Roman cemetery found at roadworks site is 'unique'

Archaeologists who excavated a Roman cemetery say it is "unique" due to the range of different types of burial and grave goods, including bracelets buried with young child.

The dig team has been showing the BBC some of the jewellery discovered at the site at Wansford, near Peterborough, where the A47 is being dualled.

The personal treasures of those buried have been provisionally dated to the late Roman Britain period (3rd-4th Centuries), and include a solid stone coffin containing a corpse set in gypsum.

Headland Archaeology's Jessica Lowther said further investigation of the artefacts would help "answer questions about those that lived here".

One of the significant finds is jewellery found in the grave of the child, who was believed to have been about five years old, giving a possible indication of their wealth and high status.

The team said it was still unclear what community the cemetery served, as no evidence of other settlement buildings had been found in the immediate area.

Sara Machin, senior specialist at Headland, said the team had been studying the finds at their base at Silsoe in Bedfordshire.

"It's a collection of bracelets all found with the same child. What it tells us is what people thought about them and what they thought was appropriate to go into the grave," she said.

"It's a little picture of the community and how they were burying their people.

"The collection in the child's grave is similar to another grave and suggests a connection."

Ms Machin said they could use DNA to establish links.

"Looking at skeletons we will be able to find out if they are related and what relationships there might be with the rest of the population," she said.

The solid stone coffin, or sarchophagus, weighed the same as a small caravan, and featured in the latest series of the BBC's Digging for Britain programme.

It was made of Ancaster stone, so the team said it might have been transported 30 miles south from the Lincolnshire village that gives its name to that type of stone, indicating the high status of the person buried in it.

Ms Lowther said its lid was made using Barnack stone, which is local to the Peterborough area, therefore it was possible the original lid may have been broken and this was a replacement.

"This is how we tell stories about people that lived everyday lives. We don't [always] have history books written about us, but archaeology can tell us those stories," she said.

She added that the different burial practices in such a small area made the cemetery "unique". These included:

• the solid stone coffin containing the gypsum
• a cist burial - using separate slabs of stone forming a coffin
• cremations
• goods placed at both the heads or feet of the skeleton
• decapitated skeletons
• iron nails, suggesting wooden coffins, since decomposed

Chris Griffin, National Highways programme lead for the A47 project, said the finds would add to the tapestry of knowledge about the area, including the discovery of a small section of Roman road nearby, which the stone coffin may have been transported on.

"It's fascinating that we found a Roman road while we were building a road. Isn't that just great?

"We didn't know that the road was there but the find shows us how important the A1 and A47 has been, going back to Roman times."

Ms Lowther said: "Transporting the gypsum coffin at all would have been a major feat with lifting and manoeuvring, but then to add 30 miles of journey is quite a lot.

"Pulling the cart on a Roman road, which would have acted a little bit like a cobbled street, would not have been the smoothest."

Ms Machin said it was "early stages" in piecing together information about how long the site was in use for burials, its place in the surrounding landscape and the stories of the individuals laid to rest there.

"What we have got now are all clues. Now we have a huge list of questions and we're moving on to the next stage to see how many answers we can get," she said.

None of the items are currently available for the public to see, and Headland said it was too early in the process for any decisions to be made about putting things on display.

Full reports of all the archaeology found will be uploaded to Peterborough's Historic Environment Record, the team said.

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