The Life Science website has a very interesting report about the discovery of a Roman cemetery at Fleet Marston in Buckinghamshire - alluded to in the report on Midland archaeological discoveries linked to in my previous post - which has been excavated in advance of the dreadful HS2 project.
What makes this cemetery of particular interest is the fact that it contains some forty decapitated skeletons out of a total of about 425 burials. It is not entirely clear if this was the cause of death or whether some were the result of post-mortem actions. If these are at least in the majority men who had been executed it is noteworthy that their burials differed in no way from those of others. They were not tumbled into a common grave pit like the Vikings killed in late Anglo-Saxon England near Weymouth who were discovered a few years ago, or those found in Oxford from the same period.
Far more decapitated skeletons have been found in Britannia than any other part of the Roman Empire. A few years ago a number of what were interpreted as beheaded Roman gladiators were found in York. Such a frequency raises questions about the exercise of justice in the Province and about social conventions here, as it appears to be a disproportionate feature of Roman life and death. One interesting suggestion the report is that severed heads were placed at the feet of the corpse to inhibit bodies rising, rejoining vertebrae and returning to haunt the living - which is similar to Central European folklore about vampirism and it’s related problems.
The article can be read at Dozens of decapitated skeletons uncovered at ancient Roman site in England
No comments:
Post a Comment