The Roman Era

Once we have seen that not all society was represented in funerary and religious monuments, we need to deal with the fact that people and time destroyed most of them and consequently, reaching them is no longer possible . Since the Roman Era itself, inscribed monuments were reused for inscribing a new dedication or reused as building material . Furthermore, most of those which have lasted until today or, at least, were recorded in modern times, were reused as building materials and consequently, fragmentised and exposed to inclement weather and subsequent erosion. The supports of the epigraphs were not only an excellent way to advertise a message, but were also a block of stone which could be reused for engraving a new message or for building material .
Moreover, epitaphs and religious dedications were surely built not only in stone but also in poorer and perishable materials which are nowadays lost.
In cemeteries from the Roman Era there would probably been sepulchres with epitaphs made in stone, ceramics, wood… and others without any external marker . Unfortunately, excluding incredibly exceptional situations, only the ones made of imperishable materials are likely to have been preserved .
For these reasons, the sample of our study is incomplete and sometimes, damaged. We cannot expect to have information about all the people who received an epitaph or dedicated a votive monument for a deity during the Roman Era. However, the reason behind the preservation (or not) of monuments is mainly accidental and in certain circumstances, we could assume that it is a random selection of the original sample and therefore,
representative.