Fear of the Dead? ‘Deviant’ Burials in Roman Northern Italy

Abstract

In the last 20 years, especially in British and northern European academia, research approaches to funerary archaeology have focused on ‘deviant’ burials, characterized by different treatments in burial rites when compared with other members of their society. According to the archaeological literature, unusual or anomalous burials are considered to be ‘cases where the individual has been buried in a different way relative to the norm of period and/or the population under examination’ (