Ossamenta

I took a bag of bones and tipped them out. Thought "Wait a second…" and promptly put one bone aside. The rest went into a new bag, neatly labelled and put in the "someone else’s problem"-box.

Romans… *shakes head* Always burying people all over the place.

Well, to be fair, it’s something the people in the Iron Age also did. And then pits and ditches were dug into old pits and/or ditches - sometimes so old you wouldn’t know they even were there - and what was originally in them got mixed with new waste and soil.



From left: cattle metacarpal, very fragmented human pelvis and the shaft of a human humerus.


As an aside, this is why it's very useful to study both human and animal bones, even if you only want to work in zooarchaeology. Disarticulated human bones are rather common on rural sites, and they are not always so complete that they are easily recognised.

One week at work and I'm already feeling quite knackered. Although, to be fair, that probably has more to do with the Ph.D. application for Uppsala University that's due on Monday than the work situation per se. And it's getting chilly too over here: just a few degrees plus for the next few days. I have to go to the fabric shop tomorrow to see if I can get hold of some good wool to make leg warmers. I swear there is a small but persistent draught from the window in my office and all the cold gathers below my desk.

I've also been asked to do a talk for the university's Roman discussion forum this term. That will be fun! Admittedly it will also mean work, since I have no base to build the talk on. And in contrast to the medieval period there are no pretty manuscript images to catch the audience's eyes and interest. On the plus side, if they're not interested in animals, then they won't come. It's not like a conference where you have to sit through uninteresting talks to get to what to you is the good bits.


And to finish this post: an example on why collaboration with science and archaeology is good: "To the naked eye, the white, powdery substance appeared to be plaster. That’s what the professional and volunteer archaeologists at a dig in Israel concluded. To be certain, though, they subjected the chalky dust to spectroscopy and a petrographic microscope, only to discover that it was not a manufactured substance, but decayed plant life and fecal matter." And that's how you turn a house into a stable...

Winchester is an interesting town. The ”first” settlement was an Iron Age hill fort, then at c. 70AD the Romans came and established a town there. In the early and mid-Saxon period there seems to be a decline of the town, but in 662AD Winchester becomes the site of the bishopric, and then becomes the capital of the kingdom of Wessex. After the Norman invasion London takes over the throne (so to speak), but Winchester remained the site of the bishopric. And not just any bishopric: the See of Winchester was one of the wealthiest in Medieval England.



The Northgate House, Staple Gardens and Winchester Discovery Centre (formerly Winchester Library) sites are located in the north-west corner of the Roman and Medieval town, within the walls*. The Saxon (and Medieval) street Brudene Stret (nowadays Staple Gardens) separates the sites. There is plot continuation throughout the Late Saxon, Anglo-Norman and High Medieval periods, which lent itself to comparisons between the plots both spatially and chronologically. However, in the early 13th century, the buildings on the northwest side of Brudene Stret were demolished and the area formed part of the Archdeacon’s residence.

The book gives an introduction to the sites, including documentary evidence from the Medieval period and land use over time. The next few chapters discuss the two sites by period: Prehistoric and Roman, Late Saxon (c. 850-1150), and Anglo-Norman/Medieval (c. 1150-1550). The latter two chapters are discussed by property, which would facilitate easy chronological comparison. Thereafter follows a discussion of the site in a wider context, again by period. Here the Late Saxon and Anglo-Norman/Medieval periods are combined and form a substantial chapter, discussing the creation of the town, building development, water supply, pit function, industry and craft (metal working, textile working, skinning and furriering**, bone and horn working), and the Archdeacon’s residence.

There is a short chapter on the scientific dating evidence, i.e. radio carbon dating and archaeomagnetic dating, a method which was chosen since there was an abundance of fired hearths in situ throughout the Saxon period. A large number of dating samples were taken to form a detailed phasing of the site, trying to find out whether the properties were laid out at the same time, or grew more organically. Other research aims included finding out whether the settlement existed before or after the ”official” foundation of the burh, and trying to calibrate the pottery dating sequence.

That’s half the book. The other half is devoted to the finds. Lots of pottery, from prehistoric to post-medieval, much building material such as tile, stone and painted wall plaster, 305 Roman coins, several ”small finds”, i.e. metal and bone objects, glass and shale. The small finds are significantly summarized in the book (a shame, as I found lots of worked bone mounts when I did my analysis, and I haven’t got around to check the cd yet - mea culpa), and the full report is included on an accompanying cd. In fact, all specialist reports, including scientific dating, are included in full on the cd. The finds section in the book also includes the ecofacts, i.e. animal bone (a lot, including evidence for a furrier’s workshop), molluscs (not many), charcoal, seeds and other plant remains (a lot, including evidence for dyeing, probably textiles), as well as human bone (mainly a small number of Roman infant burials), intestinal parasites (very few). There’s also a summary of an analysis of soil micromorphology, chemistry and magnetic susceptibility.

As with the Lankhills book, there are plenty of drawing and colour photographs throughout the book. I would recommend the book to anyone with an interest in urban archaeology from these periods.


*: The layout of the town wall didn’t change much over the centuries. Waste not, want not, I guess.
**: This is one of the sites I use for my tawyers and furriers talk at the conference in Gdansk in September. It’s (AFAIK) the second site in Britain where they have found dumps of bones from squirrel feet - one of the most common fine furs in the Medieval period and subject of a huge industry and trade. The other site is much later in the period: The Bedern in York (14th century).

B.M. Ford and S. Teague, 2011. Winchester - a city in the making. Archaeological investigations beteeen 2002 and 2007 on the sites of Northgate House, Staple Gardens and the former Winchester Library, Jewry Street. Oxford Archaeology Monograph No. 12.

Where do you put the bone expert on an excavation? At the ditch filled with bone fragments. I estimate that the deposit is approximately 70% bones and the rest is soil. The entire deposit is being taken up as samples, so that we don’t miss the smaller fragments. Well, I would probably have included everything, but when the method statement was written no-one knew I would be the one excavating the ditch.

As of last Friday, I’ve removed c. 70% of the deposit - what’s visible that is: I’m not certain where one edge is. Needs more trowelling. My initial impression is that the deposit mostly consist of chopped up pieces of cattle and horse long bones. From the fragmentation of the long bone ends it would probably be possible to discern butchery trends and how they correspond with previous studies of Roman butchery (cf. Maltby 1989, Maltby 2007 and Seetah 2006). I’m not sure if we’re dealing with waste from bone working or from cooking waste. If the deposit is cooking waste, it suggests that the bones may derive from a period of starvation, since horse were not normally eaten by the Romans.



Surface photo.


During excavation. This slot was a bit unusual, with the occasional ”non-long bone”, such as the sheep/goat mandible to the left, and much less long bone splinters.


Maltby, M. (1989) “Urban-rural variations in the butchering of cattle in Romano-British Hampshire”, in D. Serjeantson and T. Waldron (eds), Diet and crafts in towns: The evidence of animal remains from the Roman to the Post-Medieval periods. British Archaeology Reports vol. 199, Oxford. ISBN: 0860545989. pp. 75-106.

Maltby, M. (2007) “Chop and change: Specialist cattle carcass processing in Roman Britain”, in B. Croxford, N. Ray, R. Roth and N. White (eds) TRAC 2006. Proceedings of the sixteenth annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference. Oxbow Books, Oxford. ISBN: 978-1-84217-264-3. pp. 59-76.

Seetah, K. (2006) “Multidisciplinary approach to Romano-British cattle butchery”, in M. Maltby (ed), Integrating zooarchaeology. Oxbow books, Oxford. ISBN: 1-84217-123-2. pp. 109-116.