Death preoccupies every society and people's deep-rooted beliefs regarding their mortality are reflected in the rituals that surround the disposal of the dead. This module examines how the dead were treated in the Roman Empire and how people's perception of death and the afterlife changed from the first century BC to the fourth/fifth centuries AD. The historical and archaeological sources will be explored together and students should expect to acquaint themselves with the work of contemporary writers and tombstones, as well as the evidence from burials and cemeteries. METHODS OF TEACHING :10 Lectures and 1seminar. METHODS OF ASSESSMENT: 1 hour written examination (60%) (Spring) and coursework (40%).

On completion of the module a student should be able to demonstrate:

• A knowledge of the main events in the history of the most important Etruscan cities, and an understanding of their geographical context.
• A knowledge of the archaeological, epigraphic and numismatic evidence for aspects of Etruscan society such as political organisation, social and economic life, religious activity and ethnic identity.
• An ability to assess the historical implications of this evidence.
• A knowledge of the ancient literary texts that deal with the Etruscans and an awareness of the perspectives embodied in them.
• An ability to compare and combine this information with the picture of the material evidence.
• An ability to discuss these issues in written work with coherent and logical arguments, clearly and correctly expressed.

A variety of methods will be used throughout the course, including formal lectures and student-led discussion of important topics in seminars.

Lectures:
The aim of the lectures is to provide an introduction to a particular topic, establishing the key points of major course themes, identifying important issues and providing guidance for more in-depth reading. The lectures aim to provide a basic framework for understanding and should be thought of as useful starting points for further discussion and individual study. Where appropriate, handouts and other materials may be distributed to reinforce the material discussed.

Seminars:
The primary aim of the seminars will be to generate debate and discussion amongst students. Seminars for each of the course topics will provide an opportunity for students to analyse and further discuss key issues and topics relating to module. Handouts will be made available prior to the seminars.

To explore Roman attitudes towards death and how these were manifested in the burial of the dead from the first century BC to the period after the adoption of Christianity in the fourth century. Furthermore, to develop the knowledge and skills required to understand and interpret the disparate archaeological, historical and anthropological evidence relating to this subject. Ultimately the goal is to use this material in order to better understand contemporary Roman beliefs associated with death

The assessment methods for the module should be detailed here (both formative and summative), including any distinctive features (e.g. major project work). You should explain how the modes of assessment will enable all students to demonstrate achievement of the module learning outcomes, indicating which learning outcomes are addressed in each assessment task.  Any academic or competence standards which may limit the availability of adjustments or alternative assessments for disabled students should be clearly stated.

Type of assessment    % Contribution    Title     Duration (if applicable)  

Summative                       50                   Essay     max        2000 words

Summative                       50                 Written examination   1.5 hours

The opportunity for reassessment in this module - Students who fail the module will normally be expected to re-sit the failed component(s) in the summer re-sit period; in some circumstances reassessment will be by coursework.

• The Etruscan background
• Roman funerals and Imperial deaths
• Physical processes of death and decay
• Tombs and cemeteries in Roman Italy
• Signs and Symbols in funerary architecture
• Anthropology and Ethnography
• Mortality and demographics
• Burial in late Iron Age and early Roman Britain
• From cremation to inhumation
• Burial in the western Roman Empire
• The Catacombs
• Burial in the eastern Roman Empire
• Burial in later Roman Britain

READING & BIBLIOGRAPHY

The bibliography is arranged into a number of sections that are relevant to particular topics and you should read widely for the course (books marked with * are recommended). The key course book is Toynbee’s Death and Burial in the Roman World and students should consider buying their own copy (£16.50 from Blackwell’s). More reading is needed for essays and examinations.

GENERAL & ANTHROPOLOGICAL

Allan, J. 2004 The archaeology of the afterlife. Baird.

Brandon, D. and Brooke, A. 2008. London: City of the Dead. London: The History Press.

Chapman, R., Kinnes, I., and Randsborg, K. (eds.) 1981 The Archaeology of Death. Cambridge: CUP

Cumont, F. 1959 After Life in Roman Paganism. New York

Davies, D. J. 2002 Death, Ritual and belief: the Rhetoric of Funerary Rites (2^nd edition). London: Continuum.

Gowlan, R. and Knüsel, C. 2006. The Social Archaeology of Funerary Remains. Oxford: Oxbow.

Hope, V. 2008. Roman Death. London: Continuum.

Hopkins, K. 1983 Death and Renewal. Cambridge: CUP

Huntington, R. and Metcalf, P. 1992 Celebrations of Death: the Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual (2^nd edition). Cambridge: CUP

Parker-Pearson, M. 1993 ‘The powerful dead: archaeological relationships between the living and the dead’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 3:2: 203-29

Parker-Pearson, M. 1999 The archaeology of death and burial. Stroud: Tempus

Roberts, C.A. 2009. Human Remains in Archaeology. York.

Roach, M. 2003 Stiff: the curious lives of human cadavers. London.

Roach, M. 2007 Six Feet Over. Adventures in the Afterlife. Edinburgh.

Ucko, P. 1969 ‘Ethnography and the archaeological interpretation of funerary remains’, World Archaeology, 1: 262-80

DEATH & BURIAL IN THE ROMAN WORLD

Alcock, J.P. 1980 ‘Classical religious beliefs and burial practice in Roman Britain’, Archaeological Journal, 137: 50-85

*Alcock, S. 1997 The Early Roman Empire in the East. Oxford: Oxbow

Bassett, S. (ed) 1992 Death in towns. Urban responses to the dying and the dead, 100-1600. Leicester: LUP

*Beard, M, North, J. and Price, S. 1998 Religions of Rome. 2 vols. Cambs: CUP

*Bierbrier, M.L. (ed) 1997 Portraits and masks: burial customs in Roman Egypt. London: British Museum Press

Black, E.W. 1986 ‘Romano-British Burial Customs and Religious Beliefs in South-East England’, The Archaeological Journal, 143: 201-39.

Bodel, J.P. 1994 ‘Graveyards and Groves: a study of the Lex Lucerina’, American Journal of Ancient History II.

Bodel, J.  1999 ‘Death on Display: Looking at Roman Funerals.’ In B. Bergmann and C. Kondoleon (eds.). The Art of Ancient Spectacle. Studies in the History of Art 56, Washington DC: The National Gallery of Art: 258 – 81.

*Carroll, M. 2006 Spirits of the Dead. Roman Funerary Commemoration in Western Europe. Oxford: OUP.

Cormack, S. 1997 ‘Funerary monuments and mortuary practices in Roman Asia Minor’, in S. Alcock (ed) The Early Roman Empire in the East. Oxford: Oxbow

Curl, J.S. 1972 The Victorian celebration of death. Newton Abbot: David & Charles.

*Davies, P.J.E. 2000 Death and the emperor. Cambridge: CUP

Dethlefsen E & Deetz J 1966.  Deaths heads, cherubs and willow trees: experimental archaeology in colonial cemeteries. American Antiquity 31, 502-10.

Dexheimer, D. 1998 Oberitalische Grabaltäre. Oxford: BAR

Dunning, G.C. and Jessup, R.F. 1936 ‘Roman barrows’, Antiquity 10: 37-53

Dupras, T. et al. 2006 Forensicrecovery of human remains : archaeological approaches. Boca Raton: Taylor & Francis.

Esmonde Cleary, S. 2000 ‘Putting the dead in their place: burial location in Roman Britain’, in: J. Pearce, et al (eds) Burial, society and context in the Roman world: 127-42

Flower, H. 1996 Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture. Oxford: OUP

Forcey, C. 1998 ‘Whatever happened to the Heroes? Ancestral cults and the enigma of Romano-Celtic temples’, in: C. Forcey et al, TRAC97. Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, Nottingham 1997. Oxford: Oxbow

Foster, J. 1993 ‘The identification of male and female graves using grave goods’, in: M. Struck (ed) Römerzeitliche Gräber als Quellen zu Religion, Bevölkerungsstruktur und Sozialgeschichte: 206-213.

Garwood, P, Jennings, D., Skeates, R. and Toms, J. (eds.) 1991 Sacred and Profane. Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology

Graham, E-J.  2005 ‘The Quick and the Dead in the extra-urban landscape: the Roman cemetery at Ostia/Portus as a lived environment.’ In B. Croxford et al.(eds.). TRAC 2004. Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference. Durham 2004. Oxford: Oxbow Books: 133-143.

Graham, E-J. 2006. ‘Discarding the destitute: Ancient and modern attitudes towards burial practices and memory preservation amongst the lower classes of Rome.’ In B. Croxford et al. (eds). TRAC 2005. Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference. Birmingham 2005. Oxford: Oxbow Books: 57-72.

Graham, E-J.  2006 Death, disposal and the destitute: The burial of the urban poor in Italy in the late Roman Republic and early Empire. BAR Int Ser 1565. Oxford: Archaeopress.

Gurney, D. 1998 Roman burials in Norfolk. Gressenhall: East Anglian Archaeology 4

Hope, V.M. 1997 ‘Words and pictures: the interpretation of Romano-British tombstones’, Britannia, 28: 245-258

Hope, V.  1997 ‘A roof over the dead: communal tombs and family structure.’ In R. Laurence and A. Wallace-Hadrill (eds.). Domestic Space in the Roman World: Pompeii and Beyond. Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series Number 22: 69 – 88.

Hope, V. M.  1998 ‘Negotiating identity and status. The gladiators of Roman Nîmes.’ In R. Laurence and J. Berry (eds.). Cultural Identity in the Roman Empire. London: Routledge: 179 – 195.

*Hope, V. M. and Marshall, E. (eds.). 2000 Death and Disease in the Ancient City. London: Routledge.

Hope, V.  2000 ‘Inscription and Sculpture: the Construction of Identity in the Military Tombstones of Roman Mainz.’ In G. J. Oliver (ed.). The Epigraphy of Death. Studies in the History and Society of Greece and Rome. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press: 155 – 185.

*Hope, V.  2001 Constructing Identity: The Roman Funerary Monuments of Aquileia, Mainz and Nimes. Oxford: BAR International Series 960 (2001).

Hope, V.  2003 ‘Remembering Rome: Memory, funerary monuments and the Roman soldier.’ In H. Williams (ed.). Archaeologies of Remembrance. Death and Memory in Past Societies. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers: 113 – 140.

Hunter, J and Cox, M. 2005 Forensicarchaeology: advances in theory and practice. London: Routledge.

Huskinson, J. 1996 Roman Children’s Sarcophagi. Oxford: CUP.

Jalland, P. 1996 Deathin theVictorianfamily. Oxford: OUP.

Jones, R.F.J. 1987 ‘Burial customs of Rome and the provinces’, in: J. Wacher (ed), The Roman World. London: Routledge

Jones, R.F.J. 1993 ‘Backwards and forwards in Roman burial’, Journal of Roman Archaeology, 6: 427-433

Jones, R.F.J. 1993 ‘Rules for the living and the dead: funerary practices and social organisation’, in: M. Struck, M. (ed) Römerzeitliche Gräber als Quellen zu Religion, Bevölkerungsstruktur und Sozialgeschichte: 247-55

Keegan, S. 2002 Inhumation rites in late Roman Britain: the treatment of the engendered body. Oxford: BAR

Kleiner, D. 1977. Roman Group Portraiture: the Funerary Relifs of the Late Republic and early Empire. New York Press.

Kleiner, D. 1987 Roman Imperial Funerary Altars with Portraits. Rome: Bretschneider

Kleiner, D. 1988 ‘Roman funerary art and architecture: observations on the significance of recent studies’, Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1: 155-19

Koortbojian, M. 1995 Myth, Meaning, and Memory on Roman Sarcophagi. Berkley: UCP

Koortbojian, M.  1996 ‘In commemorationem mortuorum: text and image along the ‘streets of tombs’.’ In J. Elsner (ed.). Art and Text in Roman Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 210 – 233.

*Kyle, D. G.  1998 Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome. London: Routledge.

Litten, J. 1991 The English Way of Death. Mold: Derek Doyle & Assoc.

Llewellyn, N. 1991 The art of death : visual culture in the English death ritual, c. 1500-c. 1800. London: Reaktion Books

*MacMullen, R. 1981 Paganism in the Roman Empire. New Haven: Yale UP

Meskell, L. 1994 ‘Dying young: the experience of death at Deir-el-Medina’, Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 13.2: 35-46

Morley, J. 1971 Death, Heaven and the Victorians. London: Studio Vista.

Morris, I. 1991 ‘The Archaeology of Ancestors: the Saxe-Goldstein hypothesis revisited’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 1.2: 147-69

*Morris, I. 1992 Death, Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge: CUP

Mytum, H. 2000 Recording and Analysing Graveyards. York: Council for British Archaeology.

O’Brien, E. 1999 Post-Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England: burial practices reviewed. Oxford: BAR

O’Shea, J. 1984 Mortuary variability: an archaeological investigation. London: Academic

Patterson, J. R.  2000a ‘Living and Dying in the City of Rome: houses and tombs.’ In J. Coulston and H. Dodge (eds.). Ancient Rome: The Archaeology of the Eternal City. Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology Monograph 54: 257 – 89.

Pearce, J. 1998 ‘From Death to Deposition: the sequence of ritual in cremation burials of the Roman period’, in: C. Forcey, J. Hawthorne & R. Witcher (eds) TRAC 97. Proceedings of the Seventh Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference: 99-111.

*Pearce, J., Millett, M., and Struck, M. (eds) 2000 Burial, society and context in the Roman world. Oxford: Oxbow

Petts, D. 1998 ‘Burial and Gender in Late- and Sub-Roman Britain’, in: C. Forcey, J. Hawthorne & R. Witcher (eds) TRAC 97. Proceedings of the Seventh Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference: 112-24.

*Philpott, R. 1991 Burial practices in Roman Britain: a survey of grave treatment and furnishing, AD 43-410. Oxford: BAR

Pollock, K. The evolution and role of burial practice in Roman Wales. Oxford: BAR

Puttock, S. 2002 Ritual significance of personal ornament in Roman Britain. Oxford: BAR

*Reece, R. (ed) 1977 Burial in the Roman world. London: CBA

Reece, R. 1982 ‘Bones, bodies and dis-ease’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 1: 247-58

Riggs, C. 2005 The beautiful burial in Roman Egypt. Oxford: OUP.

Scheidel, W. 1996 Measuring sex, age and death in the Roman Empire: explorations in ancient demography. Ann Arbor: Journal of Roman Archaeology

Schmidt-Colinet, A. 1997 ‘Aspects of ‘Romanization: the tomb architecture at Palmyra and its decoration’, in: S. Alcock, The Early Roman Empire in the East: 157-77

Scott, E. 1990 ‘A critical review of the interpretation of infant burials in Roman Britain, with particular reference to villas’, Journal of Theoretical Archaeology, 1: 30-46

Stead, I., Flouest and Rigby, V. 2006 Iron Age and Roman burials in Champagne. Oxford: Oxbow.

*Struck, M. (ed) 1993 Römerzeitliche Gräber als Quellen zu Religion, Bevölkerungsstruktur und Sozialgeschichte. Mainz:  Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

*Toynbee, J.M.C. 1996 Death and Burial in the Roman world. (2^nd edition). London: Thames & Hudson. (Note that the library contains several copies of the 1971 1^st edition.)

Walker, S. 1985 Memorials to the Roman Dead. London: BMP

Walker, S. and Biergrier, M. 1997 Ancient Faces. Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt. London: BMP

Williams, H. 1998 ‘The Ancient Monument in Romano-British Ritual Practices’, in C. Forcey, J. Hawthorne & R. Witcher (eds) TRAC 97. Proceedings of the Seventh Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, 71-86.

Williams, H. 2004 ‘Ephemeral monuments and social memory in early Roman Britain’, in B. Croxford, H. Eckardt, J. Meade and J. Weekes (eds) TRAC 2003. Proceedings of the Thirteenth Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, 51-61.

CEMETERIES(This is only a selection of the cemetery reports held in the library)

Barber, B. 2000 The Eastern Cemetery of Roman London: excavations 1983-1990. London: MoLAS

Clarke, G. 1975 The Roman cemetery at Lankhills.

Cool, H. 2004 The Roman Cemetery at Brougham, Cumbria. London.

Crummy, N. et al 1993 Excavations of Roman and later cemeteries, churches and monastic sites in Colchester, 1971-88. Colchester Archaeological Trust

Crummy, P., Benfield, S., Crummy, N., Rigby V. and Shimmin, D. 2007 Stanway: an Elite Burial Site at Camulodunum. London.

Ertel, C. 1999 Untersuchingen zu den Gräberfelder in Carnuntum. Vienna: Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Farwell, D.E. and Molleson, T.L. 1993 Excavations at Poundbury. Vol. 2 The cemeteries. Dorchester

Fitzpatrick, A.P. 1997 Archaeological excavations on the route of the A27 Westhampnett bypass, West Sussex, 1992. Vol.2,  The late Iron Age, Romano-British, and Anglo-Saxon cemeteries. Salisbury: Trust for Wessex Archaeology

Heinzelmann, M. 2000. Die Nekropolen von Ostia: Untersuchungen zu Gräberstrassen vor der Porta Romana und an der Via Laurentina. Munich.

Kraskovska, L. 1976 The Roman cemetery at Gerulata Rusovce, Czechoslovakia. Oxford: BAR

Mackinder, A. 2000 A Romano-British cemetery on Watling Street: excavations at 165 Great Dover Street, Southwark, London. London: MoLAS

McWhirr, A., Viner, L. and Wells, C. 1982 Romano-British cemeteries at Cirencester. Cirencester

Niblett, R. 1999 The Excavation of a Ceremonial Site at Folly Lane, Verulamium. London: Britannia Monograph 14

Rahtz, P. 2000 CanningtonCemetery: excavations 1962-3 of prehistoric, Roman, post-Roman and later features at Cannington Park Quarry, near Bridgwater, Somerset. London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.

Topal, J. 1993 Roman cemeteries of Aquincum, Pannonia: the western cemetery (Bicsi Rd). Budapest

Thomas, C. 2004. Life and Death in London's East End. London. MoLAS.

Watts, L. and Leach, P. 1996 Henley Wood, temples and cemetery: excavations 1962-69 by the late Earnest Greenfield and others. York: CBA

Wenham, L.P. 1968 The Romano-British cemetery at Trentholme Drive, York. London: HMSO