Abstract
THE exploration of Verulamium by Dr. R. E. Mortimer Wheeler has added importance and interest to any finds in what may be termed subsidiary areas in the vicinity. Local archaeologists, fortunately, are fully alive to the importance of this branch of investigation in their studies; and the St. Albans and Hertfordshire Archaeological Society has undertaken a comprehensive survey of an area in the parish of St. Stephen, immediately to the south of the site of Roman Verulamium. Here in the churchyard a glass burial urn was found in 1848, and other finds have been made since then at various times, though without any precise records being kept. The work of the survey has been carried out by Dr. Norman Davey, assisted by a band of voluntary helpers. The erection of some cottages on the south side of King Harry Lane, which runs in a north-westerly direction towards the Roman wall from the churchyard, made it possible to collect sufficient evidence to establish the position of forty cremation burials and a brick-lined cremation chamber. A small strip of waste land on the north side of the lane was also thrown open to investigation by the owner, and has proved rich in The National Institute of Sciences of India to a preliminary aceaant; which appeared in Times of January 24, is a structure, which proved to be the abutment of a bridge carrying a track over a ditch. On the east side of the track were two cremation burials and on the west side forty-two cremation burials and two inhumations, one of a child and one of an adult. No sort of order or alignment- seems to \iave “been observed. ˜Kone> ctf t\ie pottery is certainly later than A.D. 160, but it is interesting as showing the development in design from Belgic to Roman. Of the forty-four cremation burials twenty-one consisted of the urn only; but the remaining twenty-three included smaller vessels, beakers, jugs, dishes of Samian ware, and a small glass tear bottle. A report by Dr. Davey will be presented to the Society shortly.
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Roman Cemetery at Verulamium. Nature 137, 181–182 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137181c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137181c0