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Excavation

  • Area B Sud Porta Nocera
  • Pompei
  • Pompeii
  • Italy
  • Campania
  • Naples
  • Pompei

Tools

Credits

  • The Italian Database is the result of a collaboration between:

    MIBAC (Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali - Direzione Generale per i Beni Archeologici),

    ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione) and

    AIAC (Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica).

  • AIAC_logo logo

Summary (English)

  • The overall objective of this project is to shed light on the religious and social conditions of the inhabitants of Pompeii through investigation of sepulchral areas and necropoleis. A very important part is a systematic investigation of columella gravestones. This initial part of the project is limited to the burial plot of the gens Calventii (Area B Sud Porta di Nocera). This burial plot is a rectangular area of 3.40 × 4.34 m with only columella gravestones, on the contrary to other sepulchral areas around the Pompeian necropoleis, where the columellae are found in combination with other types of graves in a more complex architectonic context, and the later gravestones are placed in an unusual ∩-form, which hypothetical could indicate the return to earlier ritual practices.

    Our initial research of the burial plot in 2005 consisted in optical investigation of columella gravestones from this sepulchral area, extraction and preliminary analysis of possible pigments from seventeen columellae, and a limited excavation of five trenches, one of them indicating probably an ustrinum. A major discovery is that columella gravestones originally were painted since samples from seventeen columellae all reveal pigments of paint.
    Through the analysis of pigments, the surface survey and excavation of a limited area I am focusing on three different dimensions, all of them of the same importance and significance: a) the iconographic dimension of columella gravestones, b) the ritual space of columella gravestones and c) links of change and continuity in funeral rituals. (Mónica Saldías)

Director

  • Mónica Saldías

Team

  • Annamaria Ciarallo - Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei
  • Mark Robinson - University of Oxford
  • Samuele Ranucci - University of Trieste
  • Ezequiel M. Pinto-Guillaume - University of Provence, France

Research Body

Funding Body

  • Associazione Amici dell’Istituto Svedese di Studi Classici a Roma
  • The Swedish Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities (Gihls fund)

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