Burial Customs in Ancient Italy

A showcase exhibition in the Collection of Antiquities on the 1st floor focuses on burial customs in ancient Italy and in particular the significance of grave goods as symbols of gender, age and social status.

Grave goods

The custom of providing the dead person with grave goods was widespread in Antiquity. And many of these gifts were objects that had been used in life such as jewellery, weapons and ceramics. Grave goods and the burial form can tell us about the sex and age of the dead person and also about his or her social status and identity in society.

Burial customs

Important elements in the burial were the rituals and symbolical acts that were performed in order to ensure the deceased a good life after death. Only a small number of these rituals are reflected in the material relics. One example is the use of Charon’s coin, in which coins were placed in the dead person’s mouth. All written sources tell us that this was a payment for the ferryman Charon. Without this payment he would refuse to take the dead person’s soul over the Styx to the realm of the dead.

Studies of grave gifts and funeral rituals are thus among the most important sources for our knowledge of the society and the belief in an afterlife in ancient Italy.