Funerary archaeology and digital technologies: history and development of a successful cross-disciplinary approach

The paper explores the successful merging of expertise in ‘funerary archaeology’ and ‘digital archaeology’ research domains. The Author first conducts a terminological analysis to establish a framework for both subjects based on their unique theoretical and methodological backgrounds and then highlights common methodological issues from the 1960s up to today. The result is a complex scenario in which the main applications include spatial analysis techniques and the GIS-based approach for the study of the relationship between cemeteries, settlements and territory; computer graphics and Virtual Reality techniques for the reconstruction of specific funerary structures and burial typologies; multivariate statistical analyses for the automatic classification of grave goods and their chronological ordering; modelling and simulation techniques to mimic features and behaviours of past ritual practices.