A Roman necropolis in Barcelona reveals the food used in funerary banquets and in offerings for the dead

 

IMAGE: TWO ADULT BURIALS FROM VILA DE MADRID NECROPOLIS. view more 

CREDIT: MHCB, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0271296

 

Ancient Roman funerary rituals and food

The afterlife in Roman religion was the milestone that had to be reached after death upon complying with several funerary rituals. Part of these rituals consisted of funerary offerings, banquets and sacrifices of animals, performed to ensure the protection of deities and the memory of the deceased [1–4]. Written sources (Pliny, Epist. IV, 2; Cicero, De leg. II, 22, 55–57; Tacitus, Ann. VI, 5; Petronius, Satyrion 65) show that only when a pig was sacrificed was a grave legally a grave. They also indicate that on the same day of the funeral, a funerary feast was eaten at the grave in honour of the dead and offerings of food were left at the tomb. There was also the cena novendialis eaten at the grave on the ninth day after the funeral. Throughout the year there were also other occasions on which the dead were commemorated by funerary meals eaten at the tomb by their relatives and friends, such as their birthdays or several annual festivities (Parentalia, Lemuria, Rosalia) in which a lamb could also be sacrificed [1, 5]. At all of these banquets, the departed had their share set apart for them.

Therefore, through written sources we imagine that banquets and offerings were an important part of the funerary rituals in antiquity. Archaeology has validated this idea. Graves, whether for inhumation or for cremation, are documented widely to have contained holes or pipes through which food and drink could be poured down directly on to the burial, such as at Colchester (UK) [1], Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer (France) [6], Ostia (necropolis d’Isola Sacra, Italy) [7], Tipasa (Mauritaina) [8] or Carmona (necropolis of Puerta de la Sedía, Spain) [9]. Ceramics, faunal and plant remains from these banquets and offerings have also been thoroughly recovered from the necropolis floors and inside the graves. Some examples are the necropolis of Nimes in France [10], the ‘Mausoleo di Blanda Tortora’ in Pergolo in Italy [11], the Eastern cemetery of London in England [12] or the necropolis of Valentia in Spain [13].

Taking into account the importance of these rituals, with this paper we want to take a step deeper into their research. The aim of this study is to investigate whether the funerary rituals involved special food that differed from the every-day diet, or conversely, if what was consumed as food in everyday life was also used in the mortuary meals and ceremonies. To accomplish this, we selected the collegia funeraticia area of the necropolis of Vila de Madrid (Barcelona, Catalonia), in use between the first half of the second century AD and the mid third century AD.