the circus site produces a pot!

Yesterday (5th November), Trust archaeologist Ben Holloway lifted the Roman pot which was uncovered on our circus excavation site on Monday. The Trust is currently conducting a short phase of work on our excavation on part of the circus site, in front of our building Roman Circus House.

The pot is broken but looks as though it might be complete. The fragments are quite large and were found close together, suggesting that the pot was broken in situ. It was found in the backfill of the post-Roman robber-trench which defines the outer wall of the circus cavea (seating-stand).

The Trust’s Roman pottery specialist Steve Benfield had a quick look at the fragments today. He thinks that they represent a Roman grey ware jar, locally made, of Cam form 281, with a narrow neck and out-curving rim. These jars are not uncommon in Colchester and are dated to the mid-late 2nd-4th century (probably the late 2nd-3rd/4th century). The pot was probably disturbed from a Roman burial nearby by the post-Roman stone ‘robbers’ who dug their trench here to extract the building materials for re-use – perhaps they dug up the pot and discarded it immediately, breaking it in the process (perhaps they literally threw it away!).

This jar is very interesting, because it is very unusual to find anything in a robber-trench – and it is very unusual  for us to find any artefacts on the site of the circus. We excavate structural material and demolition debris from the circus but, so far, we have only found two other artefacts on the site of the circus itself, ie the two horse harness-fittings from two different fieldwork sites. We have not found any burials on the site of the circus: we have previously only found two Roman burials in very close proximity to the circus, on the south side, again in two different fieldwork sites. The Roman jar we lifted yesterday, probably disturbed from a burial, was on the line of the north outer wall of the circus and approximately 100 metres  from the remarkable Roman cemetery which the Trust excavated in 2012 in the Butt Road car-park. It was only a few metres away from Roman Circus House!

The images show the pot in situ on Monday (bottom right-hand corner of the excavated part of the robber-trench) and some of the fragments of the pot, photographed today in the pottery-processing room at Roman Circus House, and before processing.

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