Four stages can be described here, archaeologically recognizable, in a sequence in which a pagan mausoleum becomes a paleo-Christian necropolis, according to a dynamic process that is established over two centuries.
The first is the phase of pre-Christian Roman Mausoleum, between the beginning and the middle of the first century. It is the funerary pantheon of the Hispanic-Roman noblewoman «Atia Moeta» and her family, as the sepulchral title of the mausoleum writes (which we will see in more detail later). From a certain chronological moment, it accepts the burial of an emblematic person compatible with the Apostle Santiago.
The second is the Christianization phase and the beginning of the sepulchral cult, in the beginning and middle of the second century. The tombs of the characters identified as the apostle James the Greater and his disciples Athanasius and Theodore, come to occupy the priority of the mausoleum and is placed in the preferred place of the edículo, and in its upper part of it an altar is installed where They are worshiped, altar that conforms from which was the initial sepulchral title mentioned. That is, what was a private mausoleum, becomes a Christian temple of collective worship.
It follows a phase of Concealment between the middle and end of the second century. As a measure of security, protection and defense, the edícule is covered by a vaulted wall of masonry, and even by the construction of a retaining wall of the land aligned with the mausoleum, it causes the concealment underground part or all The building, which generates the proliferation, spontaneous or provoked, of abundant vegetation that leaves buried the whole.