Liana Brent - Etruscan Tomb

Liana Brent

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/Samuel H. Kress Foundation Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize (year two of a two-year fellowship)
September 8, 2017–July 27, 2019
Profession
PhD Candidate, Department of Classics, Cornell University
Project title
Corporeal Connections: Tomb Disturbance, Reuse, and Violation in Roman Italy
Project description

My doctoral research explores non-élite Roman burial practices that involved postdepositional activity, including disturbance, reuse, and violation. This project prioritizes body-oriented research and the human remains that were once a corpse and the focus of mortuary treatment. I consider the handling of skeletal remains at the time of grave reopening in inhumation—as opposed to cremation—burials in non-monumental cemeteries throughout Roman Italy from the late first to early fifth centuries CE. This research integrates published evidence from suburban and semirural cemeteries with current methods from archaeothanatology. By investigating the state of the human remains at the time of reopening and the time between depositions, my argument centers around the ways in which the addition of individuals and the manipulation of human skeletal elements could create and maintain intergenerational corporeal connections between the deceased and the living.