Postmortem Rituals: Skeletal Manipulation of a Late Antiquity Burial in Portugal

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Freixo Archaeology Project was initiated in 2015 to investigate the nature of Roman Imperial occupation in the Iberian Peninsula with an interest in the symbolic and ideological reuse of sacred space. Freixo is located within the Municipality of Redondo in southeastern Portugal, where a sixteenth-century Christian church overlays an ancient Roman basilica. Preliminary investigations have identified a number of associated burials which appear to co-occur and postdate basilica occupation. Specific interest to this paper is a double interment located at the proposed basilica entrance that contains both a northern bundle and southern extended burial. The extended burial incorporates typical Christian mortuary practices and unusual postmortem skeletal manipulation of the lumbar vertebrae. This paper will show images of the burial and associated human skeletal remains. The biocultural analysis will provide insight into the life histories of these individuals as well as contribute to the corpus of Late Antiquity mortuary rituals in the Iberian Peninsula.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36914.0