Death on the Roman Empire's eastern frontier
At one necropolis
just outside the
town of Scupi in
Macedonia,
archaeologists have
thus far uncovered
more than 5,000
graves dating from
the Bronze Age
through the
Roman period. (Courtesy Lence Jovanova)
Mass Grave Mystery
In the first century A.D. Roman army veterans
arrived in what is now northern Macedonia and
settled near the small village of Scupi. The veterans
had been given the land by the emperor Domitian
as a reward for their service, as was customary. They
soon began to enlarge the site, and around A.D. 85,
the town was granted the status of a Roman colony and named
Colonia Flavia Scupinorum. ("Flavia" refers to the
Flavian Dynasty of which Domitian was a
member.) Over the next several centuries
Scupi grew at a rapid pace. In the late
third century and well into the fourth,
Scupi experienced a period of great
prosperity. The colony became the
area's principal religious, cultural,
economic, and administrative center
and one of the locations from
which, through military action and
settlement, the Romans colonized
the region.
Scupi, which gives its name
to Skopje, the nearby capital of
the Republic of Macedonia, has
been excavated regularly since 1966. Since
that time archaeologists have uncovered an
impressive amount of evidence, including many
of the buildings that characterize a Roman city—
a theater, a basilica, public baths, a granary, and
a sumptuous urban villa, as well as remains of the city walls and part of the gridded
street plan. Recently, however, due
to the threat from construction,
they have focused their work on one
of the city's necropolises, situated on
both sides of a 20-foot-wide state-of-the
art ancient road. In the Roman world, it
was common practice to locate necropolises
on a town's perimeter, along its main roads,
entrances, and exits. Of Scupi's four necropolises,
the southeastern one, which covers about
75 acres and contains at least 5,000 graves spanning more than 1,500 years, is the best researched. The
oldest of its burials date from the Late Bronze and Early
Iron Age (1200–900 B.C). These earlier graves were
almost completely destroyed as Roman burials began
to replace them in the first century. According to Lence
Jovanova of the City Museum of Skopje, who is in charge
of the necropolis excavations, the burials have provided
much new information crucial to understanding the lives
of ancient Scupi's residents, including the types of household
items they used, their life spans, building techniques,
and religious beliefs. In just the last two years alone, nearly
4,000 graves have been discovered and about 10,000 artifacts excavated, mostly objects used in daily life
such as pots, lamps, and jewelry.
Among the many artifacts of
everyday life found in the
graves are a ceramic face
pot dating to
the first century A.D. (Courtesy Lence Jovanova)
Among the thousands of graves there is a great
variety of size, shape, style, and inhumation practice.
There are individual graves, family graves,
elaborate stone tombs, and simple, unadorned
graves. Some burials are organized in regular
lines along a grid pattern parallel to the main
road, as was common in the Roman world.
Other individuals are buried in seemingly random
locations within the necropolis area, more
like a modern cemetery that has been in use for
a long time. The oldest Roman layers, dating to
the first through mid-third centuries A.D., contain
predominantly cremation burials. The later Roman
layers, however, containing graves from the third
and fourth centuries A.D., are, with very few exceptions,
burials of skeletons. According to Jovanova,
this variety in burial practice is normal for this time
and reflects a complex, long-term, and regionwide demographic change resulting not only from an
increased number of settlers coming from
the east, but also from internal economic,
social, and religious changes.
This past summer, Jovanova's team
was finishing excavations in one section
of the southeast necropolis, where she
hopes to uncover more evidence about
Scupi's history and its inhabitants among
the 5,000 to 10,000 graves she thinks
are left to investigate. Although there are
construction pressures on archaeological
work in the necropolis, the ancient city
is legally protected from any modern
building, so future work will focus on
excavating the city walls and buildings.
There are also plans to create an archaeological
park on the site.
Matthew Brunwasser is a freelance writer living in Istanbul.
