Archaeologists in London made the “exceptionally important” discovery of a complete wooden burial bed, the first ever discovered in Britain.
The remarkably well-preserved bed, described by experts as “unparalleled”, was unearthed from the site of a former Roman cemetery near Holborn Viaduct, central London, alongside five oak coffins. Before this excavation, only three Roman wooden coffins had been found in total in the capital.
Wooden remains from the Roman era in Britain (AD 43-410) rarely survive to this day, but because the buried cemetery adjoins the now underground River Fleet, its graves have been well preserved.
The burial bed is made of high quality oak and has carved feet and joints that are fastened with small wooden pegs. It was dismantled before being placed in the grave of a mature man in his late 20s or early 30s.
“It was quite carefully taken apart and stored away, almost like flat-packed furniture for the next life,” said Michael Marshall, an artefact specialist at archaeologists Mola (Museum of London Archaeology) – although he stressed that there was much about the burials which still needs to be studied. Excavations at the site continue.
Part of the site, outside the walls of the Roman city and 6 meters below the modern ground level, was excavated in the 1990s. “However, the bed was a complete surprise, because we had never seen anything like it before,” said Marshall. While there are reports of people being carried in funeral processions on beds, and sometimes depictions of them on tombstones, he said: “We had no idea that people were buried in these kinds of Roman burial beds. This is something for which there is no previous evidence from Britain.”
No other grave goods were found at the bed burial, but it was almost certainly a high-status person, Marshall said. “It’s an incredibly well-made piece of furniture. It’s a piece of proper joinery, as opposed to something that’s kind of slapped together. It is one of the finest pieces of furniture ever recovered Roman Britain.”
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However, personal objects have been recovered from elsewhere in the cemetery, including beads, a glass vial that appears to still contain remains, and a decorated lamp, believed to date to the very earliest period of Roman occupation between AD 43 and 80.
Strikingly, it’s emblazoned with the design of a defeated gladiator, “which is kind of a wonderful thing,” Marshall said. Similar images have previously been found in funerary contexts in London and Colchester. “There is something about the symbolism of the fallen gladiator that makes sense in a funerary context. A defeated gladiator is obviously someone who dies, but they also fight against death.
“So there is evidence that some really quite subtle choices about how people mourned their dead are starting to come through from the analysis of these burials.”
