Our Blog
Roman burials at Area E in the old garrison, Colchester
Today (12th June), Trust senior archaeologist Howard Brooks completed the report on our excavation of our Colchester garrison Area E in January-February 2013 (CAT Report 778). Area E was the site of the recently-constructed annexe for St John’s Green Primary School at the Abbey Field in Colchester, which was formerly part of the old garrison. Howard says that Area E is a very interesting site – and that, if it wasn’t here at Colchester, it would be considered to be a remarkable site! At Area E, we uncovered eighteen Roman burials, including three high-status burials, within the Roman field system. The site is not far from the site of the Roman circus. These burials form part of the extensive Roman cemetery area in the southern hinterland of Roman Colchester, which we have been investigating across the development sites of the old garrison. The Trust’s excavation of Area E followed two phases of evaluation.
The eighteen burials at Area E consisted of one bustum burial, two urned cremation burials, one boxed cremation burial, three inhumation burials, and eleven grave-shaped cuts which were empty but probably once contained human remains. There were also other possible burials on the site. The three high-status burials were a cremation, an inhumation and the bustum burial. A bustum is a rare and special form of burial, in which the deceased was cremated on a pyre within a cemetery and which was then covered over with earth. The burials at Area E represent a cemetery which was used in two phases, ie the mid 1st century-mid 2nd century and the mid-late 2nd century, when it may have been associated with an adjacent farmstead. The eleven grave-shaped cuts may date to the mid-late 2nd century or to a later date. The burials produced only fragments of cremated or poorly-preserved bone, but the earlier burials here may represent the individuals of one family. The site was later used to dig a large Roman quarry-pit. The people buried here were interred with some high-status Romanised burial goods, including personal items such as a hairpin, copper-alloy brooch, bronze hand-mirror, and a pen-knife for sharpening a reed or quill pen.
The special bustum burial included iron nails, a coin of Vespasian, the scorched fragments of at least three Roman pottery picture lamps and five pottery tazza (incense burners), a pottery flagon and bowl, and the burnt remains of foodstuffs. The coin may have been placed near the right hand of the deceased and with the reverse side up, and it would have been provided for the deceased to pay the ferryman on their journey to the Underworld. The three lamps seem to have been placed with one in the middle and one at each end of the cremation pyre and, therefore, suggest funerary ritual. The bustum burial also produced 58 fragments of blue-green glass representing unguent bottles or flasks which would have contained perfumes or oils. The remains of the foodstuffs include whole dates and possible species such as pea, field bean, lentils, figs and grapes: the foodstuffs would have been provided to feed the deceased in the Underworld or as an offering to the gods in a highly Romanised ritual. The bustum burial is dated to AD 75-85. Although bustum burials are rare, we have uncovered several on sites at the old garrison. These special burials have Germanic connections, and they provide fascinating evidence for the presence of different migrant groups of people in Roman Colchester.
See three previous items about Area E on this web-site: about the site visit by pupils from St John’s Green Primary School, at a; about the bustum burial, at b; and about our completion of the excavation of the site at c. Read CAT Report 778 in our online archive at http://cat.essex.ac.uk/ .
The images show Trust archaeologists working on part of the site; the bustum burial F62 (the upper layer and then an overhead view of the excavated burial); and three complete pottery vessels (two jars and a beaker) in inhumation burial F105.
.
