Death in Transition: Changing Burial Practices in a Late Roman World (c. 250–600 CE)

The purpose of ‘Death in Transition’ is to change how we perceive and study historical transformation through highlighting their complexity.

The project aims to challenge the common perception that burial practices underwent radical change in Roman Late Antiquity as a consequence of the Christianisation.

Instead, the study will elucidate the complexity and dynamics in the development of burial practices over time in Late Antiquity and beyond.

The project challenges the common perception that burial practices underwent swift and radical change in the period as a consequence of the Christianisation of the Roman world.

It does so by re-examining historical and archaeological material and 1) performing a metadata analysis of available sources (GU 2021/UL 2022); 2) collating the evidence in a database to analyse assemblages on different scales (GU 2021/UL 2022) and 3) exploring burial assemblages in detailed case studies (UL 2022–2023).

The project will demonstrate the heterogeneous development of Roman burial practices and will result in a new account of death in Late Antiquity and beyond.

The project brings the field of late antique archaeology into a broader archaeological conversation and offer an innovative model for the study of burial practices in the ancient world.

The project will impact our conception of how and why burial practices change, and ultimately our understanding of historical transformation.