WHO WAS BURIED? THIS CHAPTER FOCUSES ON THE BUILDERS AND occupants of the tombs in Roman Syria. The previous analysis has highlighted distinctions within the burying group, in terms of funerary space and grave good assemblages. Here, I investigate the identity of these people. Identity here is understood as the broader groups that individuals and communities identified with, in as far as it is visible in the funerary record. It concerns gender, age, ethnic, professional, collective, and individual identity (see also Introduction, p. 15). Funerary portraits and epigraphy reveal the represented identities of the deceased and the burying community. How were they depicted in art and text? What messages were considered important to highlight, and what was omitted? Ultimately, these questions concern commemorative practices: how people wanted to be remembered and what the community thought was important to stress. This chapter also addresses the physical remains of the dead, which inform us about the age and sex of the buried community, as well as trends in collective and individual burial.

The three categories of evidence – figural imagery, epigraphy, human remains – come with their own sets of interpretative issues, which form the topic of the first section of this chapter. Subsequent paragraphs explore the treatment of the body, the custom of communal and co-burial, the distribution of sex, gender, and age groups, and kinship and military identity. In the final sections, I analyze chronological developments and patterns of continuity and change. By the 1st c. CE, new modes of commemoration had emerged, and direct references to the bereaved community as heirs and survivors now adorned the tomb walls. These were inserted into long-standing traditions concerning co-sharing the tomb and preserving the body.

SOURCES

Human remains, epitaphs, and figural sculpture of the deceased provide explicit information about the occupants and sponsors of the tomb. Each offers valuable insights concerning identity, and comes with specific limitations, be they a lack of reportage or a decontextualized and partial publication. These sources represent different aspects of the mortuary ritual and cannot always be compared.