The graves of two Romans have been found in southeastern Romania, according to a Science in Poland report.
Valentina Voinea of Romania’s National Museum of History and Archaeology and Bartłomiej Szymon Szmoniewski of the Polish Academy of Sciences led a team of researchers who examined two second-century graves found in a heavily plowed burial mound in Cheia, southeastern Romania.
The first grave consisted of human remains thought to have been placed in a wooden box with possessions owned by the dead person and then burned in a pit. This grave had been looted in antiquity. When the robbers left, they closed up their hole, covered it with stones, and placed a wolf skull on top of them to prevent the spirit of the deceased from exiting the grave and taking revenge, Szmoniewski suggested.
The second grave held the skeletal remains of a person thought to have been buried in a wooden coffin with a glass vessel containing fragrance. A bronze coin minted between A.D. 125 and 127 during the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian was found in the skeleton’s mouth.
The coin was likely intended to be used as payment to Charon to transport the soul of the deceased across the River Styx in Hades, Szmoniewski said.
He thinks the dead people may have been Romans who had traveled to the area, while the looters may have been local Dacians.
