La necropoli orientale di Suasa

The Eastern Necropolis of the Roman city of Suasa was discovered during the 2012 archaeological campaign, while some stratigraphic trenches were carried out. The necropolis, investigated between the years 2012 and 2016, is located on the two sides of an ancient east-west road, which divides the cemetery into two areas, called north and south, with characteristics and chronologies very different from each other. The Northern Area preserves burials of the Republican age (2nd-1st century BC), organized in nuclei around stele and gravestones, sometimes decorated and inscribed. The northern area was abandoned about the end of the 1st century BC, when the earliest graves of the southern area are dated. The southern area will remain in use until at least the 3rd century AD and is characterized by the presence of an enclosure delimited by inscribed boundary stones and bases of funerary monuments. The burials, mainly incineration, were arranged in clus- ters along the road, while an extensive area of ustrinae was found in the centre of the plot. The eastern necropolis, although only partially investigated, offers an extremely interesting cross-section of the life of the Roman city of Suasa, providing a very rich documentation for almost five centuries.