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25th November 2006, 03:43 PM
On some Roman cemeteries, cut graves have been seen to be empty and un-occupied.This does`nt appear to be an accident of survival as near neighbours seem to be in good states of preservation.By and large, they seem to be almost identical morphologically to "occupied" graves. So what are they? Plots bought/prepared and never used? repatriation of the dead to their native lands/families soon after death? Has anyone studied this phenomena? It has even been suggested that they may represent a warning of some sort..."this has your name on it sonny so behave" kind of thing. What do you think?:face-huh:
..knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity..(imam ghazali,ayyuhal-walad)
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25th November 2006, 05:45 PM
Very different context but i think its in Varna on the Black sea there are graves without bodies which have been interpreted as cenotaphs when maybe the body was not recovered after a battle or accident at sea?
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27th November 2006, 02:55 PM
I've not looked into this - but here's an idea:
Maybe the grave-diggers were on 'piecework' rates, so they dug a number of graves in anticipation of need (and got paid for them by the management), but then not enough people died.
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished
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27th November 2006, 03:29 PM
These could easily just be babies buried in full-sized graves; their wee bones don't contain much calcium and fade away fast. Preservation may also differ markedly over a surprisingly short distance.
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29th November 2006, 02:34 PM
I wouldn't entirely rule out differential preservation in some cases as it can be a factor. I've certainly seen it on a Roman cemetery in Leicester where variations in the natural river terrace gravels / keuper marl (I think)appeared to have widely varying effects on skeletons. Treatment of the dead such as the use of quick lime could also be a constributing factor.
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29th November 2006, 04:29 PM
Supervisor gravedigger to two dishevelled gravediggers: "No, not there...."
We owe the dead nothing but the truth.
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30th November 2006, 03:14 PM
Hmmm... I've been trying to find out if what I said earlier about the use of quicklime and its detrimental effects on skeletal remains is true. I've managed to google at least one report that indicates that it may even act to preserve bones rather than degrade them. Then again, this could be a combination of this subtance with the burial conditions, ground moisture etc? Any scientists out there got any answers? All I know for sure is that quicklime is commonly thought to hasten decomposition. However this may just impact on soft tissue. Nonetheless I have seen extremes of preservation in close proximity that appeared to reflect local variations in the subsoil.
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30th November 2006, 07:32 PM
I would argue against the graves containing babies that have disappeared. Troll's question was based on a conversation he had with me about this particular site, and i've been doing the bodies for it. There were 2 foetal/neonate individuals with fantastic preservation in little graves, and I disagree on principle with the suggestion that juvenile bone preservation is likley to be worse than that of adults, just not true on any of the many collections I've worked on. Juvenile bones don't just disappear, but they do get removed completely by later activity, while adults may only get partially removed. As for the differential preservation, all of the burials were in excellent condition, so it would strike me as unlikely that there would be excellent condition, or notyhing left, with no levels of preservation in between. The quicklime issue is interesting, but surely there would be patches of it left in the grave fill? Its a weird one certainly, but I'm not at all convinced by any of the explanations that rest on issues of differential preservation. I feel a paper coming on...
++ i spend my days rummaging around in dead people ++
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1st December 2006, 01:09 PM
Following on from 1m1d...
unused graves excavated before the winter set in? You should all know how digging frozen ground is not easy.
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1st December 2006, 02:46 PM
Why are they unused then? A mild winter perhaps. You're unlikely to forget a potentially quite deep person sized hole in the ground. Especially if you excavated it. So why not use it? - easier than digging a new one any time of year.
