Tomb typesIsola Sacra Menu

This part of the website will inform you about the kind of burials and about the architecture of the funeral buildings in the necropolis of Isola Sacra.
Looking at the map of the necropoplis the first thing you notice is the lack of building organization. Because this was the necropolis of Portus you may expect the earliest tombs on the Portus side to be extended southwards (to Ostia) in the course of time. But some of the oldest tombs are situated halfway and even on the side of Ostia (tomb 97). Besides that, only small groups of tombs are aligned. Many have been built where it probably suited the owner. According to the law it was not permitted to clear a grave, but enlarging and modifying by the owners was customary.

When Portus was built in the middle of the first century AD, the dead were always cremated in so called public ustrina¹. This custom continued till the reign of the emperor Hadrian (117 AD), when burial was introduced and for a long time cremation and inhumation went side by side.

At the end of the second century burial was more common than cremation and after the early third century it seems that no new provisions for cremation were made. It is not clear why these customs changed. Christianity was not yet that popular and there is no evidence of a growing spritual respect for the human body. It probably was just a new fashion.
The first person known to have adopted this new fashion at Rome was a certain Abascantus, secretary of the emperor Domitian. The Roman poet Statius wrote that Abascantus embalmed his wife's body after her death with costly ingredients. Statius suggested that he chose for burial because he found cremation too crude. The body of his wife, called Priscilla, was buried along the Via Appia in Rome.
Anyhow, we shall see that the change of custom had its influence on the burial culture. 

 

The ancient Romans knew several ways of giving the dead a house for eternity. The last resting place of a deceased had everything to do with money. The form of burial depended on how much one could afford.

The simplest and cheapest form of burial was a grave directly in the earth. In the case of cremation, the ashes were put in urns or amphorae.
By inhumation a body was laid into a hole in the ground without any protection, or on a brick underground and sometimes also covered by bricks. For these tombs, vertically placed amphorae were often used as an indication of the burial place and in the same time for libation. Sometimes a row of amphorae, without a neck and foot, was used as the cover of a body, especially for children. 

 

Many of the simplest graves have been found in the area called "Field of the poor" or, as the Italians call it, 'Campo dei poveri'. The field is located behind tombs 38 - 43. During the excavations of 1988-89, 650 small graves were found. Most of these graves are covered again and can't be seen anymore. You will notice, however, another type of tomb in the Campo dei poveri, the so called 'tomba a cassone'. This tomb has the shape of, as the Italian name says, a big chest. Sometimes the owner tried to imitate the larger and more expensive monumental tombs by adding an aedicula³, a tympanum⁴ or even a fake door. The "tomba a cassone" is not found just in the "Campo dei poveri". You can find them also in other parts of the necropolis. 

The "tomba a cassone" was well known along the entire coast of the Mediterranean. In Rome, however, this type of grave was hardly used. In Portus we find a concentration of these tombs. It probably tells something about the cosmopolitan character of the population of Portus.

The "tombe a cassone" were often painted red with green flower motifs on the bottom, representing a tumulus, and they sometimes had a gap in the top for libation⁵ purposes.
Besides the semicircular "tombe a cassone", a couple of so called "tombe alla cappuccina" have been found. These are chest-like tombs, covered by sloping terracotta rooftiles. Both these types were meant for interment of one person, although in some cases two bodies have been found (see tomb 4a and tomb 6a).
According to several inscriptions on these graves, imitating the inscriptions belonging to the monumental tombs, there must have been place also for family, freedmen and their heirs.
Sometimes a body was first interred in a sarcophagus. The kind of sarcophagus depended on how much one could afford. The most common was a plain terracotta sarcophagus. Some well-preserved wooden examples have been found and are stored in the Museum of the Ships near the airport of Fiumicino.
Every sarcophagus was provided with a headrest.
Before we come to the more interesting tomb type, the monumental tomb or "Tomba a cella", we have to look at a couple of tombs with an unusual form. First there are two small tombs in this necropolis with a brick pyramid on a square base (tombs 1 and 51). Of both graves we know the owner by an inscription attached to the grave. Another rare example has the form of an aedicula on a pedestal. This monument too has an inscription (tomb 56).

The majority of the tombs in this necropolis are 'tombe a cella'. This means a tomb with one or more burial chambers. They were detached or part of a row.
This kind of tomb was used for a whole family, including their freedmen and freedwomen with their heirs. The 'tombe a cella' were nearly always rectangular, with a width varying between 10 and 16 Roman feet⁶. Inside, they all had a fixed design, with the exception of tomb 75, built for three families, and tomb 34, probably belonging to a collegium funeraticium, a funeral association.
According to Guido Calza, the head of the excavations of this necropolis, the façade was made up by the following elements:

"Small bricks, regular and manufactured with care, selected on size and colour; An entrance consisting of two jambs with an architrave of travertine; Brick columns with capitals, made of several materials, on top; A marble slab with inscription, surrounded by a frame, above the entrance; Two small windows in one line with the inscription; A relief depicting the profession of the tomb owner; A tympanum in the top part. This was not always the case, but many of the tombs with burial chambers contained several of these elements".

There are still some examples of façades built in a combination of brick and tufa (opus reticulatum), but often reticulate was only used for the back and side-walls.
The entrance of a tomb was much lower than a house entrance, and probably could be closed by a wooden door.
The burial chamber was lit only by small slit-windows.
The early "tombe a cella" are so-called columbaria. The urns with the ashes of the dead were placed in semicircular or rectangular niches in the walls. Normally each niche contained two urns. These niches were built alongside a larger and better decorated central niche.
The walls, niches and ceiling were painted: the larger niches with mythological scenes and figures, the smaller with flowers, stars or geometrical patterns. Most of the floors were paved with mosaic.
Normally the ashes were placed in a plain urn, already embedded in the niche. Sometimes a small marble slab with the name of the dead was placed under the niche. The name was probably written with paint, because no name has been preserved.