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+--- Thread: Burial customs of the Roman Army? (/showthread.php?tid=22555)
Burial customs of the Roman Army? - Jack Lund - 04-22-2013
Salve Omnes!
I was hoping I could get a bit of research help here. I am working on a paper for my senior capstone course on the topic of Roman burial customs. Particularly I would like to focus on how the army handled death while on campaign. While I have found this topic briefly mentioned in both some primary and secondary sources I have not found a comprehensive work on this subject and so would greatly appreciate any sources of information anyone may have. My main questions are thus:
1. When the average soldier was killed in combat what sort of funerary customs or rituals were observed? Certainly a campaigning army would not have the time for the rather lengthy funerary ceremonies witnessed back at home. Were there any records of deaths so family members could perform a proper ceremony or any personal effects brought back to be used in place of the body or as grave goods during burial?
2. If a distinguished soldier or officer, say the Primus Pilus or even a Consul, was killed while on campaign, how was his body handled? Was there great effort put into the retrieval of the body? Was he buried on site or preserved for a proper funeral back at Roman or a Roman province?
3. In battles which resulted in massive Roman casualties, Cannae for example, how were so many bodies disposed of? Are there mass graves yet to be discovered? How would a defeated army process such a great number of dead and how would they have the time, man-power, and materials to bury or cremate tens of thousands of bodies? And what happened to all their gear?
I realize that all this is rather broad and I will probably have to narrow down my research but it would be helpful to begin with a basic understanding of how death was handled on each level of the army. I am also certainly not asking for anyone to do this research for me, merely asking if any of you fellow Roman scholars and enthusiasts have come across anything related in your own studies. And I'm certainly interested seeing what discussion these questions bring about.
Burial customs of the Roman Army? - Quintius Clavus - 04-22-2013
Some very broad quesions there. I have a copy of a thesis from the University of North Caroline (Chapel Hill) and another shorter piece, which address these questions.
The thesis is by Brian David Turner and is titled: Military Defeats, Casualties of War and the Success of Rome (2010). I found it online. It deals with a good part of your questions over a long period of time - the Republic and the Empire.
The short article is by Valerie M. Hope, "Trophies and Tombstones: Commemorating the Roman Soldier" and is from the journal, World Archaeology, Vol. 35, No. 1, "The social commemoration of warfare", June 2003, pp. 79-97.
Burial customs of the Roman Army? - Michael Kerr - 04-22-2013
Hi, found this article on Military History Blog.Hope it helps.
http://militaryhistoryblog.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/commemorating-the-roman-soldier/
another PDF regarding cemetries found near Roman forts in Moesia Inferior
http://eprints.jiia.it:8080/151/1/O%C5%A3a_busta-moesia-inferior.pdf
Regards
Michael Kerr
Michael Kerr