La Necropolis, already known in the 1800s, was excavated by Guido Calza in the first thirty years of the last century. The core of the complex brought to light develops at the intersection between Laurentina Street and a road running east-west. Dating back in its first phase to the Republican age, the necropolis was used until the third century AD. Continuous water infiltrations from the underground made it necessary to raise the level of the burial ground, so that the newer tombs overlapped the older ones often exploiting their foundations.
The type of constructions adapts to the needs of the cult and reflects the changing funeral customs and habits. The rite of cremation, prevalent between the end of the Republic and the Claudian age, was gradually replaced by that of inhumation with notable variations in the use of the internal spaces of the cells. Particularly varied are the testimonies related to cremation burial with monuments in squared work, open-air enclosures, chamber tombs internally occupied by niches intended to hold, in terracotta pots, the ashes of the deceased who could be burnt directly on-site in special enclosures with rounded edges (ustrina). Courtyards often housed wells for water, cooking surfaces for food, and benches intended for ceremonies and ritual banquets. As also happens in other necropolises, the gradual predominance of the inhumation rite over the cremation one led to a less capricious and more severe architecture, with the alignment, in the later tombs, generally placed on higher occupation levels, of arcosolia intended to accommodate the deceased, sometimes placed in marble sarcophagi or in less precious materials such as terracotta.
The necropolis preserves numerous inscriptions related to the deceased, mostly wealthy freedmen, a class that from the first imperial period increasingly assumed economic power, here testified by the refinement of some burials. Many paintings decorated the tombs, some of which have been included in the Vatican collections and in the Archaeological Museum of Ostia. Few remain on site as evidence of that union between architecture and decoration that allows the evaluation of the unity of the project desired by the patrons and the penetration into usages and beliefs.
Information about Necropolis of Via Laurentina
Viale Dei Romagnoli, 717,
00124 Rome (Rome)
0656358099
ssba-rm@beniculturali.it
https://archeoroma.beniculturali.it/siti-archeologici/ostia/necropoli-via-laurentina
Source: MIBACT
