A Week in a Necropolis

The second week of the excavation I spent working in a Roman or Vandal necropolis (city of the dead or in layman’s terms, a cemetery). The archaeologists on this project aren’t sure yet whether this is from the Vandal period of occupation (5th c. AD) or the Roman period of occupation (2nd-3rd c. AD) on the island. Due to the fact that by the time the Romans decided to come here and settle down for a bit (read as attempted to conquer) they had been interacting with so many different cultures (whether through trade or war) that they’d adopted many of the traits and customs of some of their neighbors. Once Carmen and Fernando (the head archaeologist for the necropolis and the director of the Ecomuseu and the whole project) have time to sit down and actually look at the things that we, the students, have pulled from the unrelenting clay, they’ll be able to tell for sure what era this site hails from.

Regardless of the Era, the cemetery is comprised of cist style graves dug into the hard earth. A cyst grave is where a circular or rectangular (as in this case) hole is dug into the ground and then the sides and sometimes the base are lined with large flat stones. The bodies are then entombed in the graves. After enough time has passed so that the remains become skeletal, the grave is reopened, the bones shifted to the side, and new body(ies) added. Due to this practice the remains of 5-15 individuals could resides inside one tomb alone.

Our job is to (a) locate the tombs via pickaxing, (b) excavate the remains from each tomb, and (c) attempt to determine the minimum number of individuals that could have been present in each from the fragmented remains that are pulled out. The remains are incredible fragile and many of them splinter upon the slightest touch, which makes it very frustrating to work with. In the lab were get to put the bone puzzles back together, which is kinda fun.

We’re currently finishing excavations in Necropolis 6. These excavations were started last year or even possibly the year before that and now we’re coming to a close. At the start of the week there were only two tombs that still had work remaining on them and one amphora. At the end of the week there was one new tomb that was located (under a rosemary bush) on the second to last day and is only partially excavated. Everything else is either backfilled already to preserve it or left as a show and tell piece for the government and media personnel that are coming for a tour next week.

One of the tombs that we worked on this week we’ve taken to calling the “Tomb of Despair,” due to the fact that no one really wants to work in it. At the start of the week, the tomb was almost completely empty. There was just a little left at the bottom. The problem was that the bottom was about two feet under ground level and you couldn’t get inside the tomb to excavate. As a result you got to hang over the side, head down, and dig practically upside down. Caused a great head rush when you later sat back up to let the blood flow back to the rest of your body again. It was not the most pleasant of positions, that’s for sure.

The amphora (a large ceramic jug) was used as a burial vessel for an infant. Carmen believes that the child might have been two years old at the time of its death, but it seem so much smaller than that. Could just be that it only take up half of the amphorae which itself is only about 2 feet by 1 foot. The amphora is the only one of its kind to have been found on the island to date, so the finding of it holds a significant (although I don’t really know what that significant is).

There is one more day of digging left at the necropolis and then presentation day where everyone had to present a five minute powerpoint on a topic of their choice that relates somehow back to either the site, the various conquers of the island or bones. It’s not so much finding a topic that’s a problem as trying to make a five minute presentation intelligent, brief and informative all at the same time. Then two more days of chilling on the island (hopefully I can’t find some people to rent a car with this time and get to see more of the sites) and then it’s off to mainland Spain.