NHER 66662 (Monument record) - Roman small enclosed roadside cemetery

January-February 2009. Strip Map and Sample Excavation.
Excavation of site of proposed reservoir.
Exposed a circular Roman enclosure ditch encompassing six graves containing at least seven human skeletons. These may have been part of a family group, perhaps associated with a villa or small settlement, although no evidence of domestic activity was encountered. Four of the inhumations within the enclosure are thought to have been roughly contemporary. The other three were situated in the entrance to the enclosure and are thought to have belonged to a later generation and perhaps an act of closure of the monument. Of particular interest is the presence of a young female exhibiting facial characteristics suggestive of mixed ancestry, with features more indicative of Negroid than Caucasian origins, but with the shared genetic trait of a pronounced occipital protuberance as two other burials. This was the only female buried within the funerary enclosure and she shared the grave with a young male. She may represent a second or third generation migration community in the Venta Icenorum area, though of course the presence of just one individual cannot possibly indicate how extensive this may have been. Radiocarbon dating confirmed a Roman date for these burials but was insufficiently precise to allow any refinement of cemetery's chronology.
See report (S1) for further details. The results of this work are also summarised in (S2).
The associated archive has been deposited with the Norwich Castle Museum (NWHCM : 2013.161).
Previously recorded under NHER 37649.
D. Holburn (HES), 13 September 2011. Amended by P. Watkins (HES), 27 May 2015 and 5 May 2019.

Although not initially recognised as such this was almost certainly a roadside cemetery, lying immediately to the south of the recorded line of a road running between the Roman town of Venta Icenorum and the site of a Roman temple at Crownthorpe (NHERs 52026/52027). Although no trace of the road itself was recorded two of the fragmentary ditches were potentially associated with this routeway.
P. Watkins (HES), 2 February 2023.