Archaeologists excavating on the French Riviera have discovered a huge Roman cremation cemetery. Careful work at the site has revealed the step-by-step process the Romans used to cremate their dead and honor them in the afterlife.
More than 160 cremation tombs were discovered in the ancient ruins of Olbia. Olbia began as a fortified Greek settlement around 350 BC in what is now southern France. The geographer Strabo stated that Olbia was a city of the Massiliotes, a people near Massilia (modern Marseilles). After Marseille was captured by Julius Caesar in 49 BC, Olbia became a Roman city with an emphasis on trade and spas.
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For many of the dead, the cremation process began with relatives placing the body on a wooden platform built over a square pit. The heat from the firewood caused the stand to collapse, turning the bones white, twisting and cracking, Inlup said. Glassware melted, bronze artifacts warped, and pottery discolored with soot.
“The characteristic of Olbia is that most people [the graves] According to the statement, it is surrounded by liquor channels for holding liquid offerings (wine, beer, mead) to commemorate the dead or to ensure their protection.
These drinking pipes were made by reusing amphorae that stuck out of the grave even after it was covered with roof tiles and buried with earth. The tubes allowed families to visit and symbolically feed their loved ones during Roman holidays for the dead, such as Feralia (February 21) and Lemuria (May 9, 11, and 13).
In Olbia, some crematoriums were converted into direct burial grounds, while others were partially or completely emptied. But while typical Roman practice was to collect bones in glass, ceramic or stone urns before burial, many bones in Olbia were piled up in small piles or placed in perishable containers, which could indicate social or cultural differences within the city’s population, Inlup said.
“These discoveries remind us that ancient funerary rituals were rich, diverse, and loaded with multiple meanings, some of which remain shrouded in mystery today,” Inwrap representatives said in a statement.
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