Orientations of Graves in the Late Roman Necropolises of Ampurias

The late Roman necropolises, where inhumation was always practised, are dated in Ampurias between the third and the fifth/sixth centuries a.d. They are in two areas. One consists of necropolises where these inhumations shared space with incinerations and inhumations of the Early Empire and which seem to have terminated with the end of the city itself, late in the fourth century (Ballesta, Rubert, Pi and Bonjoan), the other of areas of new funerary practices (Castellet, Nofre, and Estruch, together with Martí, where there was a return to use of an earlier Greek funerary space, and Neápolis, near a cult building). Broadly speaking, the first group (except for Bonjoan) seems linked with the period when the city itself flourished, while the second is certainly associated with the late, suburban Roman villas, and with people living away from the ancient Palaiápolis (today St Martí d'Empúries). In addition, there are other burial sites associated with Visigoth Christian temples.

There is no doubt that the excavations carried out in the area in recent years by a number of teams, for various reasons and notably because of road construction, have made significant contributions to the increase of our understanding of funerary customs in the Ampurias region in Late Antiquity.

See Nolla J. Ma. and Sagrera J. , Les necròpolis tardanes de la Neàpolis (Vic, 1996).

Almagro M. , Las necrópolis de Ampurias II: Las necrópolis romanas e indígenas (Monografías Ampuritanas, Barcelona, 1955), further examined by Borgoñoz Lopez A. , “Ampurias: Consideraciones sobre las necrópolis bajoimperiales”, in Acts del XIV Congreso Internacional de Arqueología Clásica (Tarragona, 1994), ii, 423–4. Other publications by Almagro include “Nuevas tumbas halladas en las necrópolis de Ampurias”, in Ampurias, no. 24 (1962), 225–34, and Amalgro M. and Palol P. , “Los restos arqueológicos paleocristianos y altomedievales de Ampurias”, Revista de Girona, no. 20 (1962).

Hoskin Michael , “Arqueoastronomía”, Universo, no. 3 (July 1995), 52–57, and “One specialist among many”, Archaeoastronomy and ethnoastronomy newsletter, no. 21 (September 1996), 1; Belmonte J. A. , “Arqueoastronomía, ¿un término adecuado?”, Universo, no. 23 (March 1997), 30–34.

Some of this work is developed further in a broad study that re-examines the orientations of late Roman graves and their relation to sunrise: Borgoñoz Lopez A. , “Orientaciones de tumbas y sol naciente: Astronomía cultural en la antigüedad tardía”, Actas del XXIII Congreso Nacional de Arqueología, Cartagena 1997 (Zaragoza, in press).

“Los cadáveres están orientados con la cabeza hacia el SO matemático, o sea, el O visual”, Almagro , Las necrópolis, 305.

An exception is Rahtz P. (“Late Roman cemeteries and beyond”, in Reece R. (ed.), Burial in the Roman world (CBA Research Report no. 22, London, 1977), 53–64), whose archaeotopographic results can be relied upon.

Almagro , Las necrópolis, 321.

This is quite different from Greek burials, in which the heads were usually to the west, according to Almagro.

The number of degrees is not specified, the indication of orientation is subjective and only approximate.

Borgoñez Lopez , op. cit. (ref. 6).

A total of 49 graves have been published, of which 11 have no specified orientation.

Almagro , Las necrópolis, 307.

Of the plans that have come down to us of the graves found in Neápolis, the burials either clearly show an orientation with the head roughly to the west, or the grave is clearly aligned west-east (although we do not know in which of the two possible directions the body itself was laid out). The work of Nolla and Sagrera on these graves (op. cit., 250–1) shows that of the 493 listed graves, 467 (94.7%) were oriented with the head to the west and the feet to the east, while 18 (3.7%) of the rest had no given orientations and the remaining 8 (1.6%) had other orientations. The authors state that this custom prevailed throughout the Ampurian region at this period.

Mercadal i Fernàndez Oriol is an archaeologist and Gestor del Patrimonio at Puigcerdà in western Catalunya. He is Director of Museu Cerdà at Puigcerdà.

Murray Breen William teaches in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in the University of Monterrey. He has published widely on rock art and artefacts from Mexico and the United States, especially in relation to calendrical questions.

Casal Rodríguez Antón A. is professor of Prehistory at the University of Santiago de Compostela. He is the author of O megalitismo: A primeira arquitectura monumental de Galicia (1990), and editor of O neolítico atlántico e as orixes do megalitismo (1997), and is currently preparing a monograph on the megalithic monuments of the Iberian Peninsula.

Snedegar Keith earned a doctorate in Modern History from the University of Oxford, and in 1994 held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cape Town. His research interests include history of medieval astronomy as well as southern African ethnoastronomy. He now teaches history of science and technology at Utah Valley State College.

Soares Miguel Nuno took his master's degree in archaeology, and has since been engaged in numerous studies and investigations in the area of prehistory. He has made a special study of megalitism in the region of the basin of the Rio Lima.

Zaldua Mari Luix is an archaeologist working in the Urnieta Council Heritage Department.