Landbevölkerung und Tod

For the period from the Roman conquest in 241 B. C. to the 6th century A. D. a detailed catalogue of 63 rural Sicilian necropoleis has been compiled and analysed in contrast with urban burials. In the focus there were the chronological development of rural funeral rites and settlement dynamics. In Hellenistic times, small agricultural settlements and few cemeteries with hardly traceable inhumations without surface marker existed in contrast to non-monumental graves with rich grave goods in cities. In the 1st cent. B. C. and A. D. luxury villas and secondary settlements emerged whose burials largely remain unknown, while the funeral wealth in towns decreased and first grave monuments occurred. In the 2nd to 4th century a crisis enforced the formation of large estates with larger or smaller necropoleis with at best modest grave goods, while the radial highways of the cities were now lined with elaborate grave monuments of the elites. In Late Antiquity this difference between town and country became blurred everywhere in favour of large, hierarchically differentiated catacombs and graves at churches with no grave markers or monuments.