Sarcophagi in Roman Britain - Bollettino di archeologia on line

XVII International Congress of Classical Archaeology, Roma 22-26 Sept. 2008Session: <strong>Roman</strong> and Barbariancremation so the use of any coff<strong>in</strong> at all can be seen as a demonstration of some level of wealth or perceivedstatus 8 .MaterialsThree materials are used for coff<strong>in</strong>s <strong>in</strong> Brita<strong>in</strong>: wood, lead and stone. Unsurpris<strong>in</strong>gly, lead and stoneappear to have been the more prestigious but this is not to say that wooden coff<strong>in</strong>s were somehow lowstatus. Of the 453 burials excavated at the Bath Gate cemetery at Cirencester, for example, only 72 (16%)were conta<strong>in</strong>ed with<strong>in</strong> wooden coff<strong>in</strong>s; at the same time only one (0.2%) was conta<strong>in</strong>ed <strong>in</strong> a lead coff<strong>in</strong>, andonly five (1.1%) <strong>in</strong> stone coff<strong>in</strong>s. At the somewhat wealthier Cemetery 3 at Poundbury, conta<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g burialsdat<strong>in</strong>g ma<strong>in</strong>ly to the 4 th century AD, 856 (77%) of the 1118 burials excavated prior to 1982 were <strong>in</strong> woodencoff<strong>in</strong>s, only 75 (7%) <strong>in</strong> lead or stone ones 9 . At the Trentholme Drive site <strong>in</strong> York, on the other hand, almostall of the 350 burials excavated were conta<strong>in</strong>ed with<strong>in</strong> coff<strong>in</strong>s but only two of them were stone 10 .In all of these cases the choice of material appears to have held particular significance. As Toller hasnoted <strong>in</strong> his catalogue of the lead coff<strong>in</strong>s of <strong>Roman</strong> Brita<strong>in</strong> the <strong>di</strong>stribution of these 243 pieces is reflectiveless of the location of lead resources than it is of the ‘wealth <strong>in</strong> <strong>Roman</strong> Brita<strong>in</strong>’ more generally 11 . In otherwords, people were not simply us<strong>in</strong>g the material that was to hand. The majority of the lead pieces arespread over south-eastern and southern Brita<strong>in</strong>, with 55% com<strong>in</strong>g from cemeteries <strong>di</strong>rectly associated withmajor urban centres, particularly York, Dorchester, Colchester and London 12 . Even <strong>in</strong> a prov<strong>in</strong>ce wellendowedwith m<strong>in</strong>eral resources, lead can never have been a cheap material <strong>in</strong> which to bury oneself. Thesame is no doubt true of stone.The decorated sarcophagi<strong>Roman</strong>o-British sarcophagi, or stone coff<strong>in</strong>s, are relatively common but, due to the scarcity ofdecorated pieces, have received little scholarly attention 13 . The same is true of the numerous undecoratedsarcophagi from Gaul and the Rh<strong>in</strong>eland. In part this is because these pla<strong>in</strong>-sided pieces do not fit theresearch agenda of the more art historically m<strong>in</strong>ded scholars who have been responsible for the publicationof the bulk of sculpted stone objects <strong>in</strong> the north-western prov<strong>in</strong>ces (fig. 1). In her comprehensive study of art<strong>in</strong> Brita<strong>in</strong> under the <strong>Roman</strong>s, for example, Toynbee mentions seven sarcophagi, of which only five arecarved from local materials 14 . However, sarcophagi have also received little attention <strong>in</strong> stu<strong>di</strong>es of <strong>Roman</strong>o-British funerary practice; <strong>in</strong> her study of high-status burials between the 1 st and 3 rd centuries, for example,Struck <strong>di</strong>scusses built funerary monuments, grave goods, and the location of burials, but not sarcophagi 15 .In fact, well over a hundred <strong>Roman</strong>o-British sarcophagi have been identified. These fall <strong>in</strong>to three<strong>di</strong>st<strong>in</strong>ct categories:1. Imports (carved from non-British stone, probably outside of the prov<strong>in</strong>ce).2. Locally-produced decorated or <strong>in</strong>scribed pieces (<strong>in</strong> British stone).3. Locally-produced undecorated pieces (<strong>in</strong> British stone) 16 .…………………………………………8 See PHILPOTT 1991, 53, and QUENSEL-VON-KALBEN 2000, 223.9 See GREEN 1982, 64.10 See VINER, LEECH 1982, 69–88, and WENHAM 1968, 33–39.11 TOLLER 1977.12 TOLLER 1977, 2–3.13 On this po<strong>in</strong>t, see PHILPOTT 1991, 53.14 See TOYNBEE 1964, 210–211; as Walker (1990, 9) has noted, un-decorated sarcophagi are only fleet<strong>in</strong>gly <strong>di</strong>scussed <strong>in</strong> KOCH,SICHTERMANN 1982, and were not catalogued by Espéran<strong>di</strong>eu.15 STRUCK 2000, 85–92.16 There appear to be no examples of a possible fourth category, locally-produced sarcophagi carved from imported materials, like thenorth-Italian sarcophagi <strong>di</strong>scussed <strong>in</strong> GABELMANN 1973, many of which are carved <strong>in</strong> Proconnesian marble.Bollett<strong>in</strong>o <strong>di</strong> Archeologia on l<strong>in</strong>e I 2010/ Volume speciale E / E10 / 2 Reg. Tribunale Roma 05.08.2010 n. 330 ISSN 2039 - 0076www.<strong>archeologia</strong>.beniculturali.it/pages/pubblicazioni.html15