More information : Roman cemetery [R] (site of) (1)
Col Drew thinks this site was probably 0.25 mile W of where marked.
(2)
[SY 698 823] In November 1845 Mr Medhurst found a cemetery where he
obtained 40-50 urns and Samian pottery. Some are in the Dorset County
Museum and some in the BM. The site is 300 yards N of the shaft in theTemple [Dorset 53 NE 3]. [SY 6995 8203] The site of the cemetery is
about 100 yards on the SE side of the Temple. It appeared to be a
parallelogram bounded on each side by a low thick stone wall giving itslightly the appearance of a raised vallum, and extending over an areaof 500 ft. At about 2 ft depth a cist was found containing a skeleton
with nails and decayed wood - evidently a coffin. The site produced
several inhumations, burnt bones and animal bones, urns and altars".
In the same field a coin hoard was found in 1812 [Dorset 53 NE 7]. [SY698 823] This site is about 300 yards from the Temple "on the northernslope of the hill though the intervening space is also part of the
same extensive Roman cemetery. There were a few personal ornaments andstyli an iron sword, bone spearhead, a fragment of Purbeck marble
showing a mould for casting a dagger and the foot of a table or chair
of Kimmeridge Shale. The cemetery began to be used about 1 AD - Iron
Age C and continued to be used during the Roman occupation. The
burials were clearly inhumations and not cremations. Some 80 skeletonswere found and only part of the cemetery was excavated. Some ofthe
bead rim pottery is in the Dorset County Museum. [The conflicting
evidence of site is based upon the original Medhurst excavation of
1845]. (3-7)
In the Roman cemetery on Jordan Hill was found a slab lying near a
skeleton and on it a handled cup of black ware, also a Samian cup
around which were five small bowls of blackware with a piece of
Kimmeridge Shale, smooth and bearing linear and semi-circular
tracings. An elegant bowl of Kimmeridge Shale was found by Medhurst in1845. (8)
[SY 69 82] No evidence was obtained during field investigation to
confirm any of the sitings given in Authorities 2 and 3. The area is
under pasture and a crop. There were no surface finds. The area
indicated includes the sites given in Authorities 1, 2 and 3. (9)
The cemetery perhaps pre-Roman in origin, lay N and NE and extended atleast 300 yds, over an area where Roman material occurs on the
surface. The most reliable account is probably that of T W Wake Smart
in Warne's Ancient Dorset. About 80 inhumation burials of adults and
children were found in an area of about one acre, variously orientatedand often flexed, and sometimes in groups of up to six individuals.
Some were in stone cists and one grave was paved with chalk tesserae;
nails indicated that some had been in wooden coffins. Low drystone
walls, one of crescent-shape 21 ft long, apparently demarcated burial
plots and sometimes had burials in their structure (Shipp (in
Hutchins) states that the cemetery was within a parallelogram 500 ft
across with a low thick wall). Near the burials were (i) several
floors of white clay, one seemingly of 18 ft by 12 ft with stone
walls; (ii) clay-lined hollows containing ashes, animal bones and
sherds, several apparently provided with stone-lined drains; (iii) twostone cists containing burnt shale and calcined animal bones; (iv)
several stone piles on which rested animal bones or vessels
containing them. Some burials had single pots or groups; in one group
of nine vessels, three (a samian dish, a black ware imitation of
samian form 37, and a handled cup of black ware) stood on an engraved
oblong plaque or tray of shale placed at the shoulder, with five blackware bowls ranged around it, and a bottle of yellowish ware at the
knees. Another imitation of samian form 37 was made of shale. Some 80
vessels survive (mostly in DCM and BM) outof perhaps 125 listed as
from Jordan Hill in sale catalogues of the Medhurst Collection
(Sotheby's, 1 July 1879; C T Jefferies, Bristol, 1893), including manyDurotrigian jars, bowls and handled mugs, some samian ware, imitation
samian in black fabrics, a Gallo-Belgic terra rubra bowl and terra
nigra platters, and two lead glazed beakers. Although sherds of late
Romano-British ware were found, most of the whole vessels may be
attributed to the cemetery and assigned to the second half of the 1st
century AD, with some few of the 2nd century or later. A bronze
armlet, finger-rings and sandal nails accompanied burials, also iron
arrowheads, an iron sword, styli, and bone weaving-combs. Other
objects from the cemetery area, not necessarily with burials and in
some cases suggesting domestic or indistrial occupation included iron
spear-heads, saddle and rotary quern-stones, chert and flint balls, a
shale armlet and lathe-turned armlet cores, a Durotrigian silver coin
and three of the 3rd and 4th centuries, sherds including painted wareof New Forest type, and mnay pieces of angular supports resembling
salt-boiling 'briquetage'. Less precisely attributed objects from
Jordan Hill are four more whole or partial shale plaques or trays withengraved decoration, a carved shale slab, a shale tablet with stylizedlion in relif from a site yielding bronze coins and sherds, Iron Age
swan-necked and ring-headed pins (Arch J xci (1934), 228-9) La Tene I
and III and Roman brooches, and a bronze Roman mirror-handle
(Archaeologia Cambrensis c (1949), 32). (10)
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