11/06/2024
We examined the west side of the Roman plinth foundation in the apse in advance of site backfilling during the last week of May. This produced another unurned cremation burial (Cremation Burial Pit No 17). At the base of the pit below the bone and ash was another fossil which this time rather than the typical sponge fossils appears to be an urchin fossil. Also there were four charred sloe pips amongst the cremated bone and 32 (recovered) fragments of burnt flint. Whether these are from a flint artefact which subsequently disintegrated after burial, as a result of being in the funeral pyre, or from flint knapping waste put in the burial we don't know. Although there was a principal concentration of cremations we have found since 2020 a number of cremations generally across the site as well as numerous pits with similar artefacts but no bone identified, suggesting the cemetery was well spread out. With other cremated bone find spots from the pyre area we have found over twenty find spots of cremated bone and more than 30 pits in total with bone and/or Bronze Age artefacts. As yet there is nowhere else in the Forest of Dean from where Bronze Age unurned cremations have been found. In fact unurned cremations are very rare, in part due to the difficulty of identifying them without urns. Given the consistency of grave goods finds and the generally small amounts of bone in each burial it is looking increasingly likely that the site is a memorial ground, where some pits had stone markers, suggesting they were 'cenotaphs'. The discovery of these cremations is entirely due to Robin Holley's archaeological expertise (I have failed to find any!!). The cremations were Carbon 14 dated by SUERC at Glasgow University to the 13th century BC. The burials are small to very small amounts of human bone suggesting the majority was scattered on the wind. We don't know however whether the burials were adults or children. I attach some photos from this cremation pit.
