Five to six metres underground, the skull of a battle-worn man gazes into the darkness, surrounded by the remains of London’s Roman amphitheatre – a space where he may have met his brutal end before a baying crowd. Today, his remains lie beneath the Guildhall Art Gallery, at the depth of the original Roman ground level, but they were discovered near the Walbrook River, in pits where more skulls and a fragment of human femur had been hastily consigned to the ground (see CA 288). The fragmentary nature of these bones was not the only clue to this being other than a formal grave: so too did their location within the city walls – formal burials from this period are more typically found outside the bounds of Londinium.
Why, then, had these bones received such an unconventional – and apparently uncaring – fate? It may be that the men to whom they belonged had been from a group of low social status, and their scarred features proved particularly instructive. Analysis by Dr Rebecca Redfern at the Museum of London revealed that many of the individuals had suffered dramatic injuries to their heads, wounds very different to what is normally seen in the city’s Roman cemetery populations, and often inflicted by bladed weapons.
The man whose skull is now on display at the Guildhall had evidently lived a life that was no less violent than his death. A long-healed wound testifies to a once-broken cheekbone, but this was more than a particularly accident-prone Roman, remarks Kate Sumnall, Curator for Archaeological Collections at the Museum of London, and of the exhibition. At around the time of his death, he had also suffered damage to his nose that never had a chance to heal, as well as a hard blow to his temple.
