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Dion, located at the foot of Mount Olympus’s eastern slopes, was the Macedonians' sacred city since the 5th c BC; Zeus Olympios was worshipped there and the ‘Olympia’ was held under the auspices of the kings. In 169 BC the city fell to the Romans and in 32/31 BC became a Roman colony. The Romans implemented a new system of administration; material evidence indicates the interplay between new cultures and local traditions. Recent excavations at the western cemetery of this monumental urban centre brought to light more than 200 tombs dated to the 1st c. BC to 3rd c. AD. The funerary evidence reveals an important variation in mortuary rites (e.g. primary/secondary deposits, inhumations/cremations, wealthy offerings, grave architecture) that suggests social complexity; as such, the cemetery of Dion offers a unique opportunity to integrate multiple lines of evidence and shed new light on life and death in provincial societies of the Roman state. Our project proposes the interdisciplinary approach of the cemetery through a contextual archaeological and bioarchaeological study. Here we present the outline of the skeletal analysis; the burials from Dion provide a significant potential for addressing issues relevant to health, diet and mortuary practices as a means of identity formation in Roman Greece.
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