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Organized Collective Burial In The Port Cities Of Roman Italy, Dorian Borbonus

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Italian port cities were characterized by a high degree of connectivity that created unique social conditions and a distinctive funerary culture. My paper posits that human migration led to collective organization and, closely related, organized collective burial. There are two categories of evidence for this sort of burial: epigraphic sources attest that associations (collegia) maintained communal burial sites and funerary monuments with large capacities would be suitable for such a burial community. Even though epigraphic and architectural evidence usually do not overlap, the two types of evidence can be analyzed separately. One of the main questions relates to the external …