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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

Philip Corder  and
I. A. Richmond
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Extract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , January 1938 , pp. 68 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1938

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References

page 68 note 1 Clark, Kitson, Gazetteer of Roman Remains in East Yorkshire, 72–3, alludes to interments in Prescott's gravel-pit.Google Scholar

apge 68 note 2 Leeds Mercury, 15 10 1936Google Scholar; cf. Yorkshire Post of the same date.

page 69 note 1 For this fashion see Curle, , Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot. lxvi, 327Google Scholar, quoting Lantier, , Monuments Piot, xxxiGoogle Scholar. The dressing of hair with cosmetics is noted by Strabo, v, 26, quoting Poseidonius, τιτάνου γὰρ ἀποπλύματι σμῶντες τὰς τρίχας συνεχῶς ἵνα διαɸανεῖς ὦσι.

page 69 note 2 Caesar, , B.G. v, 14Google Scholar, omni parte corporis rasa, praeter caput et labrum superius. Compare, however, Poseidonius on the Gauls, quoted by Strabo, v, 28, τὰ δὲ γένεια τινὲς μὲν ξυρῶνται, τινὲς δὲ μετρίως ὑποτρέϕουσιν˙ οἱ δ᾽ εὐγενῖς τὰς μὲν παρειὰς ἀπολειαίνουσι, τὰς δ᾽ ὑπήνας ἀνειμένας ἐῶσιν ὥστε τὰ στόματα αὐτῶν ἐπικαλύπτεσθαι.

page 70 note 1 A Roman Frontier Post, pl. XXVI, 3, pls. XXVII and XXVII.

page 70 note 2 The Newstead iron helmet, op. cit., pl. xxix, and the Ribchester helmet, Vetusta Monumenta, iv, pl. 1, have attachments for just such crests.

page 70 note 3 Cf. A Roman Frontier Post, pls. XXIX, XXX.

page 70 note 4 Ibid.

page 70 note 5 Compare the breaking of swords in the cemetery of Hallais, near Bouelles, or Notre-Dame-du-Vaudreuil,Hawkes, and Dunning, , The Belgae, 203, 212Google Scholar.

page 71 note 1 For the type, cf. Strong, , Art in Ancient Rome.Google Scholar

page 71 note 2 Cf. Cichorius, , Die Reliefs der Traianssäule, scene lxx.Google Scholar

page 72 note 1 J.R.S. xiii, pl. III.

page 72 note 2 Hawkes, and Dunning, , The Belgae, 304–9.Google Scholar

page 72 note 3 Leeds, , Celtic Ornament, 39.Google Scholar

page 72 note 4 Archaeologia, lxiii, 20, and pl. II; British Museum Guide to Early Iron Age Antiquities, 1925, pl. xiGoogle Scholar.

page 73 note 1 B.G. v, 14, quoted above, p. 69, note 2.

page 73 note 2 Compare Strabo, quoting Poseidonius, iv, 4, 5, τὰς κεϕαλὰς τῶν πoλεμίων… κομίσαντας δὲ προσπατταλεύειν τοῖς προπυλαίοις˙ ϕησὶ γοῦν Ποσειδώνιος αὐτὸς ἰδεῖν ταύτην τὴν θέαν πολλαχοῦ, καὶ τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἀηθίζεσθαι, μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα ϕέρειν πρᾴως διὰ τὴν συνήθειαν. In Gallic sculpture such heads are the decorative equivalent of the Roman bucranium, and appear on the famous monument from Entremont; Esperandieu, , Bas-reliefs de la Gaule romaine, i, nos. 105–8Google Scholar; also on a small frieze, now in the ‘Temple de Diane’, Nîmes, from one of the Gallic temples previously on the site. The custom continued among the auxilia of the Roman army, see Cichorius, , Die Reliefs der Traianssäule, scenes xxiv, lvi, lxxii, cxiiiGoogle Scholar.

page 73 note 3 Antiq. Journ. xv, 459Google Scholar, and pl. LXXI.

page 73 note 4 Varimpré, , Hawkes, and Dunning, , The Belgae, 214Google Scholar, quoting. Cochet, , Seine Inférieure, 333Google Scholar; Lavilleneuve, , Bull. Archéol., 1913, 363–73Google Scholar.

page 73 note 5 The connexion appears to be with such works as are figured by Rostovtzeff, , J.R.S. xiii, 93, fig. 5Google Scholar, from London, fig. 6, from Pompeii.

page 73 note 6 Ptol, . Geogr. ii, 3, 17Google Scholar, πρὸς οἷς περὶ τὸν Εὐλίμενον κόλπον Παρίσοι καὶ πόλις Πετουαρία. The situation of the place is discussed in Excavations at the Roman Town at Brough, E. Yorkshire; Third Interim Report (1935), pp. 27–28Google Scholar; and the name is confirmed by a newly found inscription (1937).

page 74 note 1 Excavations at the Roman Town at Brough, E. Yorkshire; Fourth Interim Report (1936), pp. 19–23.Google Scholar