Grave monuments

Introduction

The majority of graves must have been marked by posts, low mounds, fences, or lines of stones, with only a minority having a tombstone of any type. The rich sometimes had a grave monument in the form of a building rather than just a grave marker, but Britain does not seem to have developed any distinctive forms of its own for such monuments, the surviving examples being types known elsewhere in the Empire.

Earth structures

Barrow

Pre Roman

It is often difficult to identify any form of late Iron Age burial in much of Britain, apart from in the south-east where there are numerous cremation cemeteries. In southern England a small number of the elite had their graves marked by circular earth mounds, some of which may have made use of pre-existing barrows. One of the largest Iron Age barrows is the Lexden Tumulus at Colchester, Essex. It is dated to c.10BC, contained a burial with very rich grave goods, and was originally 30m in diameter and 3m high.

Early Roman

The use of barrows for the rich continued into the early Roman period, although it was typical for them to be constructed in groups. At Bartlow Hills near Cambridge there were originally eight barrows in two rows, dated by their grave goods to the late first or early second century. They had a steep conical shape, and were originally surrounded by a ditch. The largest one still surviving (the largest in Britain) is 44m in diameter and 14m tall. At Six Hills at Stevenage there are six round barrows, originally surrounded by ditches and with a larger boundary ditch, which were set up by the side of a Roman road. There is no indication of how, if at all, the people passing these monuments knew who were buried there.

Stone structures

The purpose of having a large grave monument in the Roman period was for remembrance so that a person’s name would live on (Reece 1977, 44). A stone-built structure would allow for an inscription, and a number of surviving tombstones with the inscription towards the bottom of the stone, with no unworked stone below to be buried in the ground, must have been built into a monument of some form.

Circular

The circular shape of the earth structures was also repeated in stone. Some had a low stone retaining wall round an earth mound, while others had full-height stone walls. A tomb at the villa of Keston, Kent, probably built in the early third century, had a diameter of 9m and may have originally been 6m high, with red opus signinum or plaster on the stone wall and an earth mound above (Philp et al 1991 and 1996). A mausoleum set in a precinct at Harpenden, Hertfordshire had full-height stone walls, with additions at the front to create an elaborate façade. The interior had a central altar and a statue in a niche in the back wall (Collingwood and Richmond 1969, 171). It is clear that people were supposed to enter this chamber, unlike the other type of monument, where the burial chamber was concealed within the earth-mound.

Square or rectangular

A new development in the Roman period, appearing by the late first or early second century, was the square or rectangular grave monument. These had thick walls round a central chamber. The body could be in a grave below ground level, or placed in a sarcophagus set on the floor. It is likely some of these structures were two or three stories high, but little evidence survives for the form they took above ground level, nor their degree of architectural decoration.

Mausoleum

These were usually designed for single burials set into the floor. They could be for both cremations, as in a row of five mausolea from the late first or early second century at Derby, and for inhumations, as at a mausoleum at Shorden Brae, Northumberland, dating to the second quarter of the second century (Gillam and Daniels 1961). The mausoleum at Shorden Brae consisted of a building approximately 10m square, set in a precinct about 41m square marked by an outer perimeter wall. The corners of the perimeter wall were decorated with sculpture depicting lions attacking stags. Over 25 examples of this type of lion are known from Britain, mainly from the north of the country, and are mainly second century in date where they can be dated (Brewer 1986, 23). Other types of sculpture likely to have come from mausolea include pine-cone finials and large human heads, some clearly intended to be set at the corners of buildings or walls (CSIR I.3, no. 84; CSIR I.4, no. 59; Brewer 1986, 26-7).

Temple-mausoleum

A number of sites in southern Britain have a combined temple-mausoleum building (Williams and Zeepvat 1994, 100; 238). The example at the villa at Bancroft, Buckinghamshire, built c.175-200, has a 12m square central building with ambulatory. It is distinguished from a normal temple by having a below-ground burial chamber containing bases to support two sarcophagi. The back-fill of this room also contained the bones from at least four individuals, indicating multiple burials.

Again, this type of mausoleum was presumably designed so that people could enter the room, either for rituals relating to the dead or simply for further burials.

TWM

Bibliography

Collingwood, R. G. and Richmond, I. (1969) The Archaeology of Britain (3^rd edn), London

CSIR I.1 = Phillips, E. J. (1977) Corpus Signorum Imperii Romani: Great Britain Volume I, Fascicule 1, Corbridge, Hadrian’s Wall East of the North Tyne, Oxford.

CSIR I.3 = Rinaldi Tufi, S. (1983) Corpus Signorum Imperii Romani: Great Britain Volume I, Fascicule 3, Yorkshire, Oxford.

CSIR I.4 = Keppie, L. J. F. and Arnold, B. J. (1984) Corpus Signorum Imperii Romani: Great Britain Volume I, Fascicule 4, Scotland, Oxford.

Brewer, R. J. (1986) Corpus Signorum Imperii Romani: Great Britain Volume I, Fascicule 5, Wales, Oxford.

Embleton, R. and Graham, F. (1990) Hadrian’s Wall in the Days of the Romans, Newcastle upon Tyne

Gillam, J. P. and Daniels, C. M. (1961) ‘The Roman mausoleum on Shorden Brae, Beaufront, Corbridge, Northumberland’, Archaeologia Aeliana 4^th series, 39, 37-61.

Philp, B. (1968) ‘The excavation of the Roman cemetery at Keston’, Kent Archaeological Review, 11, 10-5.

Philp, B., Parfitt, K., Wilson, J., Dutto, M. and Williams, W. (1991) The Roman Villa Site at Keston, Kent. First Report (Excavations 1968-1978), Dover.

Philp, B., Parfitt, K., Wilson, J. and Williams, W. (1999) The Roman Villa Site at Keston, Kent. Second Report (Excavations 1967 and 1978-1990), Dover.

Reece, R. (1977) ‘Burial in Latin literature: two examples’, in Reece, R. (ed.) Burial in the Roman World, Council for British Archaeology Research Report 2, 44-5

Wheeler, H. (1985) The Racecourse Cemetery, in Dool, J. et al, ‘Roman Derby: Excavations 1968-1983’, Derbyshire Archaeological Journal 105, 222-80

Williams, R. J. and Zeepvat, R. J. (1994) Bancroft. A Late Bronze Age/Iron Age Settlement, Roman Villa and Temple Mausoleum, Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society Monograph no. 7.