The Western Cemetery of Roman Cirencester
Author: Neil Holbrook, Jamie Wright, E.R. McSloy and Jonny Geber
Excavations within the Western Cemetery of Roman Cirencester resulted in the discovery of 118 inhumation and 8 cremation burials. It was the largest investigation of a Roman cemetery in Cirencester since the Bath Gate excavations of the 1970s. Nine burials survived within a postulated walled cemetery. The pottery from the fills of these graves had a clear emphasis on amphorae, flagons and tazze, indicative of funerary ceremonies involving the consumption of wine, or the pouring of it as libations, and the burning of substances. Just outside the walled cemetery, the burial of a 2 to 3 year-old child contained a magnificent enamelled bronze figurine of a cockerel of 2nd-century AD date. Such figurines are rare finds, with only four or five similar examples known from Britain. Burial activity continued into the 4th century AD. One unusual later grave had a reused sculpted and inscribed tombstone placed face down immediately over the coffin of an adult male.
