Chapter 19
End of Empire
Perhaps it is apt that death and burial comes at the end of the Roman section. Diseases of Roman Britain are those we are familiar with today but there were more sexual diseases and eye problems. Roman surgeons were skilled and, although anaesthetics as we know them today did not exist, they were probably ready to operate on anybody who could pay.
Romano-British burials like Roman burials throughout the Empire, whether pagan or Christian, were placed in cemeteries by the roadsides outside the towns. However, in some instances the custom was ignored. At Housesteads vicus the excavation of a tavern produced the skeletons of a man and a woman laid on the original floor and covered by a new one. The man still had a sword-point stuck in his ribs so perhaps the corpses were the result of a crime and the perpetrators could not risk burying them in the proper place outside the settlement!
During the first and second centuries, the dead were usually cremated, so on arrival at the burial place the body would be placed on a funeral pyre. Cremation burials are often accompanied by grave-goods for the use of the dead while others, including clothes, were burnt with the deceased on the pyre. Unburnt deposits are of great value to the archaeologist as he knows that these grave goods must all have been buried at the same time and fragile things, like glass vessels, may survive unbroken. Their ages, however, could be difficult to assess as the objects may not be new ones and some may even be family heirlooms. The number of articles naturally varies according to the importance of the person and the wealth or poverty of the family.
Some excavation has been done on the eastern cemetery of Roman London, one of the three places of burial outside the town along the main roads leading west, north and east out of the settlement. Excavations uncovered 672 inhumattions and 134 cremations, forming the largest single sample of Roman burials in London but, on the basis that it was used throughout the whole Roman period, the whole cemetery is estimated to have contained over 100,000 About one-third of the burials can be dated by their accompanying artefacts while the earliest ones, as is common in Roman Britain, were cremations, a practice that over years gradually gave way to inhumation. Some customary practices were found: when chickens were buried with the dead, for example, they were always placed on the left of the inhumed body but for whatever reason is not yet clear! Other things like coins, jewellery and mirrors were relatively expensive items but there are also finds of food containers and hobnailed boots.
Some burials were made in stone tombs, others surrounded by a postholed structure, presumably a wooden burial chamber, others in coffins but it is clear that some plots were used as dumps for cremated bone, presumably taken from re-used graves for the cremated bone was discovered mixed up with the debris of grave goods.
On the roads leading out of Colchester, cemeteries have been found on the south, north and the west sides of the colonia. A first-century child’s cremation burial contined twenty-one toy figurines, thirteen glass and pottery vessels, coins, bone combs and the remains of caskets. During the second century a woman’s ashes were placed in an urn and accompanied by a pottery beaker and a samian dish, ten dark blue and two purple beads, an enamelled silver pendant, silver armlets and a bunch of toilet implements on a ring, including tweezers, ear and nail cleaners.
In the grounds of the Royal Grammar School there is a walled cemetery measuring 11.5m by 8.2m with walls between 0.6m and 1.5m thick. Inside was an internal bay along one side which probably enclosed an important memorial. Just scraps of this remained including pieces of carved stone and painted plaster. Niches in the wall would have contained cremation urns. Tombstones marked the burial places of nine cremations and five inhumations and sockets of decaying wood may have held wooden memorials. The site was begun soon after AD100 and seemed to have been in use during most of the Romano-British period as a private cemetery, either of a wealthy family or of a burial club.
At Litlington in Cambridgeshire (Kemp) the cemetery was surrounded by a wall of flint and tile. The cremations lay in rows, a metre apart, parallel to the Roman road. At the south-eastern and south-western corners, heaps of wood ash was recorded, presumably the remains of funeral pyres. Cinerary urns and other grave-goods were sometimes covered with a single or several large roof-tiles. Others were surrounded by little walls of flints or were placed in wooden chests.
The Trentholme cemetery in York (Wacher) was used mainly by the poorer inhabitants of the city and gives us information about how they practiced burial. Only two stone coffins have been found. One had been filled with gypsum after the body had been laid to rest. The rest of the burials were in wooden coffins, 5,000 nails from which have been recovered. Grave goods were poor, only a pot or two accompanying each burial but in other, slightly more prosperous burials, trinkets included bronze bracelets and armlets.
Burial clubs or societies were one of the few types of association allowed by the authorities during the Roman period. They were groups of people, slave or free, military or civilian, who were not rich enough to be sure of being able to afford an adequate burial when the time came. They met at monthly intervals, and at festivals, paying subscriptions, performing sacrifices and eating a meal. A favourite deity would be chosen as a patron and wealthy human patrons were invited to honour the society as well. Subscriptions would be invested and be paid out for the burial expenses of desceased members. Any new member would have to pay an entrance fee and contribute an amphora of wine.
A copy of the rules for such a club has survived from Lanuvium in Italy. They state that no claim for burial was allowed for a member who did not pay his dues for six consecutive months. If a member died more than twenty miles from Lanuvium, three members were deputed to go and arrange his burial and were allowed a travel allowance. If the society had not been notified in time the funeral expanses could still be claimed from it by whoever had attended the burial if he sent an affadavit witnessed by seven Roman citizens. No claims could be entertained on behalf of anyone who committed suicide for such people were cursed and their company in the communal cemetery would not be wanted by the other residents.
Two tombstones in Britain were almost certainly erected by burial clubs. One is at Bath and is dedicated to Julius Vitalis, armourer of the Tweniteth Legion Valera Victrix. He was buried at the cost of the Guild of Armourers. The other was found at Halton Chesters on Hadrian’s Wall. It commemorates the slave of Hardallo and was set up by the guild of his fellow slaves. Near Lincoln is an altar set up by a curator who was a guilds treasurer.
Many elaborate tombs were probably planned during the lifetime of the deceased, some ‘borrowed’ from other cultures like the Etruscan-type tombs and Egyptian-style pyramids in Rome. At Harpenden in Hertfordshire a circular building, 3.4m in diameter, contained an isolated masonry base set in front of a niche. On it may have stood a life-sized statue some fragments of which were found lying about nearby. Outside, two cremation burials were found dating from the first half of the second century and the whole area, about 30m square, was surrounded by a wall with an entrance in the middle one side and a V-shaped exterior ditch.
At Beaufront near Corbridge, there again may have been a central tower-like structure containing a shaft more than 1.2m deep measuring approximately 2.7m by 1.8m. Nails found at the bottom suggest a burial in a wooden coffin. Higher up, a layer of soot probably connected with burial rite contained fragments of a jar of mid-second-century date. A boundary wall surrounded the site and outside there were many more modest burials. The wall may have had groups of lion placed at each corner for a pit containing fragments of several stone lions and dressed masonry was found close by. Fragments of pots suggest that the monument was dismantled during the late-third or early-fourth century.
Roman barrows are reasonably common, about a hundred are known and they are bigger than earlier round barrows, averaging over 24m in diameter and between 5.5m and 13.5m high. Some have been excavated. One at Riseholme, north of Lincoln, included a stone slab as part of a secondary burial but the primary one under the centre of the mound was a cremation in a small trench, having been cremated on the spot. The corpse seems to have been laid on the pyre fully dressed and wearing jewellery and surrounded by offerings of food, drink and oil and a lamp, perhaps used to light the pyre. This ceremony apparently took place between AD80 and 100. Bartlow Hills in Essex are the finest group of Roman barrows where nine barrows stand in two parallel rows. All were ‘excavated’ during the nineteenth century or earlier but the very exceptional finds were destroyed in a fire. However, they were recorded and published in the proceedings of the Essex Archaeological Society in 1900. Some of the barrows are still over 13.5m high and most date from the second-century.
Inhumation burials become common during the second half of the second century. This change may have been encouraged later by the spread of Christian ideas. Many better kind of burials were in stone coffins and in some cases in eastern Britain it is clear that they were carried a good many kilometres from a quarry. Barnack stone was used for coffins at Colchester which must have represented a considerable expense for the families. They were carved out of a single block of stone and were provided with a lid made of the same material. In the Bath area the coffin interiors usually have a rounded end for the head and narrow to a squared-off foot end.
At Lullingstone villa in Kent a small building was found with a small cella approached through a columned doorway with a wooden door. Fragments of wall-painting of human figures decorated the walls while the ambulatory (surrounding passage) around it had walls and floors of pink cement. Inside the cella had been two lead coffins containing the skeletons of two adults but one had been removed although the grave-goods that accompanied it were still in position. Each of the two groups included a glass flask with dolphin-shaped handles, and a knife and spoon. There were two other glass bowls and two metal flagons and a gaming-board. Originally the two burials had been placed in a wooden chest covered with layers of chalk and gravel that subsided and crushed the burials when the wooden chest decayed. Lead coffins were also expensive at the time and seem to have been the posh alternative to the stone coffin. However, they can sometimes be found as interior coffins inside stone caskets.
Tombstones have been mentioned in another chapter. With the exception of London and Colcester, their use was largely confined to those parts of the country where stone is readily available, elsewhere they may have been substituted with memorials made of wood. Up to the present, dozens have been found at York, Chester and Caerleon and demonstrate that they were usually put up by the military or by retired veterans.
Their inscriptions follow the well-known Roman formula which allows us to fill in missing words. They commemce with the letters DM, an abbreviation of the phrase Dis Manibus (to the spirits of the departed). Then follows the name of the dead, various information about nationality, rank, occupation and age and finally the name of whoever erected the stone. Some stones have representations of banqueting scenes with the dead reclining on couches with small tables placed in front of them. Ten examples of this occur on tombstones from Chester, perhaps all made by the same firm.
During the latter part of the third century, threats to the peace and security of Roman Britain began to manifest themselves in the independent parts of the British Isles and across the North Sea in Holland, north Germany and Denmark. The most feared came from the Saxon pirates in north Germany who began to raid the borders of the Empire including the coasts of Britain. However, Roman policy was adjusted to counter this threat by the end of the fourth century for Saxons, together with Franks from the Rhineland, were being recruited into the Roman military as federates or laeti (part-time soldiers or mercenary troops).
Raiders from the north were the Picts of northern Scotland and the Votadini of southern Scotland. The attitude of the latter folk to Roman Britain was ambiguous for they had always traded with the soldiery stationed south of Hadrian’s Wall but at the same time they were always ready to take the opportunity to do a little raiding and looting.
Across the Irish Sea there were others who wanted closer contacts with Roman Britain: again they were either raiders or traders or settlers. This last ambition was easier to achieve in western Britain where Roman administration was less rigid and pervasive than in eastern Britain. In the north of Ireland were the Scotti whose emigrants to north Britain were later to give their name to the area. Further south were the Deisi and the Ui Liathain whose new homes were in western Wales and the south-western peninsula.
Evidence of possible raiding comes from several places like Trapain Law in Scotland where a collection of hack silver (silver cut up ready for melting down) has been discovered. This silver was mainly Roman silverware and is usually thought to have the fruits of a raid. In Northern Ireland, similar silver hoards have been discovered at Coleraine and Balline while to emphasise the point that plundering the Empire was a common pursuit among its immediate barbarian neighbours, we can mention the hoards at Bodingen in Germany and Høstentorp in Denmark.
Evidence of trade comes from Roman goods found in barbarian graves in all the surrounding lands. In some areas, like southern Scotland and in the Rhineland, they are so common that perhaps these people were living a pseudo-Roman way of life, at least, as far as the trappings go. It seems that the Roman life-style was immensely attractive to many barbarians and on the Continent, when they settled in the Empire as they did during the fifth century, they abandoned to a large extent their previous ways and adopted Roman ones instead, including the Christian religion. Some barbarians even became Roman generals and one a Roman ruler, recognised by the eastern Emperor. This was Theodoric who ruled in northern Italy and built fine churches at Ravenna that still stand today.
But we are dealing with the earlier phase of raiding and the measures the Roman took in trying to deal with it. Problems with raiders began as early as the mid-third century. Coin hoards are usually thought as having been buried by their owners in times of unrest and a good number of coin hoards were buried in the 260s and 270s and many were in the eastern coastal region which suggests that the threat came from Saxon raiders. Roman responses to the situation seems to have been piecemeal. Two forts were built at points along the coasts that were particularly vulnerable. One was at Brancaster in Norfolk and the other at Reculver in Kent. Together with the ports that supported the patrols of the Classis Britannica, the British Fleet and included Caister-on-Sea in Norfolk, Colchester, London, Rochester in Kent, and Richborough and Lympne also both in Kent, and the headquarters at Dover, they must have seemed an adequate defence for a time.
By the end of the third century, further measures were needed. A number of existing harbours were developed into defended bases by building strongly walled forts on the larger river estuaries and on exposed coasts. These used the latest ‘continental style’ method of defensive construction which abandoned the old ‘playing-card’ plan of fort and adapted the design to the site which was usually not the most ideal but which was tactically the most effective. Most of these sites were rather boggy and many of the forts had walls built on timber platforms to prevent them subsiding. Walls were thick, free-standing with projecting rectangular or ‘D’-shaped towers and heavily defended single gateways and posterns in the Gallic mode. Similar forts were built along the northern French coast.
In Britain these forts were Burgh Castle in Suffolk, Walton Castle and Bradwell in Essex, Richborough and Dover (rebuilt) in Kent, Lympne in Sussex and Portchester in Hampshire. Collectively, these are known as Forts of the Saxon Shore. They were probably linked by a chain of signal stations of which one has been identified at Corton in Suffolk and another at Shadwell close to the Roman city of London. The fort at Pevensey in Sussex was added to the system in 337. (Johnson)
During the early fourth-century a variety of reconstructions and remedial works was undertaken in the northern frontier forts perhaps because of a new threat in the north from the Picts.
Some form of protection was obviously called for along the western British shores but it is a difficult coast to defend, full of inlets in which raiders could come ashore and shelter their boats. The best that could be done was to build some forts and fortify the towns in the area. Carmarthen, a walled town, was linked to the sea along its river by a series of signal stations. There were almost certainly Roman bases at Loughor and Pembroke. At Cardiff a fort, whose walls were reconstructed in Victorian times, was probably built at the end of the third century for it had the projecting towers (still there in the reconstruction) that are typical of the Gallic style. Projecting towers were added to the town of Caerwent and one of its postern gates blocked up. It may be that a fleet was operating in the Bristol Channel, for a mosaic at the sanctuary of Lydney was dedicated by a soldier whose rank was abbreviated to PR.REL. that probably means that he was in charge of the fleet’s supply base locatedt not far away.
At Caernarvon the fort was occupied during the fourth century and an enclosure, perhaps for stores, was built nearby. On the island of Anglesey, a defended harbour was built at Holyhead with walls running down to the shore. Further north in Lancashire the fort at Lancaster was built during the 330s. This carried the chain of defences up to the north-west to link with the line of outpost forts built down the Cumberland coast from the western end of Hadrian’s Wall.
Within Britain small fortified posts were made out of the posting stations along some trunk roads. Examples include a line of them along Watling Street and also along the Fosse Way and other roads in the Midlands and the south-west. But there were other minor walled sites like Margidunum on the Fosse Way north of Leicester. Some of them housed police posts: an inscription from Dorchester-on-Thames records the commander of such a unit there. A re-organisation of city defences was undertaken during the mid-fourth century by the civitates. Encircling ditches were widened and towers were added to provide platforms for artillery. This meant that garrisons had to be provided for the towns. These forces were the laeti, forces independent of the regular military, recruited probably as mercenaries by the civitates perhaps from barbarian immigrants.
It has been suggested that military belt-equipment and other fittings found in graves outside towns which had these up-to-date defences are likely to be parts of the uniforms of these irregular troops. If this is so, these individuals seem to have been recruited as ‘security guards’ by other civilian establishments including, apparently, a number of villas since their equipment has been found in these places as well. North Wraxall villa in Somerset is an example.
New measures to protect the coasts from Pictish raids included the construction of a series of towers along the north-eastern littoral. They were designed inside a wall with projecting corner towers and an outer ditch, looking rather like small medieval castles and were part of a system that may have involved the signalling of warnings of approaching Picts on the horizon back to a central command at York. Further south at Brough-on-Humber, a strongly-walled settlement by the harbour may have had some place in the defensive scheme of the area while in the Fen District where a number of waterways gave access from the sea to a considerable distance inland, there were small walled towns like Caistor and Horncastle with Lincoln perhaps acting as command centre.
In the year
383, Magnus Maximus, a Roman commander in Britain, took a substantial
portion of the British garrison across the Channel to set himself up as
ruler of a combined Britain and Gaul. Another legion was withdrawn in 401
and 402 and most of the rest of the Roman forces were evacuated to fight
against barbarians in Gaul in 407.
Thus came about the gradual diminution of the defensive capability of the
province. But what should interest the archaeologist more is what happened
in the economic and social spheres during this period.
As far as the economy is concerned there were definite changes in all the areas that archaeologists have investigated. What brought about these changes?
The army had always been an important customer for agricultural produce, perhaps the major customer, and now this demand was tailing off. And the withdrawal of the army also meant that the soldiers were no longer around to spend their pay so there was a good deal less cash in circulation.
Another factor in the situation was the settlement of barbarians in the province. There were a number in eastern England where there is some cemetery evidence for their presence. Also, as mentioned above. they perhaps formed part of the garrisons of the defended towns and cities. In south Wales there was a settlement of the Desi from Ireland. As mentioned above, unlike the barbarians on the Continent who were anxious to acquire the Roman life-style, the newcomers in Britain were content to follow their own traditions and were uninterested in the Romano-British way of life and its products. Probably, too, they were not prepared to participate in the economic system of the province because they were self-sufficient farmers, producing the majority of their needs themselves.
Again, the tax demands on the civitates from the central provincial government had ceased but no doubt the local authorities continued to collect the tax where they could but they now had the money to dispose of for themselves. What did they spend it on? Defensive measures? Administration? Themselves? Did they become fat cats? Can the archaeological evidence help us to answer these questions? It is difficult to say but in any case the general shortage of cash probably means that the taxes were collected in kind.
According to the excavation evidence, after AD402 the supply of copper coins seems to have dried up. But a few silver and gold coins, rarer at any period, arrived in Britain down to about AD406 or a little later in the case of the silver. Iin the market-places, barter would inceasingly take the place of money transactions. So the lack of coins would effectively have put a brake on the free movement of trade and slowed up the economy.
If we look at the production side, we find changes too. By about AD360 a number of villa houses had ceased to be occupied but of course, this does not mean that the estates were being abandoned. When plotted on a map the abandonments are found to be spread evenly over the general distribution area of villas and suggest that, in general, as times were becoming harder the big houses were becoming too expensiveto keep up
Whether this was part of a slow-down in the trading activity related to the run-down of the military garrison we cannot be sure but there does seem to be an unevenness in the economy after this date for the concentration of late fine villas in the Cotswolds suggests that this was the most prosperous part of the civilian zone while a similar group can be found in Yorkshire. Perhaps there was increasing independence for the civitates that resulted in the more canny being more successful as entrepreneurs in the new situation. A few villa houses continued to be occupied into the fifth century but in reduced circumstances for the income that was used to run was dwindling away.
When we turn to the towns we find that they survived better. Civitates capitals, of course, may have done so simply because they were the centres of power within the region but they had been undergoing a process of change for years. For example, at Silchester and Wroxeter the basilica buildings went out of use cAD350. This cannot mean that the administration of the civitates had broken down but perhaps the business that was usually conducted there was now being conducted in the private houses of the officials as seems to have been happening in other parts of the Empire.
We have already seen how several towns had been refortified during the fourth century and there is evidence of building inside the towns at later dates. In Verulamium a large courtyard house with mosaics was built after AD370. At Exeter there was construction after AD400 and there is probably the same evidence in Gloucester. Certainly there is at Wroxeter where a large and elaborate timber-framed building was erected round about AD367. More evidence is being found that other towns survived, although perhaps in an inceasingly less prosperous manner to at least AD410 and that the civitates system was operating until that date as a letter from the British civitates to the western emperor Honorius may demonstrate.
Shortly before, Constantine, the usurper who had removed the bulk of the remaining garrison from Britain, had been discredited by Honorious and the historian Zosimus repeats a tradition that, as a result, the officials Constantine had left behind in Britain were expelled by the civitates, presumably as a preliminary to writing to Honorious to request the re-establishment of their relations with the legitimate emperor.
So it seems that Roman power in Britain gradually slipped away to be replaced by local administrators who, at first the civitates leaders or their descendants, in time, became the ‘tyrants’ who owed allegiance only to themselves.
More than in other archaeological periods, it is possible in the Romano-British period to use the many artifacts discovered in excavation to recreate the way of life of the people of Roman Britain. They include objects from graves, from domestic sites and from industrial places and after excavation can be conserved and displayed in museums. Religion, recreations, medicine, agriculture, trades, family life, trading and the activities of the military have all been illuminated by these discoveries and it is important that one knows how to interpret them correctly.
Obviously, the most important thing to know about them is their association. The greatest objection archaeologists have to metal-detectorists who dig objects out of the ground and divorce them from their contexts. Without the context, the opportunity of dating the object may be non-existent. Conversely, the object might have been able to date the context. At the same time, other information that the context could give about the object is not available. Such information could suggest an identity for the object; it could suggest how it was used and by what sort of individual, it could demonstrate what contemporaneous objects existed, it could show how it fitted into a sequence of similar objects, it could help to identify other associated objects and take its place in an assemblage of objects in a meaningful way.
Identification of an object is best done by a museum curator who has probably a range of objects in the collection with which it can be compared. Of course, there are a large number of objects that the excavator can recognise straightaway but usually there is extra data and background that can be provided by the curator. When submitting an object to a museum always provide as much information about it as possible: context, certainly, but also any details that you have about the site on which it was found - villa, fort, etc.
As well as providing the object for examination by a museum, there is a certain amount of research that can be done in books and archaeological journals, particularly in excavation reports that always include descriptions of finds and sometimes references to similar objects found elsewhere.
Catalogues are published of finds from particular places. Finds in York are being published in this way and so are categories of finds from London. For many years the London Museum Medieval Catalogue has been in use and one can find similar publications by other museums of period categories of their collections like, for example, the Bronze Age metal catalogues from Salisbury and Norwich museums.
Most finds benefit from a certain amount of conservation and some will not survive out of the ground without it. The CBA publish a field guide to conservation and there is a handy-sized book by Elizabeth A Dowman that covers much the same ground. It also deals with environments and their effects on finds.
Most substances are physically modified by being buried for many centuries but pottery and fired clay are almost the only materials of antiquity that don’t change very much. This is because they are inert substances created in the firing process by the elimination of the water chemically combined with the clay. All other materials are affected by physical, chemical or biological agencies. Other man-made materials such as glass can be attacked chemically, because the ancients had not learnt to stabilize their components to make the unchangeable substance that is modern glass. Metals, though rarely found as such in nature, are very susceptible to chemical modification and easily revert to the ores from which they were made. Organic remains (wood, leather, hair, textiles, etc) are so little modified by man as to be practically indigenous to many environments and will be attacked biologically through the activity of other organisms.
This is all due to the soil environment that determines how well the object will survive. For example, a wooden artifact buried in a moist, tropical soil will quickly become assimilated with its surroundings while if buried in a desert where there is practically no organic breakdown the same object would be discovered in an excellent state of preservation, probably better than it had remained above ground for the same period of time. These are extreme examples but in a less dramatic way, different British soils have similar effects. So, a little knowledge of soils is useful for an archaeologist. The size of particles in the soil has a bearing on its chemical properties and plant life. There are four grades: gravel, sand, silt and clay and the amount of drainage in a particular of soil depends on the percentages of these in the mixture. Very often, in context sheets used on excavation, a description of the grade of soil is called for.
The most important point to consider at all times with regard to treating objects in the field is that, if they appear to stand a reasonable chance of survival from their moment of excavation to their arrival at the laboratory, nothing should be done to them at all. When there is some doubt as to what should be done to an object that may not survive, it is usually better to handle and store it with care than to give it the wrong treatment. Impatience to see what lies under a corroded or salt-covered surface has frequently led to over-drastic cleaning methods, often with the wrong chemical which has, if not totally destroying the object, modifies it to a condition it would not have reached if it had been given correct laboratory treatment. What must be remembered by the excavator is that what is done to the object in the field will usually have to be undone in the laboratory therefore any treatment used must be reversible and materials should be used in the smallest possible quantity commensurate to the safety of the object.
When an excavated object is large enough for its finds number to written on it, an inconspicuous place should be found on which to do this. If the material of the object is porous, soft or with an uneven surface, writing directly on it will not be very successful and a lacquer or a couple of coats of PVA (polyvinyl acetate) should be applied to make a small surface on which the number can be written. A permanent ink, like Indian ink, should be used, either black or white. When the ink is dry another coat of lacquer should be applied on top.
If an object is too small to mark, it has to be put in a labelled container. The best containers are small plastic boxes like slide-boxes, some of which have transparent lids. Envelopes should not be used. The object should be accompanied by a label inside the box. Larger objects, like bones, should be stored in cardboard boxes. Boxes known as ‘skull boxes’ and ‘long-bone boxes’ can be obtained. Pottery can be marked if there is not too much of it but large quantities, after washing and drying, should be boxed in categories, a label inside the box, and another written on, or attached to, the box as with the bones.
Records which state what, if any, kind of treatment has been given to the object should accompany it to the laboratory. For the journey, proper packing materials should be acquired. You don’t want to repeat the experience of the Sutton Hoo excavators who had only the locally-gathered moss for the purpose! Care of the finds and the responsibility of ensuring that they arrive safely at the laboratory or museum belongs to the excavator and, like all areas of the excavation, should be carefully planned beforehand. This should be done in consultation with the laboratory or museum to ensure that the finds can be accommodated there.
The main problem nowadays with such accommodation is that there is not enough of it. Many museums face a crisis in finding sufficient storage space and in the last year or so there have been cases where museums have had to turn finds away. It may be that specialist warehouses have to be established in which finds can be stored but this will be an expensive option for the warehouses, like museum stores, would have to be provided with controlled environments. It has been suggested that limestone caves, like those in the Bath area, would provide convenient environments, with naturally constant temperatures and a humidity level that could be controlled.
The question of finds, from the moment of their removal from the ground, either legally or illegally, is one that cries out for legislation and a national method of dealing with them and it is a problem that not only relates to precious metals but to the humbler artifacts as well.
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By AD300 a region of small farming settlements had developed beyond the north-eastern European Roman border. During the years of the Roman occupation of Gaul a good deal of exchange took place across this frontier. In the region closest to the border it must have been in the nature of organised trade. Further out, beyond a 200 km zone, rich, aristocratic burials of the late-second and early-first century BC contain many Roman goods and suggest a less structured exchange. Such graves have been excavated on the northern European plain and in Scandinavia.
The finest discovery was made at Hoby on the Danish island of Lolland. The grave contained silver cups and ladle, a bronze situla, patera and jug, two bronze-mounted drinking horns, a gold brooch, silver and gold rings, bronze belt fittings and a knife. Similar appreciation of Roman products was common along the Dutch coast where Samian pottery is common in cemeteries. One part of the region, Frisia, had briefly been part of the Roman Empire and the area thereafter was particularly influenced by Roman culture and open to Roman imports.
This pattern of exchange and trade beyond the Roman border resulted in an admiration for the Roman way of life amongst the barbarians which became an important factor in the development of post-Roman Europe.
Our understanding of this area is greatly helped by the waterlogged condition of some of the sites that has resulted in the preservation of many perishable articles. A good example of such an excavation is Feddersen Wierde. Wierde is the German word and Terp the Dutch for an artificial mound on which a coastal settlement was placed.
Feddersen Wierde lies on the Weser estuary in north Germany. By the end of the second century AD it had grown into a village of about fifty houses set around a central open place. The lower parts of the wattle-and-daub house walls and posts of fences and enclosures are preserved in the waterlogged archaeological layers. Many of the houses were long-houses divided internally into two halves; one with a hearth serving as a living-room and the other as a byre with stall-spaces for twenty or so cattle.
Cattle were the most popular domestic animals with sheep next most common followed by horse, pig and dog. Beside each farmhouse stood a square granary. Barley and oats were the commonest grains while other crops included beans and flax. Smaller buildings served as workshops for a wood-turner, a wheelwright and bronze and iron-workers. One substantial three-aisled building without internal divisions perhaps was used as a meeting hall. Roman imports found in the village included coins, pottery and bronze vessels. The site was abandoned along with other terpen in the fifth century when coastal flooding made agriculture impossible. This disaster could well have been a spur to some immigration out of the area.
Other sites in northern Europe produced evidence of an equivalent lifestyle. House-plans were similar to those at Feddersen Wierde. The ubiquitous sunken-floored huts called grubenhutter or sunken-floor huts are found across Europe from the Ukraine to England, and small 'halls', and long-houses are common and confirm a picture of a landscape peopled with independent peasant farmers, some of them quite prosperous. Where evidence of the nature of the fields has been obtained, they are small and squarish rather like the celtic fields of the Iron Age.
Industrial production outside the Roman borders was usually small-scale, geared to the manufacture of brooches and similar adornments, but weapons and armour were also produced, usually copied from Roman models. Some areas may have concentrated on metallurgy; we have one example from Poland at Lyso Góry where fifty iron-smelting sites have been identified. Most of the metal finds come from votive hoards particularly in north Germany and Scandinavia. The best known of these objects was found at Gundestrup and is a silver bowl decorated with mounted men, gods and animal figures. This dates to the second century AD.
Also known are boat offerings from Scandinavia. Notable amongst them are a series of votive boat deposits of which the earliest example is from Hjortspring on the Danish island of Ais. The boat was of sewn-plank construction, 17.7 metres long, probably accommodating 50 or so paddlers and was accompanied by 150 wooden shields, 138 spearheads and 20 coats of mail. It dates from the third century BC. Later in the series and found in the Nydam bog on Jutland, a deposit included, amongst other objects, over a hundred swords inside a clinker-built boat of oak, 23 metres long, 3 metres wide, with planks fixed in position with iron nails. This vessel probably accommodated 30 oarsmen rather than paddlers and belongs to a period some seven hundred years later than the Hjortspring find. Evidence of the weapons found at Nydam demonstrates that by this time Roman armourers were having a considerable influence on the design of Germanic armaments. Judging by the finds from a dozen or so similar weapon hoards in Denmark, it is clear that by the early first century AD the Iron Age long sword had been replaced by the Roman gladius or short sword.
There was nothing to oppose the ingress of Gaul by a combination of barbarians in 407. The year before, the troops that guarded the Rhine frontier had finally been withdrawn to defend Italy from a similar attack. Only the troops in Britain were available to oppose the barbarians and these were led across the Channel by a general who was keen to set himself up as Emperor in the West with the aid of the Franks, Burgundians and Alemanni than defeat them on the field of battle. However he did not succeed in his ambition. His only accomplishment was to strip Britain of its garrison and Gaul gradually slipped out of Roman control. In AD418 the Roman authorities were forced to grant the Visigoths a kingdom in Aquitaine and in 443 they settled Burgundians in Savoy.
Other parts of Roman Gaul were gradually nibbled away. The Franks were systematically expanding in the Rhineland while Romano-Britons were crossing the Channel to set themselves up in Brittany and give their name to the region. Eventually the north-central part of France became the kingdom of Soissons under the rule of a rebellious Roman general while the area further south was gradually wrested from Roman hands by advances by the Visigoths from the west and the Burgundians, Alemanni and Franks from the east. All this was accomplished by AD470.
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