Cremated human remains represent one of the most complex – and at the same time most promising – sources of evidence in contemporary bioarchaeology. Long regarded as difficult to interpret, they are now proving to be a crucial source for understanding not only funeral rituals, but also profound aspects of the social organisation and biology of ancient communities.

It is against this backdrop that the new study published in the journal PLoS ONE should be viewed; it analyses cremated remains from the imperial Roman necropolis of La Cona, in Teramo, one of the most significant sites in central-Adriatic Italy for reconstructing funerary practices between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD.

The research, carried out in collaboration with Sapienza University of Rome, the University of Bologna, the Superintendence for Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the provinces of L’Aquila and Teramo, and the Polish Academy of Sciences, was coordinated by the Department of Cultural Heritage (dBC) at the University of Padua

‘Archaeological cremations offer a unique insight into the relationship between the treatment of the body, the construction of ritual, and individual identity,’ says Melania Gigante, study coordinator, researcher and Principal Investigator of a STARS project at the University of Padua. ‘Today we have the tools to interpret them as complex systems, capable of integrating cultural and biological information with a level of detail that was previously unimaginable.’

The study analysed various cremation contexts, identifying the interment – in some cases multiple – of adults, adolescents and infants. The data show that the collection of bones after cremation was not random, but followed selective criteria attributable to ossilegium practices (the collection of the bones of the deceased after decomposition for deposition in an ossuary), with a significant prevalence of skull fragments and long bones. In several burials, the remains of burnt animals – such as sheep, goats, pigs, roosters and molluscs – were also identified, which can be interpreted as offerings or ritual elements incorporated into the burial. “This is not simply a process of cremating the body,” continues Gigante, “but a structured ritual sequence in which the selection, handling and symbolic accompaniment of the body define the final form of the burial.”

A key factor was the integration of macroscopic analysis of the fragments with histological examination (i.e. of the microstructures of the bone tissue) of the cremated fragments, carried out at the BIOANTH laboratory of Sapienza University of Rome, directed by Alessia Nava, a lecturer and Principal Investigator of the ERC StG – MOTHERS project and co-author of the study. This enabled a reliable distinction to be made between human and animal remains and allowed for a more precise estimation of the age at death of the individuals, even in cases that could not be resolved by macroscopic observation alone.

‘The integrated approach makes it possible to restore biological readability to highly fragmented remains,’ emphasises Alessia Galbusera, the study’s lead author and a researcher at BIOANTH. ‘This means we can reconstruct the composition of the population even in cremation contexts, which are traditionally considered less informative.’

The most innovative aspect concerns the analysis of bone remodelling: histological and histomorphometric investigations have shown that, despite combustion, the microstructure of the bone can be preserved in a legible manner, allowing observation of the Haversian system (the structural unit of compact bone – the osteon) and the application of quantitative parameters such as Osteon Population Density (OPD, a histological measure indicating the number of osteons present per unit area). The data show trends consistent with skeletal growth and maturation processes and, in some cases, allow the age at death to be estimated even in the absence of macroscopic indicators.

Even after passing through fire, bones retain traces of their biological history: this enables researchers to study bone remodelling and skeletal physiology in archaeological populations, helping us to understand how human biology has changed over the last few millennia of our history.

The study on La Cona forms part of a line of research that the team has helped to define in recent years, including at an international level. A significant contribution in this direction had already been made by the study by Gigante and colleagues (2021), which focused on the cremated remains from the famous Tomb 168 at Pithekoussai, known as the Tomb of Nestor’s Cup due to the discovery within it of a Greek-made cup bearing what is currently considered the oldest known inscription in the Greek alphabet. In that case, histological analysis of the cremated bone had demonstrated particularly effectively how a microscopic approach could help to redefine the (bio)archaeological interpretation of a site of extraordinary historical significance, definitively rejecting the hypothesis that it was the grave of a child who had died at a very young age.

‘Our work on the Nestor’s Cup Tomb had already demonstrated how histological analysis could influence the interpretation of funerary contexts of exceptional historical and archaeological significance,’ concludes Gigante. ‘With La Cona, we demonstrate that this approach is fully applicable to archaeological samples of varying chronology and state of preservation, yielding very promising results for the bioarchaeology of cremation contexts.’

References: Macroscopic and histological analyses of cremated remains from the Imperial Roman necropolis of La Cona (1st cent. BCE-1st cent. CE, Teramo, Italy) – «PLoS One» – 2026 - Alessia Galbusera, Stefano Magri, Owen Alexander Higgins, Martina Trevisan, Vito Giuseppe Prillo, Massimo Vidale, Vincenzo Torrieri, Stefano Benazzi, Luca Bondioli, Alessia Nava, Melania Gigante. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0345498

Further Information: 
Alessia Nava - alessia.nava@uniroma1.it
Alessia Galbusera - alessia.galbusera@uniroma1.it 
Department of Oral and Maxillo-Facial Sciences