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Roman gypsum burial in stone coffin found during highway construction
A late Roman-era limestone coffin containing a rare gypsum burial has been discovered during expansion of the A47 highway outside of Peterborough in Cambridgeshire, southeastern England. The coffin was cut out of a single massive block of limestone. The deceased was clothed and shrouded, put inside the coffin and liquid gypsum poured over them. Capping stones were then placed on top of the coffin. The entire sarcophagus weighing 1,650 pounds was raised and transported to a laboratory so its contents could be excavated in controlled conditions.
The section of the A47 where the sarcophagus was discovered was once a Roman road, and a team from Headland Archaeology was contracted to excavate the site. They uncovered a small cemetery with 14 graves centered around the limestone coffin. Another seven graves were found outside the boundary ditch. Small rural cemeteries are not uncommon finds, especially at roadsides, but the variety of grave types (cist, cremation, likely wood coffin with iron nails, decapitation) is surprising for such a burial ground with so few graves, and the gypsum burial at the center makes this one is unique.
Gypsum burial is a poorly understood practice. On some occasions, Romans poured liquid gypsum over the clothed bodies of the dead in lead or limestone coffins. There are no references to its meaning or purpose in ancient sources, and other than high status of the deceased (the families had to be able to afford expensive lead and limestone sarcophagi), there does not appear to be any consistent through-line between the instances of it. It was done to male and female, adult and child. They have been found in Europe and North Africa, although Britain has the greatest number of them, all of them concentrated in major urban centers like York. Finding one in such a rural location is highly unusual and this is the only gypsum burial ever discovered in Cambridgeshire.
Intriguingly, the practice turns out to be a sort of negative-space version of the plaster cast technique invented in Pompeii to capture the impressions left by organic remains in the volcanic rock. In Pompeii, bodies and objects that decayed after the ash of Vesuvius’ eruption hardened around them, left cavities that archaeologists filled with plaster. The plaster casts took on the shape of the cavities. Bodies, clothing, furniture, bedding, all were immortalized into the stone that had encased them 2,000 years earlier and then onto the freshly-poured plaster.
The gypsum poured by the Romans on their dead cut out the volcanic middleman. It hardened around the bodies leaving their contours and the imprint of their clothing and shrouds on the gypsum. The outside of the plaster was encapsulated by the coffin sides. The rich internal life of the gypsum casings was revealed in a pioneering 2023 study in York which used 3D imaging scans to reveal how three bodies buried in a single coffin had been prepared for burial down to the ties that bound the shroud around the head and the warp and weft counts of the woven textiles.
The A47 gypsum casing was not intact like the one scanned in York, but the shrouded remains still left their imprint.
These specialist excavations were carried out by conservator Morgan Creed from York Archaeology and Osteologist Don Walker from Museum of London Archaeology over two full days. Although the gypsum was fragmentary, impressions of the shroud the individual was buried in were visible, and a small piece of the fabric itself was preserved in the gypsum. There were no grave goods within the coffin itself, but a glass vessel and fragments of leather, pottery and animal bone were recovered from the fill of the surrounding grave cut. This glass vessel could have once held a toast or libation for the deceased before it was placed in the cut.
Despite the lack of grave goods, both the beautifully carved stone coffin and the gypsum burial are indicative of an individual of high status. The gypsum for the burial would have come at a high cost, and the stone coffin was not only beautifully carved, but also made from stone quarried around 50 km away, adding the costs of transportation. These factors coupled with the central position of the burial within the cemetery points to an important person, perhaps the head of a prominent family.
The gypsum burial was not the only high-status individual interred in this little rural cemetery. The grave of a young woman aged 16-20 when she died contained a large amount of jewelry including a pair of silver earrings, nine bronze bracelets, three bronze rings and the remains of what looks like a silver signet ring. She wasn’t wearing any of these treasures when she was interred; they were at her feet, perhaps because they were part of a dowry she died too young to use. Another grave containing the remains of an even younger child also contained a rich collection of jewelry: ten bronze bracelets, four worked bone bracelets, a worked bone comb and a pair of silver earrings very similar to those found in the young lady’s grave.
Archaeologists hope analysis of the human remains and grave goods will give them a fuller understanding of how long the cemetery was in use, what the relationships may have been between the people buried there, and the connections between the small community and the surrounding area.
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