Early Christian burial traditions in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Findings from Burial Contexts of the Cemetery Basilica below St Maximin, Trier

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The project is devoted to an inter-disciplinary analysis of findings recovered between 1978 and 1995 below the church of the important imperial abbey of St Maximin, Trier. These finding stem from the late ancient and early medieval burial inventories in the cemetery basilica of the citys important Christian community. The dimensions and features of this burial hall, which was built in the fourth century and measured c. 62 x 17 m, can be explained by the patronage of the imperial court at Trier. The sequence of the places building history has already been established and the rich early Christian corpus of inscriptions analysed in recent research. Now the objects recovered from the burials in sarcophagi, including precious textiles, jewellery, and skeletal remains, will be analysed to investigate the burial rites, the social background and provenance of the dead, as well as Christian ideas concerning the afterlife and their changes between the fourth and seventh centuries.