Magical practices? A non-normative Roman imperial cremation at Sagalassos

Abstract

Many thousands of burials have been excavated from across the Roman world, documenting a variety of funerary practices and rites. Individual burials, however, sometimes stand out for their atypical characteristics. The authors report the discovery of a cremation burial from ancient Sagalassos that differs from contemporaneous funerary deposits. In this specific context, the cremated human remains were not retrieved but buried in situ, surrounded by a scattering of intentionally bent nails, and carefully sealed beneath a raft of tiles and a layer of lime. For each of these practices, textual and archaeological parallels can be found elsewhere in the ancient Mediterranean world, collectively suggesting that magical beliefs were at work.

How do we document the past countryside?

“…4). This last context provided a unique case study for which the experience of several scientific disciplines would have to be combined in order to complete the puzzle (Claeys et al 2023). The excavation exposed an area covered by 24 tightly fitting bricks; each brick measuring on average 40 x 40 x 5 cm, thus covering a surface of roughly 2.4 x 1.6 m. The bricks themselves were originally covered with a thick layer of slaked lime, of which large chunks were encountered in situ and in the surrounding layer.…”