1,800-year-old nails discovered in 3 burials in Roman necropolis, possibly to "protect" both the living and the dead

A close-up of a half-exposed skeleton with a metal nail resting to the left of the ribcage — A close-up of the skeleton shows a nail placed at the top of the chest (just left of the spine). (Image credit: Special Superintendency of Rome)

Small iron nails placed over three skeletons’ coffins preserve an unusual detail about ancient roman burial custom: 1,800 years ago, someone tried to protect the living from the dead.

Menghinello and his colleagues worked in a big way Ostiense Necropolis in the heart of Rome when they discovered three burials with nails placed with overlays over the chest, according to a March 4 translated statement from the Special Superintendency of Rome.

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The Ostiense necropolis was originally excavated in 1919but new archaeological work ahead of housing construction revealed another part of the cemetery on Via Ostiense, near the Basilica of Saint Paul outside the walls. The newly uncovered site helps clarify how burial customs changed over the centuries as the Ostiense necropolis expanded, Menghinello said.

“In antiquity, the sides of the road were occupied by a huge Roman necropolis” with several different types of tombs, Menghinello said, dating to between the second century B.C. and the fourth century AD. But the exact boundary of the necropolis is still not fully known, she said. The skeletons buried with nails were found in simple graves, probably dated to the third and fourth centuries AD

But the purpose of the nail is something of a mystery.

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Close-up of one of the three skeletons found with a nail at the excavation site on Via Ostiense in Rome.

“Its function has been interpreted in different ways,” Menghinello said, noting that the nail may have been used to symbolically “fix” the dead from returning to haunt the living. If the corpse was not fixed, it was believed that the dead could become a “revenant” or a revived corpse common in folklore.

But the practice may have been intended to protect the deceased as well. When used in an apotropaic practice — one meant to ward off harm — the nail became a type of talisman to protect the dead individual from the dangers of the afterlife or to protect the grave from being disturbed, Menghinello said.

The nailing ritual “would therefore have served to preserve the body from potential trespassers of its final resting place, protect the deceased from malevolent forces and at the same time secure the surviving relatives from the possible return of the dead among the living,” Menghinello said.