Neil Holbrook – författare

Excavations in advance of the construction of the Gloucester Business Park Link Road, Hucclecote, in 1998 revealed alluvium deposited by the Horsbere Brook, in places up to 2m deep. Radiocarbon dating demonstrates that the alluvium had been deposited by the 12th century BC. Three or four Middle Bronze Age cremation burials were probably part of a flat cemetery, the site subsequently occupied by a Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age settlement which contained in excess of four post-built roundhouses. In the 1st century AD a settlement that contained a number of probable mass-walled roundhouses was constructed. It was extensively reorganised in the early 2nd century when a series of ditched enclosures were linked to Ermin Street by a 320m-long trackway. A small cemetery of 12 inhumations is noteworthy as it demonstrates that the Late Iron Age tradition of burial by crouched inhumation persisted into the 2nd century AD. Several of the burials were accompanied by grave goods, and one of the males suffered from a very rare form of dwarfism to his forearms, a condition that would have been obvious to his contemporaries. The settlement continued in use until the late 3rd or early 4th century, although the trackway ditches continued to accumulate material into the later 4th century. The trackway and enclosures appear to have survived as visible earthworks into the medieval period as their orientation influenced the alignment of medieval field systems.

This volume presents the results of a number of excavations undertaken in Cirencester in the last decade which have examined houses, shops, public buildings (including the forum), town defences and cemeteries. Excavations within insula IX found a previously unrecorded corridor mosaic, while work within the western cemetery has revealed interesting evidence for early Roman cremation ritual, along with later Roman inhumation burials. The publication of this volume marks the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the Cirencester Excavation Committee, and an introductory essay charts the changing circumstances in which archaeology has been practiced in the town over the last fifty years.

Excavations in 2011 to 2015 within the Western Cemetery of Roman Cirencester resulted in the discovery of 118 inhumation and 8 cremation burials, the largest investigation of a Roman cemetery in Cirencester since the Bath Gate excavations of the 1970s. A greater quantity of grave goods was recovered from this cemetery compared to the Bath Gate cemetery, testifying to the higher status of those buried here.Nine burials survived within a postulated walled cemetery. The pottery from the fills of these graves had a clear emphasis on amphorae, flagons and tazze, indicative of funerary ceremonies involving the consumption of wine, or the pouring of it as libations, and the burning of substances. Just outside the walled cemetery, the burial of a 2 to 3-year-old child contained a magnificent enamelled bronze figurine of a cockerel, dateable to the 2nd century AD. Such figurines are rare finds, with only four or five similar examples known from Britain.Burial activity continued into the 4th century AD. One unusual later grave had a reused sculpted and inscribed tombstone placed face down immediately over the coffin of an adult male. Only 15 inscribed tombstones have been previously recorded from Cirencester so this is a noteworthy discovery, made all the more important by its archaeological context. The tombstone is dedicated to a 27-year-old woman named Bodicacia and has a fine sculpted pediment containing a representation of the god Oceanus. Significantly the god’s face and claws were deliberately mutilated prior to its placement within the grave, which could be a very rare example of Christian iconoclasm from Roman Britain.