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Citation for published version (APA):
Pearce, J., Lavan, L. (Ed.), & Mulryan, M. (Ed.) (2013). Beyond the Grave: Excavating the Dead in the Late
Roman Provinces. Late Antique Archaeology, 9(1), 441-482.
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Download date: 14. Jun. 2020
BEYOND THE GRAVE.
EXCAVATING THE DEAD IN THE LATE ROMAN PROVINCES
John Pearce
Abstract
Recent decades have been fruitful for the gathering of new evidence, and
for the establishment of new methods and theoretical perspectives in Late
Roman funerary archaeology. This paper reflects on three aspects of the
new data, distribution, character and dissemination, using examples from
Britain and beyond. Grave distribution is strongly biased towards urban
contexts, with consequences for socio-cultural and demographic analysis.
Opportunities to advance understanding of burial as a process rather than a
single depositional moment are discussed, including funerary rituals, commemorative activity, grave marking and the disturbance of human remains.
A fuller exploitation of digital dissemination is advocated, in particular to
allow one of the richest pre-modern skeletal samples to achieve an impact
commensurate with its scale and quality.
Introduction
In a famous article published in 1982, Richard Reece lamented the neglect
of Roman cemetery studies. In particular, he noted that the human body,
the burial of which was the raison d’être for the rituals performed for the
dead and the tombs created to house them, was, in the shape of its skeletal remnants, at best decentred from the cemetery excavation report,
and at worse absent from its pages. Such reports, he noted too, were few
in number. A decade later Ian Morris echoed his criticisms, observing a
persistent sensationalism in the study of the (Greek and) Roman dead
in the focus on ‘quirks’ and ‘oddities’ rather than a systematic analysis of
cemeteries directed at establishing social structures, cultural attitudes to
death and population dynamics.1 Nonetheless, in the three decades since
Reece’s article the analytical focus has been, if not transformed, then at
least significantly expanded beyond narrowly framed questions of religious
1 Reece (1982); Morris (1992).
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or ethnic affiliation. For one, within the concept of transfrontier migration, a traditional preoccupation of Late Roman cemetery studies, a rethinking of the relationship between burial ritual and cultural identity
and the analysis of stable isotopes of strontium and oxygen from human
skeletal samples, has undermined any simple association between grave
furnishing and geographical origin. The case of the Winchester site at
Lankhills, ca. 500 m from Roman Winchester’s north gate, is exemplary
here, where no consistent relationship could be shown between individuals whose burials rituals were argued by the excavator to be ‘intrusive’ and
of non-local origin as indicated by isotope ratios, or vice-versa.2
For another similarly long-standing concern, conversion to Christianity, the confidence with which religious affiliation has been identified in
burial practice of the 4th and 5th c. A.D. has significantly diminished.3
The Church’s limited role in burial and commemoration in better documented contexts in the Mediterranean makes the existence of a common
and coherent Christian burial practice in the Roman North at this time
unlikely.4 Conversely, neglected dimensions of social identity have seen
much greater attention, facilitated by more confidently aged and sexed
skeletal samples and a broadening focus for the archaeology of identity
in a provincial context.5 Age and gender have thus been shown as closely
linked to the variability of Late Roman burial treatment.6 But perhaps
the most significant trend lies in the much greater weight given to the
publication of human skeletal material, allowing syntheses of diet, disease
and trauma among Late Roman populations in particular, incorporating
consideration of contextual factors, such as environmental setting, site
type (urban, rural etc.) and differentiation by status, age and gender.7 The
analysis of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes provides complementary
insights into dietary variability.8 As well as contributing to the specific
debate over the origins of ‘intrusive’ burials, oxygen, strontium and lead
2 The Lankhills analyses and other studies are discussed and referenced in the volume
edited by Eckardt et al. (2010).
3 Schmidt (2000); Raynaud (2006) 154–56; Petts (2003) sees greater evidence for Christianity in similar evidence from Britain.
4 Rebillard (2009); Yasin (2009).
5 Mattingly (2004).
6 Gowland (2007); Keegan (2002); Norman (2003).
7 Recent examples with further references include: Gowland and Garnsey (2010); Pitts
and Griffin (2012); Redfern (2008); Redfern and Gowland (2011); Rife (2012) 441–56; Roberts
and Cox (2003), (2004).
8 Chenery et al. (2011) references other studies from Britain, Killgrove and Tykot (2013)
from Rome and elsewhere.
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stable isotope analyses have given insights into wider mobility; analyses
from Romano-British cities, for example, have shown that a significant
proportion of individuals buried in urban cemeteries spent their earlier
years in other regions of Britain or outside the province.9 The wider application of radio-carbon dating, especially where other dating evidence is
limited, is also putting individual cemetery chronologies and the wider
Roman-Early Medieval transition on a better footing.10
The story of Late Antiquity and its communities that can be told from
more recent studies is perhaps epitomised by three studies of cemeteries spanning the Late Roman to Early Medieval transition, with burials
of 4th to 7th or 8th c. A.D. date at Wasperton (West Midlands, UK), St
Martin-de-Fontenay (Caen, Normandy), and among the ruins of Corinth.
Though established by varying combinations of evidence—stable isotopes only having been analysed at Wasperton—in all three situations the
results show a long-established farming population continuing to work
its living in a similar manner from a landscape with enduring productive
constraints. Burial rituals and associated objects show a negotiation with
external forces, and especially changes in political or religious authority as
well as associated innovations in material symbols of power.11
These developments in the study of Late Roman cemeteries, therefore,
have significant potential for informing long-standing preoccupations in
the study of Late Antiquity, and for the writing of long term demographic
and also economic history, where health status is exploited as a proxy
indicator for economic trends.12 This article, however, approaches burial
from a different perspective, although its concerns are relevant to the
aspects discussed above. In keeping with the theme of this volume, its
principal focus instead lies on the process of generating data related to
cemeteries from fieldwork. The discussion is arranged in the order which
corresponds, in general terms: to the stages of fieldwork; the selection
of sites for investigation; the process of excavation; and dissemination
through print publication and other media. It examines three linked areas:
(i) the contexts from which Roman burial data derive (ii) the types of data
that are recovered during excavation (and to a lesser extent other types
9 Chenery et al. (2011) references recent studies. Other sources for current and future
exploitation include ancient DNA (e.g. Prowse et al. (2010)), craniometry (e.g. Leach et al.
(2009)) and inscriptions (e.g. Handley (2011)).
10 E.g. Booth et al. (2007), (2010); Simmonds et al. (2008).
11 Carver et al. (2009); Pilet (1995); Rife (2012).
12 Scheidel (2010).
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of fieldwork) and (iii) the content and organisation of the publication of
fieldwork on cemeteries. Of these sections the second is the most extensive, it considering the opportunities from various data to reconstruct the
burial process and the wider use of cemetery space, including cremation
burials, ‘windfalls’ from exceptional preservation environments, insights
from taphonomic processes related to human remains, and non-burial
deposits within and beyond the grave with assemblages related to funerary and non-funerary activity.
Some of the observations derived from this discussion prompt caveats
over the inferences to be made from cemetery data, in particular concerning the unrepresentative nature of the sample of excavated burials. Yet,
the article’s principal aim is not to restate or elaborate on the limitations
of the evidence, rather the discussion indicates where a fuller understanding of ritual can be established, through examples from recent excavations.
Addressing the nature of the evidence potentially at our disposal from
fieldwork also suggests an alternative way of conceptualising the cemetery, in particular through consideration of the connections between the
history of the individual grave and that of the burial space as a whole.
The focus lies on a subset of funerary contexts from Late Antiquity, in
the main considering evidence primarily of 3rd to early 5th century A.D.
date from the north-western provinces, though sometimes using examples
from other places and periods. Examples from recent development-related
excavation in Britain in particular will be used to support the discussion,
but they are intended to have a wider relevance. Emphasis lies on the
much more typical evidence for north-western Europe of ‘flat grave’ cemeteries, ranging from the graves found by trackways and ditches on the
margins of farms to the sprawling fields of the dead sub divo on urban
peripheries. Some traditional preoccupations in the study of cemeteries in
Late Antiquity, for example carved sarcophagi, epitaphs or wall painting
are therefore little considered here, though some new evidence for tomb
monuments is assessed briefly.13 The geographical biases mean that limited attention is paid to some enduring concerns in funerary archaeology
of this period, in particular the material setting of the cult of the saints
and the ‘turning inside-out’ of the ancient city.14
13 Important examples of monumentalised necropoleis associated with churches continue to be illuminated by new fieldwork and publication: e.g. Otten (2003), Colardelle
(2008), Paris Poulain et al. (2009) and Schmidt (2000).
14 Yasin (2009); Leone’s (2007) coinage of the ‘de-structuring’ of the classical city, as
attested by intra-mural burial groups, characterises a related dimension of urban transformation in Late Antiquity.
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Fieldwork and its Distribution
We will first consider the distribution of excavated evidence in time and
space and in relation to site type. The vast majority of cemetery excavation takes place in the context of fieldwork related to modern construction
and infrastructure development. This explains one of the most striking
phenomena of recent decades, the increase in the data available for study.
The development-related fieldwork associated with the intermittent economic booms of the 1980s to the 1st decade of the 21st c. has generated
more high quality funerary data in the form of excavated burials from
the Roman world than was previously available in toto. Taking the main
source of examples, Britain, fig. 1 plots the number of excavations of burials
recorded from 1920 to 2010, as reported in the annual fieldwork summaries
published in the Journal of Roman Studies and, since 1970, Britannia.
Since 1980 more than 660 excavations of burials are documented,
compared to fewer than 450 recorded in the previous 60 years.15 In
development-related fieldwork in England and Wales after 1990, ca. 10%
of interventions yielded funerary evidence.16 Although the scale of individual excavations may sometimes be smaller than in earlier decades,
the increase in the size of the overall sample in specific instances is very
significant, as the example of London serves to illustrate. At the time
Reece wrote “Bones, bodies and dis-ease” (Reece (1982)), knowledge of
cemeteries from Roman London was not significantly better than when
Mortimer Wheeler mapped the burial evidence in the 1920s. Since the late
1970s, however, major excavations to the west, north and especially eastern sides of the Roman city, and on the margins of the bridgehead settlement at Southwark, have given a much fuller understanding of the city’s
cemeteries in time and space.17 Similar observations apply to other cities, especially for cemeteries of the Mid to Late Roman period, including
Dorchester, Winchester, and Colchester, as well as Gloucester, Leicester,
York and Canterbury, not all yet published. At Cirencester prospection
too has also contributed to an understanding of cemetery layout.18
15 As this total is of episodes of fieldwork, individual cemeteries may have more than a
single entry. This is an indicative rather than exhaustive source. By comparison with published examples I estimate that ca. 10% of burials were not reported in this format.
16 Fulford and Holbrook (2011) 330–32.
17 Barber and Bowsher (2000); Barber and Hall (2000); Museum of London (n.d.).
18 Farwell and Molleson (1993); Finn (2004); Booth et al. (2010); Ottaway et al. (2012);
Holbrook (2008); Hunter-Mann (n.d.); Müldner et al. (2011); Pooley et al. (2011); Simmonds
et al. (2008); Gardner (2005); Weekes (2011); Winton (2009).
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160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
1921‒25 1931‒35 1941‒45 1951‒55 1961‒65 1971‒75 1981‒85 1991‒95 2001‒05
Fig. 1. The occurrence of excavations of Romano-British cemeteries, 1921–2010, by
five year periods, as reported in JRS / Britannia.
A similar expansion in development-related cemetery fieldwork can be
noted beyond Britain. Surveys by Blaizot and colleagues demonstrate the
generation of new data on an equivalent scale in France.19 Amongst the
most striking developments is the acquisition of equivalent data from
Rome. The excavation of cemeteries in advance of infrastructural projects,
such as the widening of the Gran Raccordo Anulare and the construction of the high-speed Naples-Rome railway line, as well as development
in the city’s suburbs, has produced a sample of more than 6,000 Imperial period burials in the last decade. These come from a variety of contexts in the suburbium, including extensive cemeteries which seem likely
to have served the poorer sections of the population of the city and its
hinterland.20
The expansion in the quantity of excavated (and published) burials is
not universal. In the south and east of the empire the samples available
for study are more limited; burials and especially skeletal remains remaining the poor relation of the often very rich monuments in the study of
funerary culture. Mackinnon’s recent synthesis shows, for example, how
19 Blaizot et al. (2001), (2009).
20 Buccellato and Catalano (2003); Buccellato et al. (2008); Tomei (2006); see the
volume Dossiers d’Archéologie 330 (2008) esp. Catalano (2008).
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Table 1. Numbers of cemetery excavations by region in JRS / Britannia 1921–2010.
Regional divisions follow current usage for fieldwork reporting in Britannia
(a very small number of excavations are reported for Scotland).
Region
Wales
Hadrian’s Wall and Northern England
Midlands
East Anglia
Greater London
Southern counties
South-western counties
Number of excavations
37
183 (of which N. Yorks = 52)
304 (of which Hertfordshire = 58)
138 (of which Essex = 99)
97
234 (of which Kent = 115)
117 (of which Gloucestershire = 63)
few skeletal data are accessible from North Africa, for example, despite
very extensive examination of cemeteries, while Goldman’s characterisation of burial archaeology in Turkey as ‘at an embryonic stage’ applies
more widely to the eastern Mediterranean. Rife’s synthesis of Roman and
Byzantine period burials in the Peloponnese and beyond shows the potential abundance of evidence in excavation and in archaeological archives.
Where tombs have not been damaged by antiquarians or treasure hunters,
the insights may be considerably richer than in the north-western Roman
world, given the preservation of cemetery surfaces with grave markers
and monuments as well as residues of ritual surviving in situ and also,
where arid conditions apply, the preservation of organic materials.21
More significant for the purposes of the present discussion, is the
uneven distribution of data within more extensively examined regions,
as the example of Britain again shows (Table 1). Central and south-east
England have seen larger numbers of excavations than other regions;
when the totals from individual counties are identified the bias in the
distribution to south-east England becomes clearer: one third of the 1110
interventions recorded in the last 40 years having taken place in Kent,
Essex, Hertfordshire and Greater London. This mirrors the general distribution of excavation related to the Roman and other periods.22 In less
well-represented regions specific contexts account for many excavations,
for instance York and Gloucester and environs in north and south-west
England, respectively.
21 Mackinnon (2007); Goldman (2007) 310; Rife (2012); Findlater et al. (1998).
22 Fulford and Holbrook (2011) 329–30.
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Table 2. the number of excavations of cemeteries and of burials recorded by date
in the summaries of fieldwork on Romano-British sites, JRS and Britannia 1921–
2010 (‘early’ = 1st–2nd centuries A.D.; ‘intermediate’ = 1st or 2nd to 3rd or 4th /
early 5th centuries A.D.; ‘late’ = 3rd–4th centuries A.D.).
Early
Intermediate
Late
Unknown
Number of Cemeteries
Number of Burials
219
86
282
525
2194
3397
4655
2997
Table 3. Excavations of cemeteries and burials recorded by context in fieldwork
summaries for Roman-Britain, JRS and Britannia 1921-2010. (Urban = colonies,
municipia, civitas capitals; minor centre = ‘small towns’; rural = all non-villa
burials from a rural setting).
Context
Urban
Military / Vicus
Minor Centre
Rural
Villa
Number of cemeteries
Number of burials
325
76
167
491
53
5819
847
3050
3252
279
The category of ‘intermediate’ cemeteries masks a considerable chronological bias in the available data, most burials in these cemeteries being
Late Roman inhumations (Table 2).23 Perhaps the most significant bias
lies in the context with which burials are associated (Table 3). While more
interventions are recorded from a rural than an urban setting, the majority of excavated burials derive from urban cemeteries.24 This is largely
a product of the concentration of development-related fieldwork on the
margins of the ancient centres of historic towns. This reinforces a preexisting bias towards urban cemeteries in fieldwork and analysis, although
preservation conditions and the character of ancient burial practices also
contribute.25 The association between data availability and developmentled archaeology also, in part, explains the very limited number of excavations of cemeteries associated with Britain’s northern frontiers, a bias
23 Pearce (2008).
24 This need not, of course, mean that all those buried in urban cemeteries were town
dwellers.
25 Pearce (2008); Philpott (1991).
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compounded by a focus within research excavations in this region on fort
defences and interiors, rather than on the extra-mural settlements and
cemeteries.
The accumulating evidence from extensive geophysical surveys in
upland northern England, Wales and Scotland is gradually redressing
the imbalance, at least in new evidence for the topographic relationships
between burial monuments and enclosures.26 In this sense, the British
sample is not representative of the excavations carried out elsewhere in
the Roman north, as many more cemeteries have been excavated from
frontier contexts in continental Europe, especially where Roman river
frontiers and associated garrisons and settlements coincide with later
population centres, even if military and civilian burials or cemeteries are
not always easily distinguishable.27
This skewed distribution has several implications. In Britain, like much
of temperate Europe, the bulk of the province’s population lived in the
countryside, meaning that inferences based on a minority of the population risk being unrepresentative.28 The dearth of substantial samples of
earlier Roman date and from a rural context also obstructs the characterisation of urban environments from a demographic perspective. Individual
rural samples are also often smaller, typically from a handful to a few
tens of burials, hindering statistical analysis without amalgamating datasets. The argument for an ‘urban graveyard effect’ in Roman towns and
the consequent necessity of continuous rural-urban migration remains
difficult to assess in the absence of this wider body of data.29 Likewise,
the application of stable isotopic analyses to mainly urban populations in
the province means that their typicality is uncertain, either as specific to
towns or even to the Roman period.30 Despite the expansion in sample
availability noted above, single key sites exert a substantial influence on
general population characterisations. In Britain, the sample of more than
1200 skeletons from Poundbury (Dorchester) remains the largest and most
26 The site summaries collected by Symonds and Mason (2009) illustrate the first
results of such surveys.
27 Cooke (1998), Schmidt (2000) and Pearce (2002) have references to key sites.
28 Millett (1990) 181–86. Booth et al. (2007) and Pearce (2008) argue that an archaeologically visible burial rite only itself emerges in some areas of rural Roman Britain in the
Late Roman period.
29 Scheidel (2004).
30 Results of stable isotope studies from non-urban cemeteries also hint at no less
diverse population origins, for example at Wasperton, Warwickshire (Carver et al. (2009))
or Gravesend, Kent (Pollard et al. (2011)). Studies collected by Budd et al. (2004) suggest
similar pre- and post-Roman mobility.
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important from the province, but it is not quite typical, as has been shown
for aspects of the skeletal evidence.31 This atypicality has significant consequences when this site contributes so much to the aggregate data from
the province for higher level demographic analyses.32
Excavation of Burials and Associated Deposits
In excavation, the dominant conception of the provincial Roman cemetery is, arguably, as a repository for varying numbers of ‘burials’: i.e. entities characterised by various archaeological and osteological attributes,
the comparison of which allows some analysis of social structure, real or
ideological depending on theoretical disposition, and, with reference to
the skeletal remains, of palaeodemography and pathology. For the inhumation burials, which comprise the majority of those found in late antique
cemeteries, the focus therefore lies on documentation of the skeleton
within the grave, the disposition of surviving elements of furnishing, and
evidence for the container, along with full recovery of skeletal remains and
artefacts. Analysis and comparison are based on a notional single phase
in the burial process, i.e. the placing of the body in its container and in
the grave, dressed or wrapped and sometimes furnished with objects, or
at least what decomposition, post-depositional disturbance and the processes of excavation and recording have left of this ensemble, typically its
inorganic residue. The de facto importance of this phase for archaeological
analysis contrasts with textual evidence and visual representations, which
privilege earlier stages of death rituals, for example the laying out of the
body, processions and communal meals at the tomb at the funeral and
later.33 The importance of these preceding and subsequent stages applies
as much in Late Antiquity as in earlier periods, where complex rituals and
commemorative activity persist. Indeed, the developing cult of the saints
is likely to have meant the intermittent presence of much larger numbers
of participants in commemorative rituals amongst the tombs.34
While texts may be rich for some contexts, for example Late Roman
and Byzantine Greece, for many others, such as north-west Europe, they
31 For example Lewis’ (2010) study of disease and trauma in non-adult skeletons suggests its atypicality for the province.
32 Scheidel (2010).
33 Hope (2009).
34 Rebillard (2009), especially 142–53 for discussion of the refrigerium.
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are limited or absent.35 Here a richer understanding of the funerary process can only be derived from archaeological evidence. Even for the bestdocumented phase, burial itself, there are key gaps in our understanding;
whether individuals were buried dressed or shrouded (or neither), for
example, cannot usually be established. Multiple forms of evidence potentially bear down on this issue, including mineral and plaster-preserved
textile remains, footwear, dress and other ornaments as well as the configuration of the skeleton, but these are rarely all available in any one case
and often point in different directions.
Textile fragments, for example, are usually considered to derive from
shrouds, but the frequent recording of hobnails adjacent to feet suggests
dressed corpses. The observations of different specialist reports are not
always taken account of in syntheses.36 The mise-en-scène of the deceased,
i.e. the ‘rhetoric’ of their presentation when laid out for burial as an
embodiment of key social and cultural values, therefore remains poorly
understood.37 For other rites less information is available, though it will
be argued below that their accessibility through excavation is underestimated. As well as a better descriptive understanding, a fuller account
of process also puts other analyses on a more secure footing. A theoretical disposition oriented towards understanding death rites as a dynamic
structured process requires the establishment of such a ritual sequence.38
The energy invested in burial ritual can thus be much better examined;
the apparent modesty and uniformity of many late antique tombs in their
serried ranks in cemeteries and grave catalogues can be much better evaluated on this basis.39 Variability of ritual according to the dimensions of
the identity of the deceased, for example ethnicity, age, sex, status etc.,
where so much emphasis is placed on grave goods, can also be much more
fully assessed.
From several interlinked developments, we may legitimately identify possibilities for obtaining data from Roman cemetery excavations
to achieve this fuller understanding. We are helped here by methodological innovation, especially the systematic analysis of the carbonised
35 Rife (2012) 159–63.
36 E.g. Farwell and Molleson (1993) 99, 111–13. The attempt to reconcile different forms
of evidence at Lankhills demonstrates the difficulty of answering this question: Booth et al.
(2010) 473–76.
37 Theuws’ analysis (2009) of weapon burials from Late Roman Gaul illustrates the rhetorical possibilities of burial display.
38 Scheid (2008).
39 Morris (1992) 52–68.
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skeletal, botanical and artefactual residues from cremation and related
contexts and improved understanding of corpse decomposition. It is also
made possible by greater sensitivity to the survival of residues of rituals,
conducted before and subsequent to interment, especially in the fills of
graves or other cemetery features, or where cemetery surfaces have not
been truncated. Such possibilities have been most fully explored through
the examination of residues from cremation, comprising inorganic and
organic material consumed on the pyre. The ‘princely’ burials of the Late
Iron Age and Early Roman period, as well as in some other well-preserved
cemetery contexts, offer key examples.40 Cremation is also not unknown
in the later Roman period, but the following discussion also draws on further types of evidence to illustrate the potential for a fuller understanding of burial rites: cases of exceptional preservation of organic materials;
corpse taphonomy, in particular as illuminated by the anthropologie du
terrain approach;41 non-burial deposits which may be the product of
graveside rituals and the disturbance of burials; and (briefly) the evidence
from excavation and geophysical survey of grave markers.
Cremation
The continued practice of cremation during the 3rd and 4th c. A.D., usually as a minority rite, sometimes on a larger scale, is widespread.42 Three
examples illustrate its diversity of scale. The first, the spectacular assemblage of molten precious metal from the pyre residue associated with a
Tetrarchic funerary complex at Gamzigrad (Serbia), is well-known.43 The
second, from 3rd c. Brougham (Cumbria), is a rite practised for the burials
of men, women and children associated with an auxiliary fort, where richly
furnished pyres consumed whole animals (horses) and artefacts, including metal buckets, crossbow brooches, military equipment, glass, ceramics and biers (or perhaps boxes) inlaid with bone veneer.44 The third, in
excavations from south and west of Colchester, shows more modest ceremonies. In four recent cemetery excavations 3rd and 4th c. cremations
40 The volume edited by Scheid (2008) and Pearce et al. (2000) discusses recent
approaches. The publications of Folly Lane (Niblett (1999)) and of Stanway (Crummy et al.
(2007)) offer specific extended examples. The work on the Porta Nocera cemetery, Pompeii, illustrates the same approach: van Andringa and Lepetz (2008).
41 Duday (2009).
42 E.g. Airoldi (2002); Philpott (1991) 50–52; Theuws (2009) 284.
43 Srejovic and Vasic (1994).
44 Cool (2004).
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were reported alongside inhumations, including burials as well as other
deposits of pyre debris. Pyre residues revealed the destruction of modest
quantities of foodstuffs and objects during cremation, generally leaving
scraps of animal bone and the remnants of pyre timber and kindling.
The most frequently attested artefacts were nails from biers, boots
and boxes as well as small quantities of burnt ceramics and molten
glass. Grave goods were also modest. Only one burial was distinctive, F22
(Colchester Grammar School), a disturbed adult cremation burial in the
precinct of a tower tomb, where amongst the burnt and molten scraps of
glass and metal were fragments of a bone pyxis lid, brooch(es) and toggles,
as well as nails and fragments of burnt bird bone. Unburnt material from
the same grave included sherds from at least five vessels and bones of a
goose, adult and juvenile sheep/ goat and an adult falcon and other birds.45
At Lankhills (Winchester) similar modesty to Colchester was exercised
in Late Roman cremations; fills of busta and other residues of pyre ritual
comprised of scraps of animal bone, nails and in one exceptional instance
(895) the burnt fragments of a crossbow brooch.46
Burials with Exceptional Preservation Conditions
For a small number of inhumation burials accidents of preservation, a
consequence either of burial treatment or depositional environment, have
enhanced the survival of organic elements, giving significant insights into
the presentation of the corpse at the time of burial. Mummification and
embalming are occasionally documented in the western empire, the best
known groups being from Rome and Pannonia.47 More significant for its
contribution to the preservation of organic remains is the ‘plaster’ burial,
i.e. the deposition of white mineral material including gypsum, chalk and
lime around the corpse and sometimes interleaved between its wrappings.
Examples are recorded from Britain, the Rhineland and North Africa. The
anti-bacterial as well as water-absorbing property of these materials has
enhanced the preservation of perishable materials.48 It is not clear whether
such rituals were intended to maintain the physical integrity of the corpse
for eschatological reasons or to impede or disguise decomposition prior
45 Crossan (2001); Brooks (2006); Orr (2010); Pooley et al. (2011).
46 Booth et al. (2010).
47 Topal (1997).
48 Green (1993); Green et al. (1981); Philpott (1991) 90–95; Barber and Bowsher (2000)
101–103.
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to interment. Aridity, waterlogging or the sealing of the coffin and/or its
liner or occasionally of the burial structure, have also contributed to the
corpus of such burials.49
Occasionally such conditions allow insights into more common rituals,
for example the use of reused timber for coffins in waterlogged ground
by the river Fleet at Atlantic House, London.50 However, the agents of
preservation (lead or stone coffin, embalming, application of plaster etc.)
typically favour the recipients of extraordinary rituals. Many instances
contain the remnants of embalming materials, textiles including clothing and wrappings for the corpse, footwear, garlands, fruits and flowers
and soft tissue including hair. British examples include burials from Spitalfields, London (the ‘Spitalfields princess’), Boscombe Down, Amesbury
(Wiltshire) (fig. 2), and Alington Avenue, Dorchester and illuminate the
wrapping or dressing of the corpse, footwear, as well as the laying of flowers with the dead. The fragments of textile found within the more common plaster burials, include silk and gold thread as well as linen and wool
(Table 4).51
Perhaps the most spectacular recently excavated example is the ‘Signora
del sarcofago’, an early to mid 3rd c. A.D. female inhumation burial from
a large cemetery south-east of the basilica of S. Ambrose, Milan. It was
spared the robbing that had affected its neighbours, and enjoyed unusually good preservation of organic material because of the survival of the
stone coffin’s mortar sealing. Beneath the young woman was a textile, perhaps the cloth in which she had been transferred into the coffin. A gold
hair net and a headband (?), to which ivy leaves carved in amber had been
attached, also survived. Either side of her head and by her thighs were
masses of mastic resin (pistacia lentiscus, used as incense) and grapes had
been laid on her chest. The many fragments of leaves as well as pollen are
the likely residue or garlands and bouquets. Textiles of five different types,
two coarser and three finer, are documented, though too poorly preserved
to be definitively attributed to a costume or shroud. By her sides were a
fan and a distaff of ivory.52 The grave cut was of a sufficient size to have
allowed for this arrangement of the body and its furnishing, at the base of
49 Legrottaglie (2005) and Rottloff (2006) passim illustrate examples from across the
Roman world; Ascenzi et al. (1996); Chioffi (1998) and Topal (1997) discuss Roman mummies in Rome and Pannonia.
50 Watson (2003) 60–63.
51 Swain and Roberts (2001); Pearce et al. (2008) 134–35; Booth et al. (2010) 517–18; Farwell and Molleson (1993) 111–13.
52 Rossignani et al. (2005).
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Fig. 2. A Late Roman inhumation burial from Boscombe Down, containing the
remains of a female adult and a child. The preserved footwear is visible at the
base of the coffin (see Table 4). (By kind permission of Wessex Archaeology,
Copyright Wessex Archaeology).
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Table 4. Some examples of late Roman tombs with exceptional preservation of
organic materials.
Site
Description
Reference
London
Spitalfields
4th c. A.D. inhumation burial of
young woman within lead lined
limestone coffin, wearing (?) a
purple silk garment with gold
thread. Fragments of woollen cloth
and bay leaves found beneath
skull. Grave goods include items in
jet and glass probably associated
with cosmetic preparation and / or
application, placed between liner
and coffin.
Swain and Roberts
(2001)
Alington Avenue
(Dorset)
Late Roman inhumation burial,
of 4–6 year child in lead-lined
wooden coffin excavated at extramural settlement near Dorchester.
Above and beneath skeleton were
textile remnants bearing purple
stripes. Analysis showed the dye to
be imperial purple, derived from a
shellfish.
Davies et al. (2002)
133–35, 158–59
Boscombe
Down, Amesbury
(Wiltshire)
Mid 3rd to 4th c. A.D. grave in
Pearce et al. (2008),
enclosure in cemetery associated
134–35
with a village. The burial contained
a stone coffin, within which were
the remains of a female adult and a
child. Associated objects included
a single Moselkeramik beaker and a
necklace of jet beads; the child wore
a pair of laced calfskin shoes and
the adult cork-soled shoes, perhaps
lined with deerskin. (figure 2)
Naintré (Vienne,
France)
Two 3rd c. inhumation burials
(adult and child) in lead-lined
stone coffins within sealed masonry
vaults near (disused?) villa. The
adult burial contained evidence for
textiles of several types including
gold thread as well as two pairs
of sandals made from plant fibres
outside the coffin, evidence for one
shoe being preserved as an imprint
in a patch of plaster that had fallen
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Devièse et al. (2011).
Farago-Szekeres and
Duday (2008)
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Table 4 (cont.)
Site
Description
Reference
while fresh from the vault ceiling.
As well as diverse grave goods, a
bag of pepper corns and a date, a
wider range of textiles as wrapping
for the body was documented in the
adjacent child’s grave; among the
6 different types were silk damask
and gold thread . . . In the corrosion
products on the upper surface
of the lead coffin liner were the
imprints of flowers identifiable to
species. Analytical work continues,
most recently identifying abundant
traces of Tyrian purple dye across
the face and body of the corpse of
the adult burial.
Quadrangle of
the Catholic
university of
Milan
See description in text
Rossignani et al.
(2005)
Budapest
First half of 4th c. A.D. Partially
embalmed corpse in stone coffin,
5 layers of wrapping from shoulders
to knee stuck together by resin,
with further cloths over the body
and a mat beneath. Documented
textiles include wool and silk. A
gold diadem, a basket containing
fruit and flowers, cork-soled shoes
with floral and bird motifs stitched
in gold leaf in their uppers, and
wooden boxes containing abundant
grave goods are also preserved.
Poczy (1964)
the deep pit (> 2 m) within which the burial was laid. The remarkable 3rd
c. burials from Naintré (Vienne) are even richer in terms of their textile
assemblage (Table 4).
Such burials have primarily been studied as single case studies, usually for their specific artefact contents, especially textiles. However, they
have the potential to greatly enrich our understanding of burial ritual, in
particular the mise-en-scène of the corpse: including the arrangement of
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hair, the dressing or wrapping of the body, and the (leather or plant fibre)
shoes, without hobnails, that are normally the only archaeologically recoverable traces of footwear. The presence of flowers and incense also allows
us to reconstruct with greater specificity the sensory impact of the displayed corpse. The quantity and character of textiles in which these dead
are dressed or wrapped, enhances confidence that the emphasis on dress
ornaments in the archaeological study of late antique burials as identity
and status markers is not misplaced. It also reminds us that ornaments
complement a presentation primarily created by other means.53 This
same evidence suggests too that the seeming lack of distinction between
the dead in Late Roman cemeteries is in part a taphonomy-dependent
illusion. Instead, on and around the corpse was created an image of the
‘beautiful’ dead that extended aristocratic self-presentation through dress,
gesture and luxury in public and private arenas, to the grave. Similarities
among burials from Britain to the Black Sea suggest an empire-wide language of display of this type.
Skeletal Taphonomy and Burial History
Such preservation will only occasionally apply, but more normal burial
environments also offer further opportunities for reconstructing the presentation of the dead. Beyond documenting skeletal position and the
disposition of grave furniture, the current emphasis in excavating the skeleton lies on systematic retrieval of skeletal and associated elements, e.g.
calcified masses such as gall or kidney stones, for subsequent analysis, for
example, through attention to recovery of bone elements which might be
overlooked in hand excavation.54 However, there is considerable potential
for the skeleton itself to be exploited more fully as a source of evidence for
ritual process and depositional history through the documentation of relationships between skeletal elements in the grave. This not only applies to
unusual treatments of the body, such as the peri-mortem decapitation of
individuals in provincial Roman, especially Romano-British cemeteries.55
Here, the ‘anthropologie du terrain’, pioneered by Henri Duday and
applied in excavations in France and elsewhere in continental Europe, is
53 Swift (2000), (2003).
54 McKinley and Roberts (1993); Brickley and McKinley (2004).
55 Crerar (2013) and McKinley and Dinwiddy (2009) references earlier studies for Britain. Belcastro and Ortalli’s (2010) study of northern Italy illustrates the existence of analogous treatments in continental Europe.
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a significant innovation, connecting anatomical observation of the skeleton in situ, with the reconstruction of the ritual by which the body is
buried. It begins with the truism that the disposition of the dead as seen
in the skeleton when excavated is not that of the deceased as buried in the
ground. Taphonomic factors, especially decomposition of the ligaments in
particular, are responsible for the likely displacement of its surviving skeleton from the original position of the corpse in relation to the space of the
tomb. Ligaments decompose at different rates depending on the strength
of the articulation which they connect: where stronger, as at the knee, for
example, the joint will hold for longer. Whether or not voids exist within
the burial at the time of decomposition—for example because of the presence of a coffin—will condition how the bones of the joint move and separate when the ligaments connecting them rot. The phenomenon of ‘bone
tumble’ has always been of intermittent interest, but the Duday approach
aims systematically to reconstruct the taphonomic history of the individual burial in order to ascertain its original configuration.56 Close observation of the articular relationships allows post-mortem movement of the
skeleton to be assessed, and with this burial rituals, of which no direct
trace may survive to be reconstructed: for example headrests of organic
materials, timber coffins or covers made without nails of which all traces
have otherwise decayed, or the wrapping of a body in a shroud.
Where applied to Roman period burials by Duday and others, the
results show interesting individual variants as well as a better understanding of common rituals. As an example of the latter, the analysis of over 194
Roman period inhumation burials from the Marseille Sainte Barbe site,
mostly of 2nd c. A.D. date, showed that most bodies had decomposed
within a void, supporting the direct evidence of nails or staining attested
in some but not all such burials. Skeletal configuration also showed that
the space allowed for individual Roman period burials was more generous than for earlier periods on the same site. In a minority of cases the
disposition of bones at the shoulders, pelvis or feet showed the existence
of either a lateral or longitudinal compression of the corpse, squeezed into
a tight shroud, other container or grave cut.57
In individual cases, organic containers of unusual form are revealed by
this analysis. Fig. 3 shows a 5th c. A.D. example from St. Cheron, Chartres,
56 It is difficult to decide retrospectively between the possible causes of ‘bone tumble’:
e.g. Farwell and Molleson (1993) 65–66; Barber and Bowsher (2000) 88.
57 Moliner et al. (2003): 101–10. Other examples are documented by Nin (2006) and
Blaizot et al. (2009) passim.
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Fig. 3. St Cheron, Chartres, burial 98 4th–5th century A.D., recorded by the
anthropologie de terrain method (D. Joly and P. Courtaud). The marked transversal compression of the skeleton, with the upper limbs beneath the thorax,
ribs below the vertebrae and the femoral heads beneath the pelvis, suggest that
the body was placed supine in a V-section wooden coffin (a hollowed-out log?).
Where the ligaments decomposed more rapidly, the bones formerly connected
by them had separated and slid down the sides of the coffin to gather at its base
before the coffin itself rotted. (By kind permission of Henri Duday).
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where the form of the coffin as a hollowed log, of which all trace had otherwise disappeared, can be inferred from the skeletal configuration.58 With
good skeletal preservation this approach has a potentially wide application to many sites. A key consideration is of course time and cost, both
to equip excavators to document skeletal configuration appropriately and
for the speed at which burials can be excavated. For example, the Salleles
d’Aude excavation of infant burials within a 1st c. A.D. potter’s workshop
took on average between 12 and 14 hours per burial.59 In the developmentrelated excavations at Marseille Sainte Barbe, time pressure meant a focus
only on documenting selected major articulations in detail, including the
cranium, pectoral girdle, rib cage, pelvic girdle and lower limbs.60
On a related point, extensive evidence exists from Late Roman cemeteries for the post-burial displacement of human remains in the form of redeposited and disarticulated human skeletal material. This is widely attested
but variably, and usually briefly, reported; its full analytical potential is
therefore yet to be realised, either for insights into taphonomy and burial
chronology or cultural attitudes to the dead.61 The following examples
from British sites illustrate the diverse context associations. The careful
reburial of single disturbed skeletons, or at least their major elements,
skull, pelvis and some long bones, within or outside the primary burial,
is infrequently attested. In the excavations at Lankhills, for example, the
bones of the primary occupant of grave 535 were displaced to its sides
when a later burial was placed in the grave cut on the same orientation;
burial 447 comprised a tight cluster of disarticulated bones within another
grave, perhaps buried within a bag. Grave 1049 at London Road Gloucester, the disarticulated remains of a single adult male, took a similar form.
A stone coffin from a rural settlement at Mangotsfield (Bristol) contained
the remains of a female skeleton, the primary burial, which had been carefully redeposited over and around a second corpse, an adult male burial,
when the coffin was reused.62
Examples of reburial of this kind are rarely documented in Britain, which
may explain the lack of an equivalent term in English for ‘réduction’ and its
58 Duday (2009) 50–52.
59 Duday (2009) 64.
60 Moliner et al. (2003) 78–79.
61 Current guidance advises against detailed documentation of disarticulated skeletal
material because of the limited potential for osteological inferences: Mays et al. (2002)
4–5.
62 Booth et al. (2010) 37–38; Clarke (1979) 187–88; Richards (1999) 64–83; Simmonds
et al. (2008) 24.
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cognates, used in French and the Romance languages to describe this phenomenon.63 In the eastern empire the deliberate reuse of the same grave
pit or cist for the burial of several individuals is also more frequently documented, though the numbers of such cases are not always large.64 More
common is the occurrence of skeletal material as individual fragments
or, less frequently, as associated bone groups, the result of Roman period
disturbance of graves and redeposition within or occasionally beyond the
cemetery.
In two of the rare examples where quantification is possible, Lankhills
(Oxford Archaeology) and London Road (Gloucester), around one
third of graves contained small quantities of fragmentary disarticulated
material.65 In a much fuller discussion than in most subsequent publications, Clarke exploited the frequency and associations of disarticulated
material at Lankhills to inform his discussion of how long after burial grave
position was respected.66 At Bathgate (Cirencester) and Trentholme Drive
(York) the displaced skeletal material is much more abundant from more
frequent grave disturbance in intensively used burial spaces. The limited
examination of the partial skeletons makes it impossible to establish how
soon after burial disturbance took place, but in many cases too little time
had elapsed for all the ligaments to have decomposed.67 Similarly, pit and
ditch fills from Lant Street, Southwark, illustrate the substantial quantities
of redeposited disarticulated bone sometimes associated with cemeteries
where non-burial features were used for redeposition.68
Late Roman cemeteries generally lack evidence for the targeted reopening of burials sometimes identified from stratigraphic observation or
post-excavation analysis in some Anglo-Saxon and Merovingian tombs.69
However, in occasional cases human skeletal material either appears to
have been deliberately removed from burial or its displacement by natural agencies has been facilitated by human action. For example, fragments
of human adult and infant skull and long bone in late 2nd to 4th c. contexts with domestic rubbish at Causeway Lane, on the north-east margins
of the occupied area of Roman Leicester, may be an accidental product
63 Duday (2009) 72–88.
64 Rife (2012) 201.
65 Booth et al. (2010) 339; Simmonds et al. (2008) 66–67, 148–49.
66 Clarke (1979) 186–88.
67 McWhirr et al. (1982); Wenham (1968).
68 Sayer (2006). The possibility of secondary burial rituals here and in a sample of other
sites in London, Dorset and the Fen Edge is assessed by Crerar (2013).
69 Aspöck (2011).
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of burial disturbance, but the complete skull in a pit fill is much more
likely to represent a deliberate deposit.70 The skull with traces of scalping is the most striking of several finds of human skeletal fragments in
the shafts dug on the hill south of the conquest-period temple tomb at
Folly Lane (St. Albans).71 Excavations in the Moorfields/Finsbury Circus
area in London provide a context for the many skulls found further south
in the Walbrook’s course through the Roman city. Burials were made so
close to the tributary channels of the Walbrook that their erosion from the
banks must have been anticipated by mourners.72 In view of this diversity
of practice, the argument becomes less strong for the cranial and femur
fragments (perhaps from the same individual) from ‘Hull’s pit’—a feature
south of the apse of the possible church at Butt Road (Colchester)—to be
a manifestation of relic cult.73
Artefact Assemblages from Grave Fills and Beyond
We have already referred to the existence within cemeteries of features
and assemblages other than from burials, and these are now considered
further. For the tomb as a site of commemorative commensality, textual
sources reveal significant continuity from the earlier Roman period into
Late Antiquity, at least in the Mediterranean, even if ancient and modern
authors dispute its motivations and religious context.74 However, the surviving textual sources are of limited use for determining the scale or character of this activity. Two forms of material evidence can be anticipated
for this practice: built facilities for the refrigerium, such as couches and
benches, wells and tables, for ritual and feasting; and deposits of ritual
residues and other material, either deposited in cut features, including
fills of graves, plot boundary ditches or rubbish pits, or trampled into cemetery ground surfaces.
The former are preserved primarily in areas of the Mediterranean where
tomb superstructures have survived in situ.75 One rare example where
both tomb structure and ritual residues have received equal attention is
the exceptional burial at Punta Secca, ancient Kaukana, in Sicily, created
70
71
72
73
74
75
Connor and Buckley (1999) 365.
Niblett (1999) 404; Fulford (2001) cites other examples.
Butler (2006) 38–44; Burnham et al. (2006) 419.
Crummy et al. (1993) 175–76, 188–89.
Rebillard (2009); Yasin (2009).
E.g. Fiocchi Nicolai (2001).
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within a house in the first half of the 7th c. A.D. The primary occupant
of the slab-covered tomb, built into the corner of a room, was a pregnant
woman in her mid twenties, with a three to five year old child buried
later, displacing part of the female skeleton. A hole in one of the slabs
allowed the pouring of libations. Within the room, perhaps open to the
sky, were structures (possibly a mensa and bench), hearths and artefact
assemblages (amphorae, table and coarsewares, glass, shellfish remains)
that appear to relate to commemorative activity in a Christianised setting,
as indicated by chi-rhos.76 On a larger scale, the surface deposits associated with the sub divo cemetery of late 3rd to 5th c. date from the valley of
the temples at Agrigento, include substantial quantities of cooking, storage and table wares, amphorae, glass, ceramic and glass lamps, as well
as animal bone (unreported) and other material probably deriving from
meals consumed in the cemetery, and especially overlying tombs 19–22
where the existence of a possible mensa-like structure was mooted. By
contrast, furniture associated directly with the graves, mostly rock-cut and
often reused, was almost entirely lacking.77
As Schmidt’s recent synthesis shows, little evidence survives of built
facilities for dining in northern Europe.78 From the cemetery, typically
only deeper graves and other cut features will survive; only in exceptional
cases have cemeteries been spared the loss of monuments and ground surfaces by attrition, robbing or truncation by ploughing or later occupation.
Such features have in the past taken a much lower priority than burials
themselves. The passing reference in a recent discussion of late antique
cemeteries from France to features found within them, such as hearths
and ovens as well as pits and ditches filled with their residues, represents
the typical pattern.79 Features such as enclosure ditches have often been
excavated only on a small scale, for example, primarily to obtain dating
information. The following examples from Britain briefly illustrate the
range of deposits and contexts from which activity related to burial has
been documented, as well as the difficulties of differentiating the products
of multiple depositional processes, including the disturbance of burials,
graveside consumption of food and drink, commemorative activity and
rubbish dumping.
76
77
78
79
Wilson (2011).
Carra Bonacasa (1996).
Schmidt (2000).
Blaizot et al. (2009) 65–68.
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Objects analogous to those deposited in graves are illustrated by 4th c.
A.D. burials from Lankhills, such as the coins and ceramics in the backfills
of the graves which accumulated within the filled-in boundary ditch on
the cemetery’s eastern margin, as well as dog skeletons, coins, personal
ornaments and pewter bowls in others.80 Likewise, fills of six Late Roman
inhumation graves at Alington Avenue, Dorset, included fragments of single near-complete Black Burnished ware jars, and fowl bones were found
in many others at the same site, these being also the most frequent grave
goods.81 The usually small quantities of highly fragmented and abraded
ceramics that comprise more typical grave fill assemblages are more difficult to assess. In one of the most fully published assessments of such
material, for the East London cemetery, the fabrics of these ceramics were
shown to more closely resemble those from settlements than burials, but
without a quantification of forms the likely source, whether rubbish or
ritual, is difficult to establish. The assessment of animal bone from similar
contexts suggested that the former was more likely, though the abundant
sheep-size fragments of ribs and long bones were tentatively attributed
instead to funerary ceremony.82
Some non-grave features may also have related directly to ritual process. At Victoria Road West (Winchester), in features of similar dimensions
and forms to graves, but lacking any evidence of human remains, were two
nailed wooden boxes containing complete pottery vessels (127 and 189),
illustrating a widely encountered type of feature sometimes interpreted
as a cenotaph.83 In the earliest documented activity in the northern part
of the Lankhills cemetery, eight shallow pits up to 4 m in diameter were
cut, over which later burials, inhumations and cremations and further pits
were cut over the following century. Similar pits were also documented
ca. 25 m to the west, but the largely findless fills mean that the pits’
specific function remains opaque.84 At Victoria Road West several analogous features within the Late Roman cemetery were excavated, including
three deep pits cutting a roadside ditch in the earliest period of burial
activity (late 3rd or early 4th c. A.D.). Skeletal remains in their fills indicated
they had served as an accidental trap for amphibians and one contained
80
81
82
83
84
Booth et al. (2010) 26–32; Clarke (1979) 183–85.
Davies et al. (2002) 166–68.
Barber and Bowsher (2000) 76–81.
Ottaway et al. (2012) 107–109, 113; Simmonds et al. (2008) 136–37; Cool (2011) 296–97.
Booth et al. (2010) 26–32; Clarke (1979) 183–85.
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the skeleton of a dog, but their original ritual or other purpose was not
established.
Deposits comprising mainly faunal remains are also documented at
varying scales. North of Roman London, in excavations at Houndsditch,
two inhumation burials among 36, probably of 4th c. date, were associated
with a single pit containing faunal material: mostly cod bones but also
mackerel and a small quantity of cattle, sheep/goat, pig and chicken.85 At
the Colchester sites discussed above, similar features were also noted; for
example at Handford House a pit (F205 / F193) at least 3 m wide included
the butchered remains of cattle, sheep, pig and other mammals.86 At
another site in Colchester’s southern suburb, Butt Road, debris layers
overlying the apsidal-ended building interpreted as a church contained
a faunal assemblage with a very high proportion of pig and bird bones,
as did a pit at the eastern end of the structure, along with other artefacts including many coins, an iron pan and knife, one complete beaker
and substantial parts of six others.87 Disarticulated horse bones from at
least four individual animals with evidence for butchery were deposited
within the fill of two graves at Driffield Terrace south-west of York. These
were elements of an unusual faunal assemblage dominated by equids, in
a group of burials well-known for its anomalous population distribution,
comprising primarily young adult males with very frequent evidence for
peri-mortem trauma.88
Other animal deposits of a likely ritual character do not show evidence
of consumption, Two instances from East London illustrate their complex character; in one a deer, horse and dog had been buried in a pit
placed nose to tail while the assemblage of another comprised the skeletal
remains of many amphibians, shrews and voles and a heron as well as two
complete but broken flagons.89 On the southern periphery of London’s
bridgehead settlement in Southwark, excavations at Lant Street and Swan
Street revealed the deposition of dogs in wells and boundary ditches on
the margins of the burial area, including one which had been decapitated.90
Similar deposits of carcasses or articulated limbs have been documented
in other cemetery contexts, for example single horses at the East London
85
86
87
88
89
90
Sankey and Connell (2007).
Orr (2010).
Crummy et al. (1993) 175, 178–80.
Carrott et al. (n.d.).
Barber and Bowsher (2000) 79–81, 366–68.
Beasley (2006); Sayer (2006).
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cemetery. The processes behind their deposition are, like those of the
grave fill assemblages, difficult to differentiate, some representing the
disposal of unwanted carcasses, others the product of sacrifice or associated ritual.91
The survival of cemetery ground surfaces is less frequent, but excavation in the Abbey cemetery, across the Ver north-east of Verulamium, of
fifty late 3rd–4th c. graves—mainly east-west aligned inhumations in coffins and/or packed with stone—provides a rare instance. In the southerly
of the two excavated areas, patches of cemetery surface survived: a gravel
layer laid in the late 4th c. and repaired several times over the graves.
Within it were abundant finds, including coins, ceramics and glass. The
excavators associate this assemblage with feasting and fairs connected to
the cult of St Alban.92 However, the evidence available from other sites,
for example the artefact-rich but briefly described deposits comprising
the ‘grave earth’ at Cirencester Bathgate, shows that this is likely to be a
wider phenomenon. That is, the cemetery soils there into which the burials were dug, contained many coins, a diverse pottery assemblage, as well
as animal bone (and disarticulated human bone).93
The complexity of many cemetery’s histories compounds the challenge
of characterising behaviour documented in excavation, having been not
only spaces of burial but also of non-funerary activity, either from preceding or subsequent phases on the same site, or contemporaneously in relation to nearby settlements. The heterogeneous activity in suburban areas
complicates the attribution of a specifically funerary purpose to individual
deposits. At London, for example, both the eastern cemetery and Bishopsgate excavations revealed multiple uses for peri-urban space, including
quarrying, farming including crop processing, and rubbish dumping, the
latter at Bishopsgate comprising a high percentage of horse remains.94 The
extensive excavations south of Colchester and north of Winchester reveal
equally complex extra-mural activity, with artisanal, agricultural, quarrying and funerary activity taking place in close proximity and often displacing one another over time; at Colchester this occurring alongside the
construction and use of a circus, constructed in the 2nd c. A.D.95 Recent
excavations of peri-urban space in Gallic towns and elsewhere, also reveal
91
92
93
94
95
Barber and Bowsher (2000) 79–80; Maltby (2010).
Biddle and Biddle (2001).
McWhirr et al. (1982); See also Simmonds et al. (2008) 102, 136–37.
Barber and Bowsher (2000); Swift (2003); Watson (2003).
Pooley et al. (2011).
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the complex interleaving of ritual and rubbish deposits, in association
with tomb monuments and enclosures.96
Monuments
Funerary monuments, being otherwise well-studied, are not a primary
focus of this paper.97 However, recent excavations have shown that there
remains substantial potential, where cemetery strata are not heavily truncated, to improve understanding of grave marking as a further facet of
the enduring relationship between the living and the dead. Recent excavations at Colchester, for example, reveal the diversity of 3rd and 4th c.
A.D. monuments, including masonry tombs on rectangular and hexagonal-plans, barrows and the apsidal building at Butt Road interpreted as
a church. As noted above, geophysical survey has also indicated further
likely examples, though their funerary purpose and date in most cases
remain to be confirmed. One exception is at Binchester (Co. Durham)
where small-scale excavation has identified the funerary purpose of three
heavily robbed stone structures within enclosures north-east of the fort;
the limited associated artefact assemblage spans the Roman period.98 The
recurring layout of rows of burials in many Late Roman cemeteries has
suggested the existence of now lost grave markers; the recent Colchester excavations have again provided evidence for the form such modest
markers took.99 For example, on Garrison site J1 North at least 25 postholes were identified in likely association with Roman inhumation burials. Excavations in 2012 of burial plots with well-preserved surfaces at Butt
Road revealed rows of stakeholes, typically no more than 20 cm in diameter, delimiting plot boundaries and burial sites.100
The falling into disuse or disrepair of the tomb is more rarely considered than other characteristics but, though difficult to date, is nonetheless
significant for the practice of commemorative ritual and the perpetuation of group memory. Here, the Poundbury mausolea offer a suggestive
example; in the clearest case R8, its maintenance spans the 4th c. A.D.
96
97
98
99
100
441-482_LAA 9_f15.indd 468
Ballet et al. (2003); Goodman (2007); Vaquerizo (2010).
Bowes (2006); Johnson (2009) and Schmidt (2000) discuss late antique examples.
Burnham et al. (2008) 283–85.
Brooks (2006); Crummy et al. (1993); Hilts (2013); Pooley et al. (2011).
Pooley et al. (2011) 26–34.
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before falling into disrepair.101 The currently available information does
not allow us to assess the typicality of this instance.
Dissemination
In this final section, the focus shifts to the consequences of the above discussion for the dissemination of the results of burial and cemetery excavations from our period. It notes the impossible demands that the scale of
(some) cemetery excavations, and the data currently or prospectively generated from them, impose on conventional publication and assesses the
use of electronic publication for disseminating data for the Late Roman
and other periods.
The significant expansion in fieldwork in recent decades discussed
above has been reflected unevenly in publication.102 Some projects have
been published in a form approximating to the (Platonic) ‘perfect’ report
identified by Reece, combining: a stratigraphic account of the cemetery’s
development over time as a space with traces of human behaviour and of
burial rituals; an inventory of burials, including both their osteological and
archaeological attributes; and an integrated discussion of the evidence of
cultural and skeletal remains to characterise the community whose cemetery is under study. Ideally, any interpretation should be strengthened by
an assessment against the wider background of, for example, burial rituals
or population characteristics.103
However, the extent and character of publication varies, depending
in part on funding as well as differing academic traditions of dissemination. Many significant projects are published only in highly summarised
or selective form,104 and information from this is otherwise only available in archive or as ‘grey literature’, the unpublished interim reports created following fieldwork.105 It is not my purpose here, however, to review
publications against this standard as we may doubt whether the ‘perfect
101 Farwell and Molleson (1993) 45–61.
102 Even where funding is available for post-excavation analysis and dissemination,
as under PPG16 in England and Wales, as Fulford and Holbrook’s survey (2011) 333–34
demonstrates.
103 Reece (1982), (1995), (1999), (2005).
104 For example the results of recent fieldwork at Rome, referenced above.
105 The online availability of grey literature, for example through the Archaeology
Data Service, blurs these distinctions: http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/
greylit/.
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report’ should be the normal outcome of a cemetery excavation. The scale
of excavation and the (ever-expanding) analytical possibilities with their
attendant documentation make the publication of the full report impossible, especially of complete skeletal inventories.
Numbers of burials produced in large fieldwork projects defy publication in conventional printed form. Few projects could draw on the
resources, made available over decades, for the publication of two of the
largest Roman funerary fieldwork projects: Wederath (Rheinland-Pfalz)
and Krefeld-Gellep (Nordrhein-Westfalen).106 A cemetery of several hundred burials can be barely accommodated within the pages of a single
volume, for example the larger urban cemetery excavations from Britain
referenced above, and only by presenting skeletal data in a summary
form. Where fuller skeletal (and artefact) inventories are compiled, publication is enormously expanded; the approximately forty-six individuals
from the late antique cemetery from Agrigento occupy as many pages as
the six hundred+ cremation and inhumation burials published in the East
London report.107 Stable isotope analysis and other biomolecular data
in future will further expand the content of skeletal inventories, as would
the application of the ‘anthropologie de terrain’ method to reconstruct the
taphonomic process from close recording of skeletal configuration. The
page devoted in the burial catalogue to each Late Roman inhumation
from the southern cemetery at Aix en Provence illustrates the implications; as little direct evidence survived for grave goods, coffins or other
burial structures, this comprises primarily a description of the skeleton
and a report on the anatomical relationships observed during excavation.108
The greater attention advocated above to disarticulated human bone and
non-burial deposits, would also compound this problem.
Cemeteries, as much as any category of archaeological information,
lend themselves to digitisation (especially spatially referenced burial
inventories), but while fieldwork and subsequent analysis now almost
always involves the creation of substantial digital resources, typically with
a geo-referenced burial inventory, their electronic dissemination is uneven; combining print and digital media is not uncommon but not always
done well. Web dissemination is likely to be a more accessible and stable
means for making available very large datasets indefinitely, providing that
106 Pearce (2002).
107 Barber and Bowsher (2000); Carra Bonacasa (1996).
108 Nin (2006) 223–33. See also Moliner et al. (2003).
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institutional continuity can be guaranteed.109 Resources for Roman period
cemeteries on the UK’s Archaeology Data Service—a national digital
repository for project archives and ‘grey literature’ inter alia—illustrate
the varied uses to which web dissemination has been put.110
Much of the data made available are of a similar form to that found
on a CD: i.e. tabulated supporting data, for example artefact assemblages;
environmental data or stratigraphic relationships; as well as full versions
of specialist reports and further images.111 The Channel Tunnel Rail Link
Section 1 archive also publishes online a stratigraphic narrative and analyses of finds for individual component sites, complemented by a printed
synthesis.112 This puts significantly more data at the disposal of the reader,
but valuable though this is, the full benefits of web-based publication have
yet to be realised.
The use of PDFs in this and other reports as a publication medium
impedes the movement between text, image and data.113 The complementing of a grave inventory with a web-mounted spatial interface and a
search facility would substantially facilitate re-analysis and cross-referral
between site plans and graves, and take fuller advantage of the possibilities of digital publication; a late antique example being the online archive
from the excavation of the 5th to 7th c. cemetery at Llandough, southwest of Cardiff.114 With a shift to digitisation directly from the point of
fieldwork, more flexible digital access to cemetery data will perhaps be
more easily realised. The Prescot Street excavation (East London) illustrates the possibilities that ab initio digitisation allows, though so far its
major emphasis has been on facilitating public engagement.115
Finally, one of the most important changes in the study of Late Antiquity has been the much fuller attention that has been paid to human
remains. While significant results have come from the synthesis of the
109 Withdrawal of funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Data Service (2008) illustrates the attendant risks (http://www.ahds.ac.uk/).
110 http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/.
111 See, for example, the archives for the Brougham, East London and Wasperton cemetery projects. http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/.
112 Foreman (2009).
113 For example, the report on the Colchester garrison excavations of 2004–2007
includes a single chapter of more than 1000 pages detailing burials from two cemetery
excavations: Pooley et al. (2011).
114 Llandough: http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/llandough_cadw_2004/
(Holbrook and Thomas (2004)).
115 Prescot Street: http://www.lparchaeology.com/prescot/; G. Hunt pers. comm. Fulford et al. (2010) discuss the wider context of on-site digitisation.
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now large samples, the variability in the recording of skeletal characteristics but also their dissemination, obstructs wider exploitation. The difficulties posed by summary presentation for assessment and re-analysis
of skeletal data are well-known. For example, comparison of the results
of multiple projects without archival work is often obliged to use the
crude prevalence rate (CPR) of an osteological characteristic, i.e. where
its frequency is calculated in relation to the total skeletal sample, rather
than as the more informative true prevalence rate (TPR), based on the
characteristic’s occurrence as established with reference only to skeletons where the appropriate anatomical element survives and permits its
presence or absence to be observed.116 Given the interest in the synthesis of skeletal data for wider demographic and socio-economic history,
this is a significant problem. Re-analysis with any quantitative element
will be significantly hindered by a need to recreate data in digital form
where they will almost certainly have been compiled and assessed digitally during post-excavation analysis before publication. The creation and
dissemination of skeletal inventories in a shared database format would
significantly enhance their wider exploitation through limiting the labour
of re-digitisation or harmonising digital resources in diverse formats. For
London and Rome, the databases used for recording skeletal inventories
of burials, excavated across multiple development-related projects, illustrate the potential of such resources.117
Conclusion
The focus in this paper on areas where the understanding of burial practice may be improved and suggestions for change, should not obscure the
very significant developments in Roman funerary archaeology outlined in
the introduction. The scale of fieldwork in recent decades makes the mid
first millennium A.D. one of the best-documented periods, especially of
pre-modern skeletal samples. The comments on dissemination notwithstanding, a very much larger sample is now available for discussion and
use in wider synthesis. Nonetheless, consideration of how sites are chosen,
116 Roberts and Cox (2003).
117 London: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/Collections-Research/LAARC/Centrefor-Human-Bioarchaeology/Database/; Rome: Minozzi and Zabotti (2008). Current English Heritage publication guidelines do not yet consider digital dissemination: Mays et al.
(2002).
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excavated and the results disseminated give insights into current biases in
our data and into how understanding might be extended. While the total
sample is increasingly impressive, its distribution, if we take the British
case as typical, is unrepresentative in its bias towards urban cemeteries.
The value of new urban data should not be under-estimated, even this
sample being dominated by a few key sites, but opportunities to examine
rural burials must be taken full advantage of, and their skeletal analyses in
particular incorporated in wider synthesis. As samples are typically small,
their distribution over many publications inhibits synthesis, and the case
for a larger digital architecture for inventorising their results, as well as
that of funerary excavations in general, is especially pressing.
Research excavations have allowed for some experimentation as regards
the recovery of burial evidence, which has emphasised that this process deserves further attention. Such a process encompasses the detailed
documentation of the grave itself and the more or less ephemeral traces
of activity beyond.118 But, as such excavations only account for a minute
percentage of fieldwork, a wider understanding can only be established
in development-led excavations, which are also typically on a larger scale
and likely to encounter a wider range of features. This is not to propose,
as a consumer of fieldwork results and only an occasional practitioner, the
close documentation of all assemblages and features of the type discussed
in the preceding paragraphs as the norm. Instead, wider experimentation
should assess their potential (as with the anthropologie de terrain), though
this may be less easily written into research frameworks for developmentled fieldwork, where the ‘repository’ model for the cemetery prevails.119
The discussion of ritual is not intended as an exhaustive account of
analytical opportunities offered by cemeteries for reconstructing ritual
and its setting. A focus on this has meant that the traditional preoccupation of funerary archaeology, the interpretation of grave goods, has been
left largely unexamined here and remains of course central to the interpretation of burial data, as the studies of identity cited in the introduction
demonstrate. Other possibilities which may be enabled through excavation,
such as palaeobotanical or geomorphological analysis to reconstruct cemetery environments, have also not been discussed. Nonetheless, the examples discussed above show significant scope for extending understanding
118 Scheid (2008); van Andringa and Lepetz (2008); Chapman et al. (2010) 358–59.
119 For example, the English Heritage regional research frameworks, linked from the
Association of Local Government Archaeological Officers’ website: http://www.algao.org
.uk/england/research_frameworks.
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of the burial process and ritual sequence, though opportunities to do so
vary according to ancient burial practice and site histories.
Since cremation continues into the 4th c. A.D., the same analytical
techniques that have recently illuminated cremation cemeteries of earlier date can be applied; existing examples show a wide variability in pyre
treatment. For the layout of the body at death the anthropologie de terrain offers a significant opportunity, in normal preservation conditions,
for better understanding. Exceptional preservation conditions for organic
remains pertain much more rarely, but their transformative potential for
understanding burial ritual means that examples must be fully exploited;
the commonalities among the widely dispersed known examples suggest
that their results can be used to inform burial rituals more generally.
In many cases, truncation means that little is left apart from the most
deeply buried interments, but grave fills and other features including cemetery surfaces with their associated assemblages and evidence for markers, do sometimes survive to some depth. Where more systematically
documented, these may aid in the construction of a fuller ritual sequence
beyond the point of burial. Given the variety of evidence assembled
above, specific explanations, for example in relation to Christian cult in
the Abbey cemetery at Verulamium or at Butt Road (Colchester), become
less necessary; instead such cases should rather be seen simply as manifestations of more widely documented practices.
Diversity in the treatment of redeposited human remains is also notable, varying between carefully structured placing within or beyond the
grave and apparent casual redeposition, especially through accidental disturbance of forgotten interments. The occurrence of sometimes extensive
charnel assemblages is in itself of wider interest, suggesting pragmatic
limits to the construction of identity by the burying group through reference to the bodies of ancestors, especially in heavily used burial space
on urban margins. It also reveals changes in attitude to the decomposing
corpse and its skeletal residue from the pre-Roman period, where such
material in the majority of cases shows careful curation.120
Not all of the evidence bears (or can be made to bear) on the reconstruction of individual burial sequences. It is not easy, except where very close
spatial association applies, to link specific graves with separate deposits of
ceramics and/or faunal and botanical remains or, from current evidence,
120 Lally (2008).
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475
to differentiate between material related to burial and other profane uses
to which urban margins are put.
This depositional complexity may be considered as ‘noise’ if emphasis
lies on the single grave as the unit of analysis, but this ‘noise’ itself constitutes significant evidence for funerary rituals, and for the character of
the cemetery as a space where burial and other activities overlap. Though
mainly urban examples have been cited, similar complexity applies to
many rural burial spaces, the small groups or plots on settlement margins, often also closely related to other structural features (e.g. boundary
ditches, trackways, crop processing areas) and where evidence for other
activities also occurs.121 A potentially frustrating imprecision can be converted into a source of potential insight by considering the cemetery as
a more complex and dynamic space. The combined evidence for the disturbance of burials and the abandonment of monuments may allow some
better approximations for the duration of commemorative activity, and
thus perhaps the significance of the dead as social actors. The evidence
for associated profane activity also helps convert the abstracted space of
the cemetery site plan into a closer intuitive approximation of the lived
environment.
Acknowledgements
My principal debt is to the editors for their forbearance in waiting for
this paper. Conference participants are also thanked for their comments
on the original presentation, and the discussion also draws on conversations with Jake Weekes, Paul Booth and Guy Hunt. The referees too are
thanked for their helpful observations on the paper’s argument and for
further references. Responsibility for the opinions expressed here is, however, entirely my own.
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List of Figures
Fig. 1. The occurrence of excavations of Romano-British cemeteries, 1921–2010, by five year
periods, as reported in JRS / Britannia.
Fig. 2. A Late Roman inhumation burial from Boscombe Down, containing the remains of
a female adult and a child. The preserved footwear is visible at the base of the coffin (see
Table 4). (By kind permission of Wessex Archaeology, Copyright Wessex Archaeology).
Fig. 3. St Cheron, Chartres, burial 98 4th–5th century A.D., recorded by the anthropologie
de terrain method (D. Joly and P. Courtaud). The marked transversal compression of
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rapidly, the bones formerly connected by them had separated and slid down the sides
of the coffin to gather at its base before the coffin itself rotted. (By kind permission of
Henri Duday).
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