Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Journals
  3. The Antiquaries Journal
  4. Volume 18
Journal Home
Refine listing

Refine listing

Access:
Publication date:

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Volume 18 - January 1938

Contents

Page 2 of 6

Notes

Research Article

Notes

Research Article

  • A Romano-British Interment, with Bucket and Sceptres, from Brough, East Yorkshire

  • Philip Corder, I. A. Richmond
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    08 January 2012, pp. 68-74

  • The Roman Ermine Street, having crossed the Humber on the way to York from Lincoln, leaves Brough Haven on its west side, and the little town of Petuaria to the east. For the first half-mile northwards from the Haven its course is not certainly known: then, followed by the modern road, it runs northwards through South Cave towards Market Weighton. In the area thus traversed by the Roman road burials of the Roman age have already been noted in sufficient quantity to suggest an extensive cemetery. The interment which is the subject of the present note was found on 10th October 1936, when men laying pipes at right angles to the modern road, in the carriage-drive of Mr. J. G. Southam, having cut through some 4 ft. of blown sand, came upon a mass of mixed Roman pottery, dating from the late first to the fourth century A.D. Bones of pig, dog, sheep, and ox were also represented. Presently, at a depth of about 5 ft., something attracted closer attention. A layer of thin limestone slabs was found, covering two human skeletons, one lying a few feet from the west margin of the modern road, the other parallel with the road and some 8 ft. from its edge. The objects described below were found with the second skeleton, and the first to be discovered was submitted by Mr. Southam to Mr. T. Sheppard, F.S.A.Scot., Director of the Hull Museums, who visited the site with his staff. All that can be recorded of the circumstances of the discovery is contained in the observations then made, under difficult conditions. ‘Slabs of hard limestone’, it was reported, ‘taken from a local quarry of millepore oolite and forming the original Roman road, were distinctly visible beneath the present roadway—one of the few points where the precise site of the old road has been located. On the side of this… a burial-place has been constructed. What it was like originally it is difficult to say, beyond that a layer of thin … slabs of limestone occurred over the skeletons. This had probably been kept in place or supported by some structure of wood, as several large iron nails, some bent at right angles, were among the bones.’ If this were all that could be said about the burials, they would hardly merit a place in these pages. The chief interest of the record would be its apparent identification of the exact course of the Roman road at a point where this had hitherto been uncertain. Three objects associated with the second skeleton are, however, of exceptional interest.

Notes

Page 2 of 6