1,800-year-old nails found in three burial sites in Roman necropolis, may have been used to ‘protect’ both the living and the dead

Small iron nails placed in the chests of three skeletons preserve rare details about ancient Roman burial customs. 1,800 years ago, someone tried to protect the living from the dead.

Diletta Menguinello, an archaeologist at Italy’s Ministry of Culture’s Special Supervision Office for Rome and leader of the excavation project, told Live Science in a translated email that the discovery of nails in burial sites is “an act well documented in Roman times and later stages.”

While working in the vast Ostiense cemetery in central Rome, Menguinello and his colleagues discovered three bodies with nails deliberately driven into their chests, according to a March 4 translated statement from Rome’s Office of the Special Inspector General.

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The cemetery of Ostiense was first excavated in 1919, but prior to the construction of the houses, new archaeological work was carried out that exposed another part of the cemetery outside the walls, on Via Ostiense, near the Basilica of St. Paul. Menguinello said the newly discovered ruins help reveal how burial customs changed over the centuries as Ostiense’s cemetery expanded.

“In ancient times, both sides of the road were occupied by vast Roman necropolises with several different types of tombs,” dating from the 2nd century BC to the 4th century AD, Menguinello said. But the exact boundaries of the necropolis are still not fully known, she says. The nailed skeleton was found in a simple tomb and is thought to date from the 3rd to 4th century AD.

However, the purpose of the nail is shrouded in mystery.

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A close-up of one of the three skeletons found with nails driven into them at an excavation site on Via Ostiense in Rome.

Archaeologist Walter Pantano points out that at the new excavation site, a nail has fallen into one of the skeleton’s chests.

Aerial view of the Ostiense necropolis excavation site.

“Its function has been interpreted in many different ways,” Menguinello said, noting that the nails may have been used to symbolically “immobilize” the dead so they could not come back and haunt the living. It was believed that if the body was not immobilized, the deceased could become a “revenant”, a resurrected corpse common in folklore.

However, this custom may also have had the meaning of protecting the deceased. When nails were used in amulet practices, they became a kind of talisman to protect the dead from the dangers of the afterlife and protect graves from being vandalized, Menguinello said.

Therefore, the nailing ritual “would have served to protect the corpse from those who might encroach on its final resting place, protect the dead from malevolent forces, and at the same time protect surviving relatives from the possibility of the dead returning to the living,” Menguinello said.

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