Burial road

The deceased were commemorated in ancient Carnuntum beside the main arterial roads.  The gravestones were sometimes splendidly decorated and told the life stories of the dead.

The graves along the so-called burial road on territory supervised by the Army give us an insight into the usual burial customs from the middle of the 1st to the 2nd century AD in Carnuntum.  In addition to the usual cremation burials at this time (manifest in urn graves and graves where the ashes were buried), busta were also the custom, when the deceased were not incinerated in the usual place but were cremated directly above the place where they were to be buried.  The urns were usually buried (with or without burial objects) in excavated holes in the ground.  The latest excavations have shown that more frequent inhumation burials took place in the early days of the Empire than had previously been assumed.  After the burials, the graves were often marked with stelae.  Some of these stelae were made of limestone from the Leitha hills in local workshops.  Others were perhaps made of wood and have therefore not been preserved.  Some graves were perhaps only marked by a small mound of earth.  The tombs were frequently enclosed by a wall.  Tombs were more lavish and expensive when so-called grave altars, monuments with pillars, or chapels were erected over the graves.  A typical form of Carnuntum grave (which was probably brought from Italy by soldiers) was the tumulus, consisting of a high mortar ring wall which was filled inside with earth. 

The graves in the area between the auxiliary fort and the burial road were abandoned at the beginning of the 2nd century.  The graves were often removed right down to the lowest level of the foundation walls, whereas the grave stelae were carefully laid flat and buried in shallow earthen graves.  These measures were no doubt connected with the rebuilding of the fort in late Trajan or early Hadrian time.  However, other sections of the burial road show that fresh burials took place later on after the demolition of the early graves.