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New project to investigate Roman gypsum burials
A three-year, £1 million project, supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, is set to explore the Roman practice of coating bodies within coffins in liquid gypsum before burial. (A burial of this type was recently excavated in Peterborough; see CA 420.) The project, run by York University in collaboration with York Museums Trust, Heritage Doncaster, Wakefield Museum, and MAP Archaeological Practice, will focus on 3rd- and 4th-century AD burials from York and Yorkshire. Using 3D scanning, the team hope to determine information about the individuals within, such as their age, sex, diet, and genetic ancestry, as well as building on our understanding of Roman funerary rituals in Britain. For more information on the project, see https://seeingthedead.ac.uk.
Spoon of fortune
An Iron Age spoon (below), believed to have been used in divination rituals, has been discovered on private land in Patrick, on the west coast of the Isle of Man. The spoon, which is crafted in bronze and believed to date to between 400 BC and 100 BC, has a strawberry-shaped bowl with a cross design. To divine the future, the user would pour liquid into the bowl and a reading would be taken depending on which quarter it landed in, as indicated by the cross. This is the 28th example worldwide of such an object, and is a relatively rare Iron Age find on the Isle of Man. The spoon has been donated to the Manx National Collections, cared for by Manx National Heritage at the Manx Museum.
Eighteenth-century skeleton buried at Padstow
The archaeological remains of a man, believed to have been a fisherman or sailor, have been buried at Padstow cemetery, Cornwall. The skeleton, dating to the 18th century, was found on a coastal path at Trevone, in November 2022, and is believed to represent the remains of a man who died at an age of between 25 and 50 years. The bones revealed good upper body strength, and marks on the back of his teeth suggest the man probably used his mouth to work with rope or nets, leading to the suggestion that he was a sailor or fisherman who had drowned off the Cornish coast.
Text: Rebecca Preedy
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