Romans in Ancient Olbia Watered Their Dead With Wine and Beer

Archaeologists in France have uncovered a 1,700-year-old ancient Roman funerary area, including burials with libation conduits hilariously akin to today’s watering spikes.

The excavation revealed at least 160 structures associated with cremation on France’s iconic Côte d’Azur, just west of the ancient port town of Olbia in modern-day Hyères. The findings highlight ancient Rome’s diverse funerary traditions and its people’s serious commitment to their dead.

1,700-year-old burials

Olbia was a Greek colony founded by Massaliotes—citizens of Marseille, also a Greek colony—in 325 BCE. The burial ground dates back to between the first and third centuries CE, at which point Olbia was part of the Roman colony of Arles.

The area hosted a funerary practice we often see in historical or fantasy movies (where those left living look on with epically serious expressions and flames reflecting in their teary eyes)—cremation via pyres, essentially a large pile of wood. Here, the ancient Romans built the pyres over rectangular pits and surrounded the deceased with objects destined to follow them into the afterlife.

The fire caused the wood to collapse into the pit, turned the pit’s walls red, and made the bones white, twisted, and cracked. The burial objects also melted or burnt, which is how experts can tell if they were placed there before or after the fire.

Afterward, some people turned the collapsed pyres into formal burial sites, while others transferred the cremation remains into separate graves. Either way, archaeologists identified the burials, sometimes marked by sandstone blocks, from their piles of human bones and found unburned objects like glass perfume bottles and vases. Interestingly, some of the bones were arranged in a pile or in a perishable container, as opposed to in a glass, ceramic, stone, or lead urn.

“Are these social or cultural differences? These discoveries remind us that ancient funerary rites were rich, varied, and imbued with multiple meanings, some of which remain mysterious even today,†reads the statement by France’s National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) describing the discovery.

Libation conduits

Most of the newly discovered graves also featured another distinctive Olbian feature—a conduit for libations, or liquid offerings, such as wine, beer, and mead for either the deceased or the gods. Many of these conduits were mostly made from amphorae, with one of the excavation images (at the top of this article) featuring the top of an upside-down amphora that would have presumably stuck out of the ground like the water spikes some people use to water their plants when they go on vacation.

The Inrap statement highlights one pyre tomb in particular. Its walls are reddened, and the team found metal nails among the burnt bones, indicating that the deceased was cremated atop a wooden structure such as a stretcher or a bed. Afterward, someone left a jug and two small pots on the pyre’s likely extinguished remains. The pit was then closed with a roof-like cover of tiles and partially filled in to hold up its libation conduit—two upright semi-circular tiles.

The discovery stands as a reminder that while the Romans are one of the most studied ancient civilizations, they still have secrets in store for archaeologists.