Mors acerba into the civitas of Forum Iulii (narbonnensis Gaul) : from archaeothanatology to social archaeology
Résumé
During Roman Antiquity, the specificity of the funerary treatment of the children (localization or device) is always described as very specific, sometimes atypical or deviant, compared to the adults. In Forum Iulii, the graves analyzed, comprising cremations or inhumations, testify obviously to specific gestures towards them, but the intra-site comparative analysis reveals also an heterogeneity in the practices. Despite the sharing of a common standard in the constitution of the tomb, the methodological progress in field archaeology allows us to interpret this variability better. This diversity highlights specific treatments which depend mostly on the social group to which they are linked. Actually, to understand the funeral practices for the young subjects, which are the result of choices made in the family intimacy, we must consider those to the adults of the same group. This new reading proposes the first answers on the origin and the identification of the populations present on the territory of this civitas.