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A large cemetery dating to the 6th-7th centuries has been discovered on the Fonmon Castle estate – a fortified castle just to the north-west of Cardiff Airport.
The project, led by Dr Andy Seaman, began in 2021 when the team was invited to carry out a geophysical survey of the probably 12th-century castle’s grounds. While their initial aim was to understand the archaeology within the later medieval demesne of the castle, the survey revealed a series of enclosures of various shapes and sizes that were interpreted as Iron Age or early Roman. When an evaluation trench was opened across one of the enclosures in 2022, however, it uncovered burials dating to the late 6th and early 7th centuries. With both the ditch and burials dating to the same period, the team realised that they had come across an early medieval cemetery, and one with well-preserved skeletons – a rare find in Wales.
Returning last summer, the team opened a trench across half of the cemetery and uncovered 36 inhumations. While the majority were buried in a ‘typical’ early medieval fashion – east–west alignment in a supine position – almost 20% contained skeletons in more atypical positions, including crouched and flexed (below).
No grave goods were found with any of the individuals, but the grave fills yielded a large amount of material that appears to be largely contemporary with the burials. This included iron slag and copper alloy, lots of animal bones, and, most significantly, fragments of imported glass vessels that appear virtually identical to examples found at both Tintagel, in Cornwall, and Dinas Powys, in the Vale of Glamorgan (just 9 miles east of this site). Scientific analysis of these samples will hopefully reveal more details, but these finds hint at the Severn Estuary having been a vibrant trading hub during this period.
The domestic material also suggests that a settlement might lie nearby, perhaps within some of the other enclosures on the castle estate. This is fairly unusual for the period, the team note, as most cemeteries were located away from areas of occupation, and were rarely enclosed. Further investigation will hopefully add to this picture, but it could be that this site was similar to the settlement-cemeteries known from Ireland (see CA 407 for one at Ranelagh, for example), a significant meeting place for local communities, or perhaps part of an early monastic site. The last suggestion is particularly compelling. The burials were only 50m north of the Llancarfan monastery estate: could it be that the burial ground was associated with this early medieval religious site?
Some of these questions may be answered when the team return to the site this summer to excavate the second half of the cemetery. Post-excavation analysis will then focus on isotopic and aDNA analysis – something that, it is hoped, will add important Welsh details to our growing understanding of settlement and migration during this period, which at the moment is largely based on ‘Anglo-Saxon’ cemeteries from the south and east of England.
Text: Kathryn Krakowka
