Burial customs during Roman times evolved in a complex society in which Roman and Italic traditions combined with the diverse cultures and indigenous beliefs of the different peoples that made up the Roman Empire.

The two funerary methods of Roman society, burial and cremation, gradually gave way during the first centuries AD to a complete domination of burials, characteristic of the Low Empire. This can be attributed to the progressive influence of the different burial cultures present in Rome, through the local provincial elites, who gradually attained a majority in the organs of government and the Imperial administration.

The variety in the type of tombs is the main characteristic of lower Imperial burial grounds. The first differentiating factor is the cost, between for example, the sepulchral monuments and the simple interments in the ground, marked only by a small tumulus.

In the known burial sites on the Iberian Peninsula, simple burials in graves are much more common than grand mausoleums or funerary monuments. In the Tárraco Necropolis, of the more than two thousand catalogued tombs from the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, approximately one hundred are in the twenty different funerary structures found there. Simple tombs, therefore, clearly outnumber funerary buildings.

We do not know the reasons behind the choice of one type of funeral receptacle or another. There appears to be no chronological relationship to the variations. The stratigraphy shows that, although burials in wooden coffins or covered with flat tiles were used first, they coexisted later with the other types found and their placing seems random. Men and women, young people and adults are found side by side in all types of tombs.