As the first fully published account of the stratigraphic excavation of imperial period tombs from Pompeii, this is a landmark in Roman funerary archaeology, but it is of much more than specialist interest. Exceptional preservation conditions have allowed the authors to describe rituals and their setting over three quarters of a century by the Porta Nocera with a detail unequalled for the ancient world. Students of epigraphy, social history and law as well as of mortuary rituals will find discussion of significant interest here.

The fieldwork was undertaken in five monthly campaigns from 2003 to 2007, examining a c. 110 m² area centred on the mausoleum of the freedman Publius Vesonius Phileros by the road running west from the crossroads by the Porta Nocera towards the Stabian Gate. Save for removal or damage of some epitaphs and degradation of monument superstructures, the excavated area escaped mostly unscathed from earlier clearance. The protective overburden of volcanic debris and the short duration of funerary activity, mitigating the disturbance and spoliation otherwise characteristic of Roman urban burial grounds, also explain the remarkable survival of tombs. Excavation of a cluster of walled plots and their environs documented sixty-four burials, many pyres and associated debris deposits, in-situ columellae (anthropomorphic burial markers) as well as larger monuments, and cemetery surfaces in which residues of commemorative and profane activity were embedded. Good preservation of cremated bone enhanced the osteological analysis of individuals (age, sex, pathology) and of the treatment which their remains had undergone. Inspired by Scheid's reconstruction of the funeral as a structured sacrificial process, the project defines itself as a mortuary archéologie du geste, aimed at establishing as full as possible a reconstruction of the sequence of actions from pyre to interment and subsequent commemoration. It draws especially on the condition of cremated human bone and its depositional history as evidence for ritual process.

After discussing research context, fieldwork methods and previous work in and around the plots concerned, the first volume presents a detailed stratigraphic account of each enclosure and cremation area (sections 1–3). The second volume documents the finds, from the monumental to the artefactual and biological. Most readers, however, will first turn to the summaries (vol. I, section 4) of the burial plots' development, of the rituals documented within them and of the skeletal remains. The funerary activity reported here dates from the later decades of the first century b.c. to a.d. 79. Within individual plots, use for burial alternates with episodes of abandonment and of landscaping in anticipation of new ownership. The later phases are more fully documented than the earlier, especially in relation to the largest plot (23), taken over in the Neronian period by Phileros and perhaps previously belonging to the family of his patron, Publia Vesonia. For individual burials, the funerary sequence can be reconstructed with extraordinarily high resolution, enabled by meticulous documentation of individual deposits and successful linkage between pyres, debris deposits and graves. The wealth of detail and of variety of practice is almost overwhelming, but nonetheless striking commonalities characterize most burials, illustrated by the example of Bebryx, a six-year-old slave. His grave could be linked to an individual pyre site through two joining bone fragments, supplemented by the complementary character of individual bone elements and the identity of maturation stage in the skeletal assemblage from pyre and grave. Thoroughly cremated, little else was found with his remains save some scraps of pig and chicken bone. A lamp, ceramic cup and glass unguent bottle were deposited broken on the raked-up pyre remnant after the collection of the bones. Most of the latter were gathered in a textile container before deposition in an urn, with a holed jug placed above it to allow the pouring of libations into the tomb. The packing for the lava columella which marked the grave included a bronze nail, perhaps deliberately wedged in place as a clou magique; above the deposit which sealed the grave was a glass unguent bottle, perhaps discarded after emptying its contents at the tomb.

In their essentials, little distinguishes rituals for Bebryx from those of more important individuals, for example the freedwoman Stallia Haphe, occupant of the adjacent burial and likely sponsor of the plot, or of Vesonia, the patron of Phileros. Occasionally, as for Phileros himself, bone inlay and plaster fragments suggest the transport of the corpse on decorated biers. Otherwise pyre residues differ only in their slightly greater variety, sometimes including the carbonized remnant of plant foodstuffs as well as scraps of glass, ceramics, and hobnails and metal casket fittings. Unlike most burials, that of Bebryx lacked a coin, but grave goods are otherwise rare; the phallic amulet (burnt) and bracelet with attached bell buried with a child a few months old (tomb 10) are a rare example of more generous provision, linked to the age of the deceased. Marble was occasionally preferred to lava for markers, but even for Phileros and friends a re-used piece was inscribed with the epitaph. As the excavators note, the modest quantities of objects consumed and use of recycled materials are far from the obsequies of epic. Only through their monuments do the likes of Phileros stand out, typical of the freed individuals sponsoring tombs by the Porta Nocera.

As well as a richly documented ritual sequence, the excavation also furnishes an unusually well understood setting for burial markers, inscribed and anepigraphic. A curse affixed to the podium of his mausoleum famously describes the disloyalty to Phileros of his erstwhile amicus, Marcus Ofellius Faustus, whose statue shares the aedicula above with those of Phileros and Publia Vesonia. Excavation of the niche at the back of the podium reveals the practicalities of sundering Faustus in perpetuity from the di inferi which the curse wished on him. The columella set up in anticipation of his death while the pair were friends was broken and its stub was sealed along with the never-used receptacle for his ashes by a mortar layer in which Phileros' initials were inscribed. Markers otherwise ensured the proximity of connected individuals in death, allowed tombs to be re-opened for later burial, and provided a focus for commemorative libations. To judge from plots 23 and 35b, this function lapsed after two or three decades; with change of ownership came an uprooting of markers and a sealing of earlier burials through dumped material. By contrast, the remounting of the epitaph of Stallia Haphe at a higher level as the ground within her plot rose reveals deferral rather than quickening of oblivion.

Survival and approach notwithstanding, there were limits (sometimes left implicit) to what could be achieved. The archéologie du geste in this case reveals the processes applied to the corpse: of the consumption of food by the living, a key element in Scheid's model for ritual process and status-supporting hospitality, there is little trace. The stratigraphic account and the discussions of finds assemblages show that not all evidence can be easily or precisely accommodated within the funerary sequence. Lepetz' analysis of animal bones, for example, reveals the difficulty of differentiating funerary activity, rubbish dumping and redeposition as well as canine action among faunal remains from the cemetery surfaces. Absolute chronologies were not easy to establish, given the wide dating brackets for the main object types, including coins. Appeals to the wider history of Pompeii to date individual sequences are plausible but unproven. For example, seven successive pyres in sector 250 are bracketed by linking a wall collapse which they postdate to the a.d. 62 earthquake and the overlying deposit, closing the area's use for cremation, to the restoration of misappropriated public land by Titus Suedius Clemens in c. a.d. 75.

While the volumes are presented to a very high standard (errors noted being rare and trivial: for example, the description of tomb 15 begins on p. 553, not 533 as the table of contents has it), their size obstructs easy use and cross-reference. An accompanying digital component might have mitigated cost and facilitated exploitation of the quantitative data, especially of the cremated bone. The absence of summaries in other languages and, above all, the staggering price, do not ease the volumes' accessibility. Nonetheless this project puts study of Roman funerals on a new footing. Instead of a composite derived from sources of varied date, biased to élites and focused on the exceptional or absurd, here are death rituals from cremation to commemoration in a single setting from urban Italy at the beginning of empire. Here too are challenges for future fieldwork on well-preserved burial sites, especially where the circumstances of development-led archaeology may set constraints to which this project was not subject.