Ustrinum
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In ancient Roman funerals, an ustrinum (plural ustrina) was the site of a cremation funeral pyre whose ashes were removed for interment elsewhere. The ancient Greek equivalent was a καύστρα (kaustra). Ustrina could be used many times. A single-use cremation site that also functioned as a tomb was a bustum.
A single ustrinum could accommodate many successive cremations, and usually belonged to a single family. Mass cremations, in which several bodies were burned in a ustrinum simultaneously or in succession, were efficient but were used only for the poor, or during epidemics, or on battlefields. Otherwise the ustrinum was supposed to be cleared after use, to avoid the mixing of ashes from different bodies, though a few cases are known in which this was deliberately done.[1] After a cremation, the heir of the deceased sprinkled the ashes with wine, gathered them along with any traces of bone, placed them in a cremation urn and interred them in a mausoleum or a bustum (tomb). This was sometimes done by the wife of the deceased; Livia did so with the ashes of her husband, the emperor Augustus.[2][3]
Ustrinum Domus Augustae
The ustrinum of the emperor Augustus, and other members of the house of Augustus, was sited in the Campus Martius, near the Mausoleum of Augustus. Strabo describes it as a travertine enclosure with a metal grating (presumably on top of the wall) and black poplars planted inside it.[4] A fine alabaster urn[5] and six large rectangular cippi of travertine were found in excavations in 1777 at the corner of the Corso and Via degli Otto Cantonia (now Via dei Pontefici). These cippi had inscriptions of various members of the imperial household, the three sons and one daughter of Germanicus, Tiberius the son of Drusus, and a certain Vespasianus.[6] It is very probable that these cippi, or at any rate the first three, which all end with the formula 'hic crematus est,' belonged to the ustrinum. This would place the ustrinum on the east side of the Mausoleum.[7] On this hypothesis, the fourth and fifth cippi, which bear the formula hic situs (or sita) est, may have belonged to the mausoleum. Hirschfeld however, excludes this possibility, mainly because of the material and form of the cippi.[8]