An early medieval cemetery discovered under student accommodation at Cambridge University has been described as “one of the most interesting discoveries of Anglo-Saxon archeology in the 19th century”.
King’s College discovered the “extended” cemetery, which contains more than 60 graves, after the demolition of a group of buildings in the 1930s, which had recently housed graduates and staff in the west of the city, to make way for more modern halls.
About 200 objects from the tombs, including bronze brooches, bead necklaces, swords, short blades, pottery and glass balloons, were systematically discovered. Most date from the early Anglo-Saxon period (c400-650 CE), although evidence of Iron Age structures and Roman earthworks has also been found.
Dr. Caroline Goodson, who teaches early medieval history to King, said the human remains they found were remarkably “well-preserved.” “Alkaline soil, typical here, has not decomposed bones.”
This is significant because it will allow archaeologists to apply state-of-the-art scientific techniques to reveal the diet and DNA of the dead, allowing the analysis of migration and family relationships.
Goodson said the excavators were “surprised” to find so many graves and such a vast medieval cemetery, surrounded by Roman moats and so close to the remains of Roman Cambridge. According to Bede Ecclesiastical history, which was written in the 8th century, Cambridge was abandoned – like many other Roman cities – when the Romans withdrew their military forces from England in the 5th century. “We already know that Cambridge has not been completely abandoned. But what we see now is a larger and clearer picture of life in post-Roman settlements. ”
Goodson speculates that the people living in Cambridgeshire were a mixture of descendants of earlier Roman populations and recent migrants to Britain on the mainland, living in a post-imperial world.
Excavation site
“I no longer live as the Romans lived, they eat differently, they dress differently and they find different ways to exploit the land. They change the way they live in a period of considerable fluidity. ”
Some of the findings raise questions about the emotional connection people had at the time of the funeral to the feelings they might have felt toward the Romans who lived in Cambridge before them. In a tomb, archaeologists found a body buried with what appears to be a piece of late Roman glass in the shape of a small barrel for storing wine.
“It seems that a classic Roman object is reused in a post-Roman context, as serious goods.” Another tomb looks like a typical late Roman burial from the 5th century, suggesting that there may have been a continuity of use of the cemetery since Roman times. “It would be really interesting,” Goodson said.
To date, archaeologists have found no “strong evidence” that people living in the sixth century still chose to bury their dead near late Roman tombs, but few cemeteries of this size have ever been scientifically excavated using methods and Modern technologies such as advanced radiocarbon dating techniques and isotopic analysis.
“It would be great to say very clearly – and we will need a large suite of carbon-14 data to do this – that we have people using this site from the 5th to the 7th century,” says Goodson. . “We can see that the burial of the dead and the treatment of their bodies are especially significant for the living in a different way from other parts of the post-Roman world.” This indicates a different view of the world and a different “cosmology”: “It is a new form of commemoration.”
She hopes to find out if anyone in the cemetery died of the Justinian plague, a pandemic that erupted across Europe in the 540s.
“I’m really interested to know if he’s been to Cambridge and how much that relates to what’s going on.”