This book is visually stunning. The magnificent images take me back to the first time I visited the newly excavated and presented Roman necropolis under the Piazzale di Santa Rosa in December 2006. The bewildering array of built tombs, gravestones, funerary portraits and ground-level libation pipes jutting out everywhere made a lasting impression, dispelling any notions of Roman cemeteries being neatly organised rows of tombs along a main thoroughfare. This place is busy, jostling and lively even now, as any Roman necropolis would have been whilst in use; only the sounds and smells are now missing.

The volume presents the results of the excavations in the 1940s and 1950s under St Peter's basilica and the area under the Vatican car park (Autoparco), as well as the most recent work from 2003–2006 at Santa Rosa. Together, these excavated remains reveal a remarkable picture of the cemeteries along the ancient Via Triumphalis on the Vatican hill, with the rich evidence for funerary ritual that has all but disappeared at contemporary cemeteries such as those at Ostia and Portus. The entire complex is now accessible as two museums, with plans to connect both sectors of the necropolis.

The book opens with a chapter on the chronological, historical and topographic development of the ager Vaticanus and the Vaticanum. It presents a picture of this suburban area as a desirable one for the villas, monuments and gardens of the Roman elite and the imperial family in the first centuries b.c. and a.d. But changing land use and lack of imperial interest meant that by the latter part of the second century a.d. the site of the now disused circus of Caligula and Nero on the old horti of Agrippina began to be transformed into a cemetery. The second chapter discusses Roman funerary rituals and practices that are attested by the archaeological evidence recovered in the Vatican necropoleis. The change in rite from cremation to inhumation, for example, took about a century to complete, as is evident in the types of receptacles for human remains in the chamber tombs. Cinerary urns in the niches of columbaria were gradually replaced with formae and sarcophagi from the 130s and 140s a.d. to the middle of the third century. Evidence retrieved for rites in memory of the dead includes the use of floral offerings during the annual Parentalia festival, the holes above the cornices of tomb walls being interpreted as hooks from which flower garlands were suspended. The pouring of libations and the lighting of lamps over the physical remains of the deceased are attested by the in situ finds of jugs near tomb altars and oil lamps above cinerary urns.

In addition to brick-built house tombs and marble urns and sarcophagi, containers for human remains could be made of perishable materials, although the evidence for them anywhere is extremely rare. A striking discovery in the Santa Rosa necropolis, therefore, is the small ditches filled with human ashes, but devoid of any cinerary urns or grave goods. The small amount of ash found in these ditches is comparable to that contained in urns of more permanent materials, such as stone, and the authors argue that this is evidence for the use of coffins or boxes of wood or even wicker as a ‘cheaper’ receptacle for the cremated remains. Certainly, many marble ash urns throughout Roman Italy were carved to imitate wooden boxes or wicker baskets, so the real thing must have existed. Perhaps containers made of perishable materials were far more common than has previously been recognised, illustrating a considerable social differentiation in the materials for the receptacles of human remains.

Chapter 3 is a discussion of the necropolis under St Peter's basilica. It opens with a high-quality photograph (the only colour one I know) of the inscription of Gaius Popilius Heracla that is a copy of his last will and testament of the second century a.d. This document is crucial not only because it names the proprietor of the tomb, but also because it records the wishes of the deceased regarding the location of his (excavated) tomb (tomb A) near the circus (in Vatica(no) ad Circum) and the obligation of the heirs to spend 6,000 sesterces to erect it. Only a handful of such inscriptions, once mounted on the walls of tombs, survive, and so it is a particularly valuable document enabling us to grasp the concern for a proper memorial as a reflection of status, as well as the importance of individual preference and the ante-mortem specification for tomb design. A discussion of the many other tombs in the necropolis follows, accompanied by beautiful colour photographs of brick facades and polychrome interior walls, but space permits the mention of only one, the family tomb of the Valerii (tomb H). This tomb stands out for its stucco and marble portraits of the tomb owner, his wife and two children, originally published by H. Drerup (‘Totenmaske und Ahnenbild bei den Römern’, RM 87 [1980], 81–129). Stucco portraits and plaster funerary masks are extremely rare, so this set of likenesses is exceptional, as is its presentation with excellent colour photographs. Particularly moving is the plaster mask of a dead infant; we know of only one other mask of a child so young from Paris, most recently published by V. Dasen (in V. Dasen and T. Späth [edd.], Children, Memory, and Family Identity in Roman Culture [2010], pp. 109–46).

Chapter 4 is devoted to the Autoparco and Santa Rosa sections of the necropolis. This area is characterised by a series of terraces cut into the terrain for house or chamber tombs and individual burials from the mid-first to mid-third centuries a.d. It is apparent that any kind of general planning is lacking, in part due to the constraints imposed by the Vatican hill's topography and the instability of the land. In fact, we owe the remarkable survival of much of the evidence in this location to precisely this instability; landslides covered the tombs and preserved them on various occasions. Brick-built columbaria with varying orientation jostle against each other and against upright tombstones, tile burials a cappuccina, cupae or barrel tombs, and stone altars. The amount of new epigraphic material from the site is enormous, and the information on changing burial rites, funerary containers, mosaic floor coverings and tomb paintings is exceedingly rich testimony to evolving funerary customs and the occupation of the cemetery by people whose social status and origins could differ vastly. The final fifth chapter discusses the conservation and restoration of these paintings and sculptures. For me, the most emotive object to emerge from the Santa Rosa excavations is without doubt the marble funerary portrait of a young boy, the inscription on the plaque to which the head is attached revealing his age as four years, four months and ten days. The portrait is exquisite. Was it based on a mask taken from the infant's face, like those in the tomb of the Valerii under St Peter's?

This book is not a substitute for the final, detailed publication of the excavations and the material culture revealed in them, but it is a very fine tribute to the wealth and variety of monuments dedicated to the memory of named individuals and families and to the attention paid to rituals meant to honour the dead in imperial Rome. It should inspire any reader to visit the site.