudentius (Peristephanon, III, 39). The later cemetery housed the graves of important Christian citizens as indicated by inscriptions, sarcophagi and funerary monuments dating to the second half of the 4th century. During the first half of the 5th century, widespread destruction and looting of the funerary structures took place, a phenomenon that has been connected to the Swabian destructions of 429 CE. In the second half of the 5th century, the tomb of Eulalia was included within a large basilica (Mateos 1999).

9Traditionally such abandonments of suburban industrial or residential areas outside the walls of cities have been linked to the insecurity caused by barbarian raids (Cantino Wataghin, Lambert 1998: 103). This hypothesis finds support in the massive construction of defensive walls (Rambaldi 2009 for archaeological evidence) that even used spolia from the funerary monuments of earlier cemeteries. These events led to profound transformations affecting the function of the suburbia of Roman cities and therefore also the organization of funerary areas which were partially destroyed. After that, but generally exact dating on the process is lacking, new cemeteries developed reusing areas of the suburbium which had been residential and/or productive quarters and now, being unprotected, had been abandoned.

10Without denying this possibility, it should be also noted that during the 3rd century another process took place in most areas of the Mediterranean: the development of large Christian urban communities. Although recent research tends to place the development of Christianity in the west from the time of Constantine onwards and sometimes even later, considering it a very slow process, several written testimonies attest that christian communities had already been expanding in the west since the 2nd century and that in the 3rd century many cities encompassed a well organised ecclesiastical structure and considerable number of faithful2. Although extensive archaeological evidence relating to the spaces where Christians met is still lacking (but I think it is more a problem of research that reality), a Christian iconography linked to the funerary realm has been widely documented already from the 3rd century. Bearing in mind that the Christian cult was profoundly linked to the concepts of death and salvation, it is difficult to accept that – as argued by Eric Rebillard (1993, 1997, 2009) and his many followers (Bodel 2009; Borg 2013 among others) – urban communities did not plan burial areas for the poorest faithful. In fact, several written sources clearly attest this. The subject has been well-reviewed by Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai (most recently in 2018) so there is no need to reiterate the evidence from Rome, where already by the end of the 2nd century3 written and archaeological sources attest the need to provide a burial place for Christians as well as to find adequate space for burials of the Christian community, where rites such as prayers for the deceased and funeral masses could be conducted (see Fiocchi Nicolai 2019: 67–69 but also Fiocchi Nicolai 2003, 2006, 2016).

11In Spain, where some of the earliest written Christian testimonies also relate to burial and the need to provide adequate burial spaces, new cemeteries established in the 3rd century generally continued in use during the following centuries and developed into large ecclesiastical complexes, usually related to the burial of some important Christian figure of the city (such as Fructuosus in Tarragona in the mid-3rd century and Eulalia in Merida at the beginning of the 4th). The Christian character of these graves cannot always be established for the 3rd century, but from the 4th century and even before any Christian building, they constitute some of the finest examples of Christian burial art in the form of sarcophagi, mosaics and epigraphy, in some cases because they were associated with a martyr cult. They therefore represent the first urban Christian cemeteries, probably begun in the 3rd century, when the Christian communities could acquire cheap land by taking advantage of the redefined use experienced by suburban areas. From the 4th and during the 5th century, these Christian cemeteries would continue to grow and be consolidated, with basilicas and monasteries appearing within them or in their immediate vicinity. Here, much of the Christian population in the cities, including bishops, aristocracies and other members of the religious and civic hierarchy, continued to be buried for centuries (Fiocchi Nicolai 2016).

12This pattern of extramural Christian cemeteries respected traditional legislation against intramural burial existing since the 5th century BCE.4 Changes to this pattern only appear from the 6th century, and most frequently in the 7th century when burials inside cities become a general feature. As we will see in the next chapter this evolution has possibly nothing to do with the development of Christianisation but most possibly with the arrival of populations that did not follow Roman legislation and also because urban areas had deeply changed with respect to the Roman and late Roman periods.

3. Inside the cities: scattered burials in urban contexts and the contribution of new multidisciplinary studies

13One of the most striking changes concerning burial customs and urban transformations during Late Antiquity that has drawn attention from researchers is the progressive development of intramural burials, a phenomenon that has traditionally been linked to processes of Christianisation, the construction of churches inside cities and particularly a change in the relationship between people and the bodies of the dead, especially those of martyrs and saints. This phenomenon was already noted by Father Fasola in 1958, and since then has been repeatedly quoted in studies of the end of Roman cities and analysed from a multitude of perspectives5. Most recent studies link it with the right (or not) of having a burial located in institutionalized funerary complexes (Bérard 2021). Informal burials would instead be located in housing or in artisanal areas, but most often remain invisible to archaeologists because they were isolated, modestly built or even deliberately hidden (Morris 1987: 104-109).

14The main problem which arises in the study and interpretation of these burials in Late Antiquity is the difficulties in dating them. Most are very simple funerary deposits in the form of earth graves, a capuccina or amphora burials, without grave goods. Chronologies are generally widely estimated as between the 4th and the 6th-7th centuries, two periods (separated by 200-300 years) in which the economic, social and political contexts were very different. ¹⁴C dating is therefore of primary importance in order to study this phenomenon.

15In Italy, where the subject has been widely studied, these burial plots were generally very small (between one and ten burials), with very simple graves (earth, a capuccina or amphorae in some cases), generally without grave goods and often located in abandoned private and public buildings. Rarely have they been absolutely dated. Their earliest - but very rare - appearance is from the 4th and 5th centuries, including the cemetery located by the Colosseum of Rome, which has been linked to the extraordinary circumstances of the sack of Rome6. They are much more frequently documented from the 6th century onwards, when some cities experienced different circumstances such as the Greco-Gothic war, the multiplication of abandoned areas, and the presence of a new non-Roman population.

16In Verona, 18 single burials dated between the mid-6th and 8th centuries have been documented at the abandoned Capitolium, comprising four adults (three men and one woman) and 13 subadults (six between 5 and 9 years old and seven newborns). The bioarchaeological study revealed evidence of serious nutritional deficiencies and a very precarious state of health (Bedini, Bartoldi 2008): cribra orbitalia and cribra cranii were present on three infant skeletons, while the dental enamel of some other individuals also shows numerous lines of hypoplasia, revealing nutritional deficiencies. In two individuals, the very high values of the strontium and carbon ratios seem to attest a diet based almost exclusively on the consumption of cereals, vegetables and roots, while the zinc concentration values are similar and very low compared to the norm, probably because they could not afford frequent consumption of meat or milk and dairy products. Finally, evidence of tibial periostitis (inflammation of the membranes lining the bones), found in one skeleton, and periodontitis (chronic inflammation of the gums leading to tooth loss) in another, could indicate vitamin C deficiency. This indicates a similar situation to other recently studied early medieval burials inside the abandoned Verona amphitheatre or in different areas of Brescia: many of them belong to individuals who died young, some before reaching the age of twenty, with strong signs of malnutrition and a very precarious state of health (Mazzucchi et al. 2014).

17These data therefore seem to confirm what Gian Pietro Brogiolo hypothesized years ago with respect to the burials in Brescia (Brogiolo 1997), based on their location and archaeological characteristics: that these are burials of people of low social status, in particular dependent workers or slaves, often employed in artisanal activities. Comparable data have been recently reviewed at other north Italian cities such as Pavia, Cividale, Piacenza, and Alba (Giostra 2014) and similar interpretations are also given to non-typical urban funerary contexts also in other geographical areas such as Poitiers, with very young deceased (preadolescents, adolescents and young adults) showing signs of malnutrition, growth delay, markers of occupational stress and after-effects of traumas. Again they have been interpreted as the servile young workforce of the nearby craft quarter, deprived of a normal community burial place (Galliena 2016).

18A similar but slightly different phenomenon occurs in cities where scattered burials appear in residential spaces which were originally part of the city but became suburbium when late Roman walls reducing the urban area were constructed. This is the case at Reims, for example, where due to the construction of the smaller urban wall, at the end of the 3rd century, part of the formerly built space was occasionally occupied by graves in the 4th century. At least 55 burials have been documented, mostly distinguished from graves in community necropolises of the city by their irregular orientation, different funerary architecture, and their lack of grave goods (Sindonino et al. 2016). Bioarchaeological analysis indicates an overrepresentation of men, an absence of non-adults and an abnormal number of unreduced fractures with complications7, which shows that they probably did not have access to any health care. Their proximity to industrial-artisanal areas could indicate, again, that these marginal burials, set apart from the community cemeteries, belonged to low status workers.

19It must, however, be emphasised that these marginal burials are not the only type found inside urban areas and thus there are many possible interpretations of this evidence, which reflects multiple ideological, social, and economic traditions. At Verona, the burial place of the first Lombard king, Alboin, was under the staircase of his palace according to Paul the Deacon (HL, II, 28) and in the same city a very high status female tomb dated to the beginning of 7th century was discovered in the area of Palazzo Miniscalchi/Cortalta (Curtis alta) (Cipolla 1907). At Cividale, also, a sarcophagus containing rich mid-7th-century grave goods was recovered in 1874, in this instance possibly associated with some form of public or elite building (Brogiolo 2001). The characteristics and grave goods of some of the burials recovered in Bergamo (via Osmano-vicolo Sant'Andrea) suggest that they belong to élite Lombards, who perhaps were linked to some kind of public building (Fortunati et al. 2014: 141-144).

20In sum, it seems clear that burial activity inside cities in the period from the end of the 6th century to the first decades of the 7th century CE is not linked to the presence of churches, nor is it an indicator of Christianization. In fact, it is notable that intramural churches, and in particular cathedrals, in Italy and Gaul did not attract formal burial grounds until a later date and never before the 7th century CE (for Italy, see Chavarría Arnau, Giacomello, 2014; for France, see Jourd’Heuil 2009; Margue 2006). Some of the earliest burials that have been found close to cathedrals rather seem to be linked to previous contexts, and therefore pre-date the construction of the church (in Geneva for example) or even date to a period in which the church could have been destroyed or temporarily abandoned8

21This is supported by recent research carried out in Padua at the 4th-6th century episcopal complex (Chavarría 2017), where 5 early medieval (7th-8th century) burials were investigated (Marinato 2017). The low social status of those interred in these burials is indicated by the consistent presence of millet in the early medieval levels (deduced from the archaeobotanical material, from the isotopes in the human bones and from the remains inside kitchen vessels), and bioarcheological analysis, in spite of the position of the burials (near the cathedral) which might superficially suggest a privileged context9. The anomaly is explained by the fact that when these individuals were buried, after the Lombard conquest of the city at the beginning of the 7th century, the episcopal complex was in a state of neglect, a hypothesis confirmed by the layers of destruction, burials and huts on which they are superimposed. Similar examples appear at other north Italian cities such as Alba (Micheletto 1999: 34), Trento (Guaitioli 2013: 116-21), Brescia (Breda 2007: 240-42), and Cividale (Borzacconi 2003).

22It is also important to note that the earliest 7th century CE graves that can be reliably linked to cathedrals probably belonged to lay elites and not to ecclesiastics. At San Salvatore in Turin, inhumations, which have been radiocarbon dated to between 660 and 770 CE, were identified as belonging to members of the military aristocracy of the city through osteological analysis (Pejrani Baricco 2003: 316). At Mantua, two monumental urban baptisteries that were in use during the 7th century CE were both linked to burials with weapons and particular gold grave goods that likely mirror high status, and possibly belonged to Lombard aristocrats (Manicardi 2015: 38–39, 56–61).

23Whether this pattern of diverse burial relates to a different conception of ancient laws or, perhaps, the different (Arian) Christian confession of Goths and Lombards is a subject that deserves further attention. Furthermore, all examples of elite burials cited in the previous paragraph come from northern Italy, a region in which Lombard settlement seems to explain the anomalous presence of privileged burials inside the city. An important avenue for future research will be to investigate whether similar patterns appear in regions within the Roman Byzantine territory, or those of different barbarian groups.

4. Conclusion

24The transformations which the Empire experienced from the 3rd century onwards due to political, economic and cultural events had an impact on the place and the way that people were buried. Although there is still a tendency to see the “material birth” of Christianity as taking place after the reign of Emperor Constantine during the first decades of the 4th century, there is clear evidence attested by written sources that Christianity had already expanded significantly from the 2nd century, leading to the multiplication of meeting and cult places during the 3rd century, as well as the organisation of particular areas in which Christian funerary practice developed. Christianity existed and developed within the structure of the Roman Empire, and therefore Christian cemeteries respected Roman legislation with regard to the extramural topography of traditional burial areas, i.e. their consistent location outside the city walls. With the intensification of persecutions during the second half of the 3rd century and at the beginning of the 4th, these cemeteries included the burials of martyrs which were later monumentalised. They ultimately became the seeds of Christian funerary basilicas and monasteries which attracted thousands of burials of the urban population, including the ecclesiastical hierarchy, aristocracies and most of the Christian urban population.

25The entrance of intramural burials into the urban space was a later process which has no relation to the process of Christianisation. Apart from very occasional instances in some cities, resulting from exceptional events such as the sack of Rome, intramural burials have rarely been securely documented as occurring before the 6th century, most cited examples being very uncertain in their dating. This phenomenon developed mostly from the 7th century on.

26The progressive abandonment of some urban areas could lead to their reuse for funerary plots, but generally the presence of scattered urban graves seems to be related to particular individuals who show elements of marginality, with extreme deficiencies in their diet and poor state of health, probably due to their low status because they were slaves or workers of very low social status and therefore were deprived of a formal burial. The location of these graves - generally in public areas devoted to industrial or productive use - seems to confirm this. Their chronology (6th-8th centuries) and the territories in which the phenomenon is documented in Italy suggest that these public areas were managed by Gothic or Lombard authorities, possibly less attached to traditional Roman burial practices and prohibitions.

27At the same time, scattered urban graves with no signs of marginality could also be related to a non-Roman population, as seems to be the case at Verona, Cividale, Bergamo, as well as in the cases of the first aristocratic burials related to episcopal complexes at Turin or Mantua, for example. In contrast, the Roman population continued, at least until the 8th century, to prefer suburban funerary areas linked to the first Christian martyrs as the place for their eternal rest. It is only from around the 8th century that the translation of the suburban relics to urban churches, due to the insecurity created by new barbarian raids, created the necessary conditions to subvert traditional customs (possibly even more than ancient laws) and led to the multiplication of intramural cemeteries linked to parish or the most important urban churches.