Dorian Borbonus's Books

Columbarium Tombs and Collective Identity in Augustan Rome

By: Dorian Borbonus

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Columbarium Tombs and Collective Identity in Augustan Rome

By: Dorian Borbonus

This book analyzes the architecture of columbarium tombs and explains their unique design with the particular social experience of their non-elite occupants.

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Page Count

311

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1107031400

ISBN 13

9781107031401

Columbarium Tombs and Collective Identity in Augustan Rome

By: Dorian Borbonus

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Columbarium Tombs and Collective Identity in Augustan Rome

By: Dorian Borbonus

Columbarium tombs are among the most recognizable forms of Roman architecture and also among the most enigmatic. The subterranean collective burial chambers have repeatedly sparked the imagination of modern commentators, but their origins and function remain obscure. Columbarium Tombs and Collective Identity in Augustan Rome situates columbaria within the development of Roman funerary architecture and the historical context of the early Imperial period. Contrary to earlier scholarship that often interprets columbaria primarily as economic burial solutions, Dorian Borbonus shows that they defined a community of people who were buried and commemorated collectively. Many of the tomb occupants were slaves and freed slaves, for whom collective burial was one strategy of community building that counterbalanced their exclusion in Roman society. Columbarium tombs were thus sites of social interaction that provided their occupants with a group identity that, this book shows, was especially relevant during the social and cultural transformation of the Augustan era.

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