AD). The ban remained in place until at least the 4th century. Heirs might be obliged by the terms of their inheritance to keep their inheritance whole, not sell it piecemeal, and to keep the family name alive; this could be done by leaving the property to freedmen, who adopted the name of the master who freed them. Whoever inherited or bought a property automatically acquired its graves, monuments and resident deities, including its dii Manes and Lares, who were closely associated – at least in popular opinion – with ancestor cult. If the family villa had to be sold, it was not unusual for the contract of sale to maintain the vendor's traditional rights of access to their family tombs, so that they could continue to observe their ancestral and commemorative rites and duties. Common graves A funeral ceremony acceptable to the Roman elite might represent several times the annual income of the average citizen, and an impossibility to the very poor, dependent on charity or an unpredictable day-wage, unable to afford or maintain a burial-club subscription. The social status of the poorest citizens might have been marginally better than a slave, but their prospect of decent burial could be much worse. Some were doubtless unlawfully dumped by their relatives, or by the aediles or rather, by their assistants. Several historical burial crises are known, mostly relating to famines and plagues and the overwhelming of facilities for disposal. The bodies of the poorest, whether slave or free, could have been consigned to the same dishonourable places as executed criminals deemed obnoxious to the state (noxii). Most are presumed to have been disposed of in pits (puticuli, s.puticulus) like those at the Esquiline, outside the town or city boundary, or at worst dumped into sewers or rivers, and their remains dispersed. For the truly impoverished, and during times of exceptionally high mortality such as famine or epidemic, mass-burials or mass-cremations with minimal or no rites might have been the only realistic option, and as much as the authorities and undertakers could cope with. Some modern scholars perceive this as a sign of apathetic indifference among Rome's poorest in a ferociously competitive society. Basic pit graves The least costly form of individual inhumation was the simple pit-grave. It was used, in various forms, throughout the Republic and Empire, especially where there was little or no pressure for burial space. Orientation of