Human Remains from the North Gate, Silchester: An 'Early' and a 'Late' Radiocarbon Date from the City

Abstract

Human Remains from the North Gate, Silchester: an 'Early' and a 'Late' Radiocarbon Date from the City. Michael Fulford writes: Excavations at the North Gate, Silchester in 1991 recovered fragments of human bones from five different locations in and around the gate.40 Apart from two skull fragments which derived from a gully sealed beneath the latest cobbled road surface through the gate, they occurred in unsealed late or post-Roman contexts above or cutting through the latest road surface. Earlier excavations in 1909 had reported the find of a human skull in the 'counterscarp' of the late Roman defensive ditch to the north of the gate.41 Parts of a second cranium were recovered from this location in 1991. Although it was suggested that the crania might originally have been displayed on the gate as trophies, the only close parallel (from Colchester) dated from about the middle of the first century A.D. It was even more difficult to understand the original context of the post-cranial material, of which two fragments appeared to be stratified in late Roman contexts.42 One possibility, that this bone may have been disturbed from a late Roman extra-mural cemetery, was discounted on the grounds that recent fieldwork in the vicinity had encountered no evidence of any human burial in the area between the town wall and the Outer Earthwork.43 In order to obtain independent evidence of date two fragments were selected for AMS radiocarbon dating in 1999: part of the cranium of an adult found in 1991 in a comparable location to that reported from 1909;44 and part of a femur with a cut mark sustained in antiquity from the disturbed contexts of excavation trenches of 1890 and 1909, from which the majority of fragments derived.45 In the case of the latter the inferior trochanter appeared to have been partially chopped off with a sharp implement while the bone was comparatively fresh. This bone yielded a radiocarbon age (OXA 8732) of 2320+/-40 BP, which calibrates to 550-200 B.C. at one standard deviation (750-20 B.C. at two standard deviations).46 The radiocarbon age of the cranium (OXA 8733) was considerably younger at 1600+/-40BP, which calibrates to A.D. 420-540 at one standard deviation, A.D. 340-570 at two standard deviations.47 We are thus presented with two extremes of date: midor early-to-mid-Iron Age on the one hand, and post-Roman on the other. In the light of this evidence it is appropriate to see the human bone from the 1991 excavations at the North Gate as originating in at least two separate periods. While the collection from which the femur was selected may yet prove to contain specimens of different date, the cranium was the only find of its kind from the upper fill of the late Roman ditch. George Boon has drawn together the few objects which attest to activity on the Silchester plateau before the late Iron Age.48 In particular he has noted in the Silchester Collection in Reading Museum 'a coloured glass bead of a kind identical with a pair from a princess's grave at Reinheim, and a small iron cheek-piece with bronze rosettes from a helmet of Montefortino affinity'. On the basis of this evidence he 'suggest(ed) that barrows of the Early Iron Age, about the fourth century B.C., may have been levelled within the walled area'.49 Although we have no idea of the precise provenance within the Roman town of these finds in the Silchester Collection, their age corresponds with that of our femur, which might conceivably have derived from an inhumation beneath a barrow; however, burial in this manner is not well attested in the south of Britain at this time.50 On the other hand there is considerable evidence for less formal disposal of human remains in this period, as evidenced for example at Danebury hillfort, also in Hampshire,5 and elsewhere in Wessex,52 but usually in association with pottery or other material evidence. While the combined evidence of the finds from the early excavations and the radiocarbon-dated bone strengthens the case for