unusually large fragments of bone from Roman cremation burial

Today (30th December), some of the Trust team – including several of our very dedicated volunteers! – were back at work at Roman Circus House. We had renovation volunteers hard at work on the building, and Catherine, an archaeology volunteer, excavating the contents of a Roman cremation urn in the pot-processing room and then washing and drying the fragments of human bone.

The cremation urn – no 540 – is large but it was badly cracked due to compression underground, and it broke as it was lifted, so it is contained in a wooden box. After centuries underground, Roman cremation urns are always full of soil, and this has to be carefully excavated to recover the fragments of human bone and any finds which may have been deposited in the cremation urn for burial; when the contents have all been excavated, the soil is sieved so that really tiny fragments of bone can be recovered with tweezers. Catherine was unable to excavate the contents of this urn in spits (layers) as usual, and had to remove fragments of bone as she found them. For Roman cremation burials, the deceased individual would have been laid on a pyre and burned until only fragments of bone remained; some of these would then have been collected, placed in an urn – perhaps with a coin or the burned remains of the individual’s shoes or some small personal items – and then buried. The fragments of bone in this urn are unusually large; Catherine thought that this might indicate that the cremation of this particular individual had not been very fully carried out, but she then decided that perhaps it was using a different excavation technique which was resulting in the larger fragments surviving. These fragments of cremated bone are large enough to be studied by an osteoarchaeologist and might produce evidence of the cremated individual such as gender, age at death, diet, disease or wear and tear.

Cremation urn 540 is from burial F214, one of a large cluster of burials on the western side of the Butt Road car-park site, not far from Roman Circus House, which the Trust excavated in late 2012. The cremation urn was uncovered with a large pot (589) placed on top of it as a lid. Cremation burial F214 had been cut by the later inhumation burial F155 which had also cut through cremation burial F154; both F154 and F155 were very damaged. The excavation revealed a large Roman cemetery with some remarkable elements.

The images show the damaged cremation urn (540) in its box, half-way through the excavation of its contents; fragments of cremated bone of the usual size; large fragments of bone from urn 540; and a selection of the large fragments of bone – you can see identifiable fragments of small bones, vertebra, pelvis, skull, and long bones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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