A rich burial at Stanway, Colchester
A rich burial dating to within 20 years after the Roman
conquest has just been excavated in a gravel quarry at Stanway,
just outside Colchester
The intact burial was not
at the centre of the enclosure, but was a subsidiary burial. Here
in the foreground is the central pit, which had been robbed, or
where all the grave goods had been cremated. The intact burial
is in the background, under the tent.
View down into the burial
pit.
The finds were made in two wooden boxes. To the top left is a
wooden box containing drinking equipment including a bronze saucepan
and a bronze strainer. Top right, outside the box, is a dinner
set.
Bottom right is an amphora, a large pottery vessel containing
wine. Along the bottom of the pit is a second box containing a
gaming board.
Close up of the top half
of the pit.
To the left, in a wooden box, is drinking equipment. At the top
is a bronze strainer, crushed. Then there is a large Samian bowl,
also crushed, and then a patera, or bronze saucepan, in
perfect condition. The edges of the box were visible in the ground,
and may perhaps be visible on screen, with a certain amount of
imagination.
To the right, outside the box, is a dinner set. This consists
partly of terra rubra, in red, and terra nigra, in black. These
items can be dated fairly precisely to around 50 AD, that is approximately
10 years after the Roman conquest in 43 AD.
The southern end of the
burial pit.
The southern end contained a second wooden box, which contained
the gaming board which as become the best known feature of the
burial.
Little can be seen of the gaming board itself in this picture
- though the row of white glass gaming pieces along the top should
be visible - the comparable row of blue glass beads along the
bottom have probably not survived transmission. However the gaming
board was about two feet long by a foot wide, and it was hinged
down the middle - again the hinges are not really visible. However
it was hinged longways rather than crossways, so that it would
have folded up to about 2 feet long by only 6 inches wide.
The big mystery however is the series of bronze and iron rods
which were placed over the top of the board. Some of these are
visible. The group on the left has a spatula at one end, and a
trumpet flare at the other end. Some of those in the centre have
a right-angled bend at the top. Any suggestions as to their purpose
would be welcome. Are they medical? (suggesting that the person
buried was a doctor?) Or are they perhaps part of the game?
To the right the pottery amphora can be seen. These normally hold
wine: however this is a Spanish amphora of a type that usually
holds fish-sauce: did the person buried (the cremated ashes were
found to one side of the grave) go to the next world with wine?
Or with fish-sauce?
Plan of the Stanway burial
enclosures.
This plan, taken from an earlier article in Current Archaeology
132, shows the layout of the burial enclosures. The site lies
on the western outskirts of Gosbecks, the Iron Age 'town' that
formed the predecessor to Roman and modern Colchester, which lies
2 miles to the north.
Air photographs revealed this series of rectangular enclosures
which were thought to be agricultural until excavation showed
then to be burial enclosures, with a principal burial pit at the
centre - mostly empty - and subsidiary pits within the enclosure.
The current excavations took place in enclosure 5, at the right
hand end of the top row.
.
This is a preview of a forthcoming article in Current Archaeology. The excavations were conducted by the Colchester Archaeological Trust, under the direction of Philip Crummy. He is not on the web, so please send any comments direct to Current Archaeology
For details of the site, see the previous article in Current
Archaeology 133.
Click here for the Current Archaeology home page.