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An Anglo-Saxon Cemetery in Lincolnshire
7 January 2001
On the surface it looks just like any other large Lincolnshire field. But when a pipe was laid across it a couple of years previously the trench dug then revealed a number of shallow graves. An exploratory dig in 1998 identified them as Anglo-Saxon – on a site which also threw up large quantities of Roman remains. An earlier water pipe, laid in 1954, had uncovered a lot of Roman pottery here too. So what did it all indicate? And what could Time Team learn about this possible Anglo-Saxon cemetery and former Roman settlement in the three days available?
Read more about the excavation:
A weekend with Time Team
by metal detectorist Denny Woodthorpe
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VR gallery
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Finds and photo gallery
Finds and other photos from the dig.
A slow start and the 'digger's nightmare'
Time Team had the chance to carry out the first full investigation of the site: the 1998 dig had been limited to the area immediately around the water pipe. But the first task was to find the line of the pipe. The geophysics survey couldn't locate a plastic pipe, but the survey results suggested it took one route, while the water company said it followed another. After a day of fruitless digging, which turned up no more than a handful of finds, including a couple of human teeth, the geophysics was proven to be correct.
In fact, the early stages of the dig drew almost a total blank. Trench 1 had been dug in the wrong place and had to be extended. Trench 2, dug parallel to the supposed line of the water pipe, had yielded no more than one lump of slag. And Trench 3, dug to investigate geophysics survey findings suggesting a possible Iron-Age settlement, was to turn up only a rather disappointing Roman ditch. To add to the problems, the Team had been faced with the digger's nightmare: compacted clay. Even the mechanical digger can struggle with this stuff.
'A dig of two halves'
By early on the second day, however, things had begun to change. An examination of a large adjacent field, recently ploughed, had revealed large quantities of Roman pottery, including Samian and black burnish ware, on the surface. An area of 'high noise' readings located by the geophysics – and clearly visible from aerial photographs as an area of darker ground, possibly the site of a building – identified a suitable site for excavation. The trench dug here, overseen by Carenza, was soon turning up a series of finds.
In the newly extended section of Trench 1, meanwhile, Phil was in charge of what turned out to be a complex series of burials. The two trenches – Carenza's Roman remains and Phil's Anglo-Saxon cemetery – formed the focus of what was to become, in Tony's words, 'a dig of two halves'.
'From famine to feast'
The finds which began to be unearthed in each of these 'halves' soon prompted Tony to quip again – this time that we had gone 'from famine to feast' in a matter of minutes. It wasn't quite that dramatic, but the early discovery of bones in Carenza's trench meant that the Team was now looking at two distinct burial areas. These bones were found alongside the remaining foundations and lower courses of walls of a former Roman building – a juxtaposition that is common in Anglo-Saxon burials, which are often associated with sites of high-status Roman occupation.
Two bodies were eventually identified as having been buried here, although most of the bones had been destroyed by ploughing and natural decay. A further four were found close together in Phil's trench. Disentangling the various burials and other material proved to be one of the more taxing efforts of the dig.
The excavation here uncovered a complicated set of burials – a crouching skeleton found with the remains of a glass bead necklace; another in a very bad state, with a crushed skull, buried with a spear indicative of high status; a set of disarticulated bones around an Anglo-Saxon pot; and the bones of a woman who appeared to have been buried in haste, thrown into the ground and piled over with rubble. Other finds included a tin-plated copper pin brooch, which microscopic examination showed still bore the marks of the cloth it had once pinned together.
A Roman village
But one of the most remarkable discoveries of the three days was provided by the geophysics surveys. These might have had problems picking up the plastic water pipe, but they clearly revealed a fascinating series of ditches, enclosures and other curvilinear and circular features. What emerged – and was confirmed by the large quantities of Roman tesserae, roof tiles and pottery fragments found on the site – was a clearly defined Roman settlement. And not just one building, or even a villa, but a complete Roman village with a street and individual farmsteads leading off it. The site covered three hectares, or seven acres, in all.
And, in case you were wondering, the final body count totalled ten – a far cry from the two teeth and lump of slag that was all that had been unearthed from this Anglo-Saxon cemetery by the end of the first day.
Anglo-Saxon burials
The Anglo-Saxons normally buried their dead in a cemetery area, a short distance from their main dwellings, together with their clothing and most prized possessions. A high-status male might be buried with a spear and perhaps a shield, the women with brooches, beads, the occasional purse or other symbolic grave goods. Lower down the social scale the poorest were buried with a knife or often with nothing at all. Sometimes, as with one of the skeletons found on this dig, the head was detached from the body. It has been speculated that this treatment was reserved for criminals, although children have also been found buried in the same manner. Occasionally the dead were cremated and the ashes placed in pots, although more usually the burials were of the complete corpse.
Male or female? An Anglo-Saxon riddle
One of the puzzles of this dig is why a male skeleton was found apparently wearing a string of beads of the sort that would have been associated with women's clothing. The crouching skeleton was uncovered in Phil's trench and identified as 'probably male' by bones expert Margaret Cox. The beads would originally have formed a string linking two annular brooches across the chest, as part of a smock-like outer garment. The jewellery belongs to a female garment of a style dated to the 6th century, but the body on which they were found was identified as male.
The answer to the riddle may never be known for sure, but it may lie in the difficulties of accurately identifying whether bones are from a male or female skeleton. In theory the distinction is relatively straightforward, as bones specialist Margaret Cox explained in this programme. In practice, it can be much more difficult.
The most obvious means of identification relies upon relative bone sizes: put simply, those for men tend to be bigger. More reliably, there is a noticeable distinction between the male and female pelvis. A man's pelvis is designed solely for stability and strength. A woman's needs to be shaped differently to allow for childbirth. This difference can be seen most clearly in the sciatic notch, angled typically at about 90 degrees on the female pelvis compared with 50–60 degrees on the male.
It is also possible, on well-preserved bones, to gauge whether the person concerned had given birth during their life. The pubis – the part of the pelvis that runs forward from the hip socket to the genitals – changes with childbirth, with the left and right halves of the pubis pulling apart as the baby goes through the birth canal. This leaves a small lip or wrinkle in the region where the bones articulate. Some experts can even gauge how many children the person has had by using this method.
The difficulty in determining whether a bone comes from a man or a woman arises from a number of factors. Bones may not be well preserved. And, most importantly, the difference within the two sexes can be greater than the difference between them. Some males may have apparently 'female' bone formations and vice versa. So although as a general rule it may be possible accurately to identify the vast majority of bones, there will always be individual cases that don't follow the general pattern.
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