06-19-2006, 06:35 PM
Following up on my email regarding the dating of the headless Romans from York, here's a piece from the email newsletter Salon-IFA 142: 19 June 2006
For pictures and further information on the finds, go to the YAT website: http://www.yorkarchaeology.co.uk/driffield.htm
Quote:Headless Romans in York: doubt cast on the Caracalla theory
Salon readers might have seen a BBC TV ‘Timewatch’ programme last month in which archaeologists working in York revealed the discovery by Patrick Ottaway, FSA, MIFA, and his team of thirty decapitated Roman skeletons in the rear garden of a house in York. The programme explored different theories to explain why their heads had been removed and placed between their knees, on their chests or by their feet. Anthony Birley, FSA, came up with the plausible explanation that these people were murdered by the bloodthirsty Emperor Caracalla because they were supporters of Geta, his younger brother, rival and co-emperor.
This explanation was based on the large amount of early third-century pottery recovered from the site of the burials (Caracalla came to the throne in AD 211). Now, according to Kurt Hunter-Mann, writing in Yorkshire: Archaeology Today, the magazine of the York Archaeological Trust, further decapitated burials have been found in neighbouring back gardens that indicate a date range for these burials stretching from the late second century and on in to the later third or even early fourth centuries.
During almost a century of deposition, new graves have intercut older ones. Some of the later graves include multiple burials (four people to a grave) or burials in which the remains of up to four horses were buried with the human remains in large wooden boxes. The final phase is characterised by individual burials clustered around the earlier burials with horse bones.
Nobody is rushing into an explanation for what can clearly no longer be considered a single event. All Kurt Hunter-Mann will say is that ‘the decapitation rite is even more difficult to interpret than was first thought; gladiatorial combat is the latest theory to be proposed’.
For pictures and further information on the finds, go to the YAT website: http://www.yorkarchaeology.co.uk/driffield.htm
hock: :wink:
