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The discovery of Roman Baldock happened after Mr Hart, the farmer of Walls Field, ploughed up a human skull just before Easter in 1925. Over the next five years, Percival Westell of Letchworth Museum and his assistants excavated over 450 burials from a cemetery, or possibly two adjacent cemeteries. The burials were mostly undamaged by later ploughing, as they lay towards the bottom of a slope and soil washed downhill had protected them for many centuries.
Because of the excellent preservation, they provided Westell with a vast haul of objects to put into the growing Letchworth Museum. Although he published his results promptly, as a result of which the cemetery is well known among archaeologists, his standards were poor and his record keeping almost non-existent. We don’t even have a plan of the cemetery showing the locations of individual burials, let alone plans of the graves themselves. He did keep everything from a single burial together most of the time, though, so we can reconstruct from his ‘burial groups’ the contents if not the layout of each one.
Most of the burials in the cemetery were of cremated remains, which can be dated from the mid first century AD through to the late third because most of them contained datable pots. There were also inhumation burials, represented by skeletons; although Westell kept their skulls and sent them to the Royal College of Surgeons, they were destroyed by bombing during the Blitz along with the rest of the College’s collection. They are less easy to date than the cremations, although some contained pottery disturbed from earlier graves. Westell’s initial dating of the pottery was often wrong, and a 1985 dissertation by Maria Fabrizi, an undergraduate of the University of Bradford, was able to suggest more accurate dates.
Westell did not excavate the entire cemetery, as trenches by his assistant Erik Applebaum in the early 1930s uncovered more inhumation graves. It is also evident from his inadequate plan that the burials concentrated in two principal groups: one to the north-east and one to the south-west of the area he excavated. Using Fabrizi’s dating, we can see that the earliest burials in the southwestern group date from about AD 50-70, while the latest belong to the early third century. The 53 inhumation burials in this part of the site cannot be dated, unfortunately. The earliest burials in the northeastern are later, about AD 75-100, and deposition here continued into the fourth century. These distinct but overlapping date ranges make it likely that we are indeed looking at two separate burial grounds.
Westell retained very few cremated human remains: there is an account by his assistant J Peat Young of them tipping the remains out onto the field surface as being of no value! Nor did he record the positions of vessels in cremation pits or the alignments of bodies in individual inhumations. The majority were aligned with head to the west, although some had heads to the south; most were extended, but some seem to have been crouched.
One of the burials in the northeastern group (Westell’s Group 89), excavated in spring 1928, contained cremated bone inside a decorated samian bowl of form Dragendorff 37. The bowl came from the potteries at Lezoux in Central Gaul (Puy-de-Dôme, France), and bears the stamps SACRILLIM (Sacrillus’s Manufactory) and DOECCVS (Doeccus, the name of the artist who created the decoration). Doeccus’s decoration consists of an image of Silenus with a basket of fruit on his head, a dancer with scarf, hares and flames. Sacrillus was making pottery between about AD 165 and 200, while Doeccus was active about AD 160-190, meaning that this bowl probably dates 165-190.
As well as the decorated bowl, there were a colour-coated globular beaker and the lower part of a flagon. The beaker is probably of much the same date as the samian, while the flagon, probably from the kilns outside Verolamium, is not easy to date as the most easily dated features are towards the top of these vessels. Nevertheless, all three vessels indicate that the burial was probably deposited in the later second century (say AD 170-200).
Glass beads
The most remarkable aspect of this already unusual grave – it is uncommon to find the cremated bone put into a samian bowl – is its collection of beads. Westell recorded forty-four of them, but some apparently disintegrated during excavation, so we are left with the forty-one shown in the picture. Westell described them as ‘gilded’, but they are technically gold-in-glass or gold-glass. Such beads have an unusual distribution: they are found in Britain but rarely in other western provinces of the empire, and from central Europe southeastwards. This led George Boon to suggest in 1977 that they came to Britain with the 5500 Iazyges cavalry sent here in AD 175 by Marcus Aurelius, according to Cassius Dio’s Ῥωμαϊκὴ Ἱστορία (‘Roman History’) Book 72.
The Iazyges were a tribe of Sarmatians, a group of people from southern Russia who began migrating westwards into Ukraine during the fourth century BC. They had expanded into the Balkans, north of the Lower Danube and into the Carpathian basin, by the first century AD. The Iazyges were the Sarmatian group between the Danube and Dacia (which became a Roman province after Trajan’s conquest in AD 106, covering much of modern Romania). Marcus Aurelius fought a series of wars on the Danube frontier between AD 166 and his death in 180; to Roman historians, it was Bellum Germanicum et Sarmaticum (‘the German and Sarmatian War’), but historians today usually call it the Marcomannic War, after the main German enemies of Rome involved in the conflict.
Marcus defeated the Iazyges in 175, their king Zanticus surrendering in person to the emperor. As part of the peace treaty, they supplied 8,000 cavalry troops to the Roman army, of whom 5,500 were sent to Britain. Although numbers cited by ancient authors are often suspect and probably exaggerated (Dio’s 5,500 is a legion-sized body of men), we know that Sarmatians did arrive in Britain in the later 170s. The best evidence is from Bremetennacum Veteranorum (Ribchester), a cavalry fort in northwest England. It was home to a unit known at first as the
Much of the supposed evidence for Sarmatians in Britain is less clear-cut than the inscriptions. A tombstone from Chester said to show a Sarmatian cavalryman almost certainly does not: it is too early (it dates from the first half of the second century) and probably depicts a Dacian. Some enthusiasts have seen almost every bead from Roman Britain as evidence for them, even the ubiquitous melon beads!
What has been described as ‘an imaginative and controversial theory’ links these Sarmatians with the Arthurian legends. Why? A tombstone from Podstrana in Croatia commemorates a Lucius Artorius Castus, who late in his military career served as Praefectus Legionis for Legio VI Victrix, based in York. His next post was as Dux Legionum adversus Arm… (‘Commander of legions against the Arm…’). Unfortunately, the slab is broken at this key point. The most reasonable restoration is Armenios (‘the Armenians’), which is perhaps the war of AD 163. Supporters of the ‘controversial theory’ would rather read Armatos (‘armed men’), a term too vague ever to appear in an outline of a military career.
However, those who want to see Castus as a prototype of King Arthur propose that while Praefectus Legionis at York, he led Sarmatian troops against these ill-defined Armatos, identified as barbarians from north of Hadrian’s Wall. The descendants of the Sarmatians then conflated him with a folk-hero Batradz, remembered in the Ossetian Nart Sagas. Needless to say, this is the stuff of fantasy. A Praefectus Legionis was a late-career soldier, usually in his 50s, who acted as quartermaster for a legion. In other words, someone in charge of logistics rather than a fighting or even commanding soldier. Nothing links Castus with Sarmatians, and the Nart Sagas were first recorded in the nineteenth century.
The use of gold-glass beads to identify Sarmatians has also been called into question. Maud Spaur’s 1993 reassessment of the type has shown that far from being a type from the Balkans, they originated in Ptolemaic Egypt in the third century BC. They were probably made in the Roman period and later at several places around the eastern Mediterranean; the only chemical analysis of a British bead (one from Caerleon in Wales) indicated that it was an import from Egypt. Given that we have local evidence for Alexandrian glass (the mosaic glass dishes discussed a few weeks ago), an Egyptian origin seems likely for these beads from Baldock.
These beads are yet another example of the many layers of meaning than can be extracted from apparently ordinary objects. Even if some of them are dead ends – the idea that a supposed commander of Sarmatians in Britain was the original King Arthur – they add interesting digressions to understanding the past.
Written by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews
Guest post by Alice Rogers and Himani Sidhu work experience students from Knights Templar School, Baldock
We came here for work experience, and we had a great time! We have been given valuable life lessons by the beyond friendly workers at the museum. We have learnt lots about the area we have grown up in that we didn’t know prior to our visit. As part of our experience, we have been able to help with a new display, create top trumps cards, learnt how to catalogue items, went around town to promote a new exhibit and many other things.
We were asked by the museum staff to select our favourite display; we chose the suffragettes. This display includes letters to suffragettes, notably one from Christabel Pankhurst, outfits they once wore, badges and much more. It is fascinating to know that there were some of these noble people in this area.
Viewing these exhibits made us realize that there is a lot more significant history in North Herts than we were aware of. We have had an interesting and memorable time working here, an experience we will never forget.
Alice and Himani with their favourite display
Roman food has a reputation for its exotic – and sometime, frankly repulsive – dishes. The clichéd recipes, such as dormice in honey (glires melle ac papauere sparsos) or larks’ tongues in aspic (linguas alardum in aspide, also an album by King Crimson), are found satirical literature. The wealthy did eat dormice – Apicius’s well-known de Re Coquinaria (‘On Cookery’) includes a recipe for glires stuffed with a pork forcemeat – but the idea of eating larks’ tongues originates in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. According to Pliny (Historia Naturalis X.68), phoenicopteri linguam praecipui saporis esse Apicius docuit (‘Apicius taught that the tongue of the flamingo is of supreme flavour’), although Apicius did not include a recipe for the delicacy in his book.
Of course, such pretentious foodstuffs were not everyday fare for people living throughout the Roman world. At a time when refrigeration was many centuries in the future, exotic meats and vegetables would need to be preserved – by salting or pickling, for instance – before transport. Even flamingos’ tongues would probably lose their ‘supreme flavour’ during the journey from the Mediterranean to Britain.
Bread, made from wheat or barley flour, was a staple and had been for centuries before the Roman conquest. These same grains went into making the main drinks, ceruisa, a type of low-alcohol wheat beer, and curmi, a low-alcohol barley beer. Both types were sometimes sweetened with honey or flavoured with herbs such as henbane, a poisonous plant with psychoactive effects that can, however, cause convulsions and even death. Oats were used to make porridge or gruel.
Everyday vegetables included onions, wild garlic, turnips, parsnips, cabbage, seaweed, nettles, fennel, sorrel, parsley, spinach, beans and mushrooms. Most fruit was wild, such as blackberries, gooseberries and bilberries. We have previously seen how the local people, the Succii, took their name from the pigs that they bred for meat. They also reared cattle, sheep and goats, while chickens arrived from the Roman world long before Julius Caesar had been born. People seem not to have eaten much in the way of seafood or game before the Roman conquest in AD 43. Secondary products from domesticated animals included milk, cheese and sausages.
The ability to drink milk in adulthood and eat cheese is something that many humans lack; although born with it, most people lose it after breastfeeding ends in infancy and their bodies stop making lactase, the enzyme that allows them to process the sugar lactose, found only in milk. We refer to this as lactose intolerance, but it is really lactose tolerance that is the oddity. More than 85% of north Europeans (but not Icelandic people) are lactose tolerant, but the picture is very different across the rest of the world. In Africa, south and east Asia and among Native Americans (both in North and South America), fewer than 25% of people are lactose tolerant in adulthood. In northern Europe, prehistoric populations had been drinking milk since the arrival of agriculture about 6000 years ago. They developed a genetic mutation about 4000 years ago, which spread rapidly through the population. One suggestion is that during times of disease or famine, those without lactose tolerance would die as a reaction to the milk they were drinking; those with it would benefit from digesting the lactose in the milk.
In the century between Julius Caesar and Claudius, when Britons in the southeast of the island began to adopt Roman ways, they started importing new foodstuffs. They included vegetables such as peas, cucumbers, carrots and celery. Domesticated fruits included figs, apples, pears, cherries, plums, and dates. Newly planted vineyards, like one at Barkway, meant that local wines became available. People used new flavourings such as the herbs coriander, thyme, mint, basil, bay and dill, and the famous but pungent garum (a fish sauce like southeast Asian nam pla). Exotic imported items such as ginger, laser (galangal), pepper and olives added new flavours. People also began to develop a taste for seafood, and oyster shells are a common find on Roman sites, even in places a long way from the sea. Hunting game was a new pastime for the wealthy, so we begin to see venison appearing on the menu, at least for the better off.
Iron Age cheeses may have been almost as varied as modern types. Analysis of coprolites (human stools) shows that there was a type of blue cheese, while other evidence points to making cream cheese and hard cheeses. The pot seen here, dating from the last quarter of the first century AD, was first thought to be a strainer (and, indeed, was once labelled as such in a display at Letchworth Museum). However, it is a cheese press, used for draining the whey from the curds and compressing them to make a hard cheese.
The simplest way to make cheese is to heat milk and then add something to make it curdle. This could be sour cream, beer or vinegar. Next, the curds and whey need to be separated, by allowing the whey to drain away (and be stored for other uses in cooking). This can be done in a cloth bag, which makes a soft cheese. To make a hard cheese, it is necessary to press the curd to force out any remaining whey by putting it into jar, still wrapped in its cloth, and putting weights on top. This is how the pot we see here was used.
So, someone was making a hard cheese, but on what sort of site? We know from the Letchworth Museum Accessions Register that the vessel (described as a ‘Bowl Colander’) was ‘found with shards at 2 Chimneys Sandpit March 25th 1942. 4’6” deep’. The register contains two more relevant entries: on 18 August 1952, some pottery was accessioned ‘from Two Chimneys Gravel Pit’, having been found in that year and in 1939, while one from 19 November 1953 records pottery ‘found by F J Berry’.
Historic maps show a sand pit 175 m south of The Two Chimneys public house, which was still shown on a map surveyed in 1951. This must be the place, which is now covered by Wilbury Hills Cemetery. This is just inside Stotfold parish in Bedfordshire, although the pub became part of Letchworth in the 1960s. The Bedfordshire Historic Environment Record lists the site (number 508) and suggests that it may be a disturbed burial. This is unlikely, as Percival Westell’s note on the original discovery stated that ‘[t]he occupation area is approximately 250 ft’, suggesting that the area in which the pottery was found covered more than 75 m across, too large to be a single disturbed burial. Cheese presses are functional, everyday items that are unlikely to be put into a grave as a gift for the departed, as are the quern fragments that were also found there.
Westell’s original guess that it was an occupation site is likely to be correct. Although Bedfordshire County Council commissioned an evaluation of the site, which included geophysics and trial trenching, no further Late Iron Age or Romano-British finds were made. Presumably, everything on the cemetery site lay within the outline of the sand pit and, if the occupation area was larger, it extended east across Stotfold Road. Unfortunately, no aerial photographs show activity on this side, either.
The site fits into a pattern seen across Letchworth Garden City, where almost every hilltop has produced evidence for a Roman period farmstead or village. Examples include Caslon Way on the Grange Estate, the centre of Norton village, Spring Road, Sollershott West/High Avenue and the northern edge of the Jackmans Estate. As we saw last week, individual ‘sites’ are simply part of a wider landscape, and we are lucky to have a lot of evidence locally for land use in the first century AD. We also know a great deal about Romano-British foodways (a useful American term covering the production, preparation and consumption of food), thanks less to the survival of recipes for things eaten by the wealthy and more to archaeological evidence, including data from animal bones and plant remains, things often overlooked by those who can only see glittery metalwork.
Written by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews