probable Roman burial in St Clare Road, Colchester

Last week (on the 12th May), the Trust conducted an archaeological evaluation at a property in St Clare Road, in the Lexden area of Colchester. The site is in an important archaeological area of the town, near to the site of the famous Iron Age ‘Lexden tumulus’* and within the site of the extensive ‘Lexden cemetery’. The ‘Lexden cemetery’ dates to the Late Iron Age and early Roman periods and it developed along both sides of the Roman road from Colchester to London, the line of which is now followed by the modern Lexden Road. The houses on the opposite side of St Clare Road also back on to the line of the Lexden Dyke, part of the Iron Age defensive dyke system of Camulodunum. There were areas of extra-mural settlement and cemeteries around Roman Colchester’s walled town centre.

The Trust has conducted a number of archaeological projects at properties in St Clare Road over the years. Last week, we machine-excavated one evaluation trench across the site and then hand-excavated the exposed features. We uncovered two Roman ditches and a Roman pit. We also uncovered a feature which was the right shape and size for a Roman inhumation burial: it was sub-rectangular, vertical-sided and flat-bottomed, and it was 1.82 metres long. This feature produced only a small amount of very degraded bone and no other finds: however, we interpret it as being a probable Roman inhumation burial. The finds from the site consist of fragments of Roman pottery, a fragment of Roman lava quernstone which would have been imported from Germany, and some fragments of post-Roman peg-tile. Trust pottery specialist Stephen Benfield has looked at the pottery and says that it suggests a date in the late 1st-2nd century, with the post-Roman peg-tile being intrusive. The Roman pottery includes fragments of a small jar, two large storage jars, and a large, double-handled, white ware flagon which was probably imported. Stephen says that the pottery fragments are residual and they suggest waste from previous domestic activity on the site.

In 2013, the Trust uncovered six Roman inhumation burials and the outlines of further possible burials during an evaluation at a property at the other end of St Clare Road, along with further Roman ditches and pits (CAT Report 745). The finds on that site included coffin nails from two of the burials, while another burial produced a fragment of Roman lava quernstone. The site also produced some fragments of post-Roman peg-tile. We did not excavate the burials during the evaluation, but they occurred in clusters. The evidence from that site is very interesting, as it shows that the ‘Lexden cemetery’, which was previously known as a cremation cemetery, also included inhumation burials. Now we have this probable Roman inhumation burial, also within the site of the ‘Lexden cemetery’. We have just completed an excavation on the site at the other end of St Clare Road and we are currently conducting a watching brief there. Coincidentally, Trust excavator Nigel was sieving soil samples from that excavation, here at the Trust’s HQ, yesterday (17th May).

All the Trust’s fieldwork reports are available online at http://cat.essex.ac.uk/ .

Trust archaeologist Ben Holloway supervised our evaluation last week.

The images show a feature in the trench being hand-excavated by Trust excavator Alec and the probable inhumation burial pit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* The site of the ‘Lexden tumulus’ is in a large garden in Fitzwalter Road. It is a scheduled ancient monument and it is a site of national archaeological importance, identified by Historic England as ‘… Iron Age [funerary] barrow and associated cemetery area …’. Colchester and Ipswich Museums, on their web-site, say that is one of the most famous Iron Age burials in Britain. See blog post about the ‘Lexden tumulus’ on this web-site at www.thecolchesterarchaeologist.co.uk/?p=10672 .

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