1 00:00:01,670 --> 00:00:10,420 Works. I've been told my microphone's a little quiet. So if anybody has any trouble here, he made them feel free to give me a wave or shout. 2 00:00:10,420 --> 00:00:20,390 Sorry. OK. So, yes, Ted, I want to talk about some fairly recent research I undertook looking at a specific burial that was found in Stanley, 3 00:00:20,390 --> 00:00:24,560 just that sort of Colchester in Essex. It called the doctor's burial. 4 00:00:24,560 --> 00:00:30,950 It's a unique burial that had the kind of branches, the late Iron Age to early Roman transition. 5 00:00:30,950 --> 00:00:35,120 So the transition between prehistory and history in Britain. 6 00:00:35,120 --> 00:00:39,710 And it's unusual because of the arrange of graves that were found within the burial, 7 00:00:39,710 --> 00:00:46,950 which were interpreted by the excavate, is as serving both a medical function, but also a magical function. 8 00:00:46,950 --> 00:00:49,040 So I'll just give you a little bit of background. 9 00:00:49,040 --> 00:00:59,380 The site itself was excavated between 1987 and 2003 by the Colchester Archaeological Trust ahead of gravel extraction at the site. 10 00:00:59,380 --> 00:01:04,910 It's this is the volume that they produced in 2007, which is available to download for free, 11 00:01:04,910 --> 00:01:11,030 if anybody would like to, from the Archaeology Day service to the site itself. 12 00:01:11,030 --> 00:01:18,080 Circled here in red is just outside of the modern town of Colchester in the late Iron Age when the site was founded. 13 00:01:18,080 --> 00:01:25,010 It lay outside of what we call an operative. So a major centre of occupation during that period. 14 00:01:25,010 --> 00:01:26,840 But it was also a contested region. 15 00:01:26,840 --> 00:01:37,640 And after 1843 and the the invasion of Britain by and precluded from the Roman army, they founded a legionary Fortress at the site. 16 00:01:37,640 --> 00:01:42,050 So there was a period of domination over the local populace. 17 00:01:42,050 --> 00:01:51,110 And it was during this period that this area was interned. The site itself is multi period. 18 00:01:51,110 --> 00:01:56,510 It starts off as a midline age farmstead. It's very much an agricultural site. 19 00:01:56,510 --> 00:02:02,570 But by the first century B.C., we have the construction of a large enclosure, a burial enclosure, enclosure, 20 00:02:02,570 --> 00:02:10,250 one here, which is the first burials are undertaken on the site after the life of the farmstead had gone out of use. 21 00:02:10,250 --> 00:02:14,530 And very quickly in that period, just across the. 22 00:02:14,530 --> 00:02:15,770 The invasion of Britain. 23 00:02:15,770 --> 00:02:24,140 We see the establishment of three more buried enclosures, three, four and five, which have themselves a whole host of burials. 24 00:02:24,140 --> 00:02:29,720 And my research really just focussed on one burial within one enclosure, 25 00:02:29,720 --> 00:02:36,590 but only to give you a sense of how many different burials and different types of burials were at the site during the time. 26 00:02:36,590 --> 00:02:44,360 So in Enclosure five, where the doctor's burial is located, we have evidence for a mortuary enclosure, PIRE sites. 27 00:02:44,360 --> 00:02:49,990 We have a number of other important burials which were called approaches burial at the mirror burial. 28 00:02:49,990 --> 00:02:53,030 But I want to focus today on the doctor's burial. 29 00:02:53,030 --> 00:03:01,740 This is just to give you an indication of the divine, a diversity of burial rites that were undertaken during the period. 30 00:03:01,740 --> 00:03:06,300 This is the doctor's burial. A photo of the excavation at the time. 31 00:03:06,300 --> 00:03:11,250 It's cremation, burial dates to around 80, 40 to 1850. 32 00:03:11,250 --> 00:03:20,040 And here is a plan of all of the different grade kids that were found within the burial, which was excavated in the summer of 1998 eight. 33 00:03:20,040 --> 00:03:24,030 The reason it was called the doctor's burial is because of this fine. 34 00:03:24,030 --> 00:03:33,660 This is the one of the earliest known examples of a full surgical kit that was found in Britain or in many places across Europe. 35 00:03:33,660 --> 00:03:39,750 It formed a unique set of implements, which I'll talk to in a little bit more detail in a minute. 36 00:03:39,750 --> 00:03:46,950 But this is why it was named readopted burial. And this grew through a lot of interest from different areas. 37 00:03:46,950 --> 00:03:57,540 And particularly after the publication of the volume in 2007, we saw lots of newspaper articles which related to potentially the the person in this 38 00:03:57,540 --> 00:04:05,250 burial being a druid based on both the medicinal aspects of some of the great good found, 39 00:04:05,250 --> 00:04:09,630 but also some of the magical aspects of the great good sound. 40 00:04:09,630 --> 00:04:14,220 And what I wanted to do with my research was to have a little bit more of a deeper 41 00:04:14,220 --> 00:04:20,680 dive into the burial itself and try and dispel some of these myths and complications, 42 00:04:20,680 --> 00:04:25,560 as we heard from Professor Hutten earlier about the paganism involved. 43 00:04:25,560 --> 00:04:30,450 And there has been taken rites associated, modern pagan rites associated with this site as well. 44 00:04:30,450 --> 00:04:38,160 But calling the person a druid I think allows it doesn't allow us to really see the complexity of the burial rites, 45 00:04:38,160 --> 00:04:43,680 involve the supernatural elements involved, the belief systems involved when we take a deep dive. 46 00:04:43,680 --> 00:04:50,760 So my research looked at two aspects materiality and performance to try and really get a better sense 47 00:04:50,760 --> 00:04:58,680 of what these items were and how they related to the overall performing of rights in this period. 48 00:04:58,680 --> 00:05:06,050 Let's go back to the surgical instruments. Here is a replicator version of the instrument that you can see them in a little bit more detail. 49 00:05:06,050 --> 00:05:13,880 And as you can see, they are quite a diverse range of implements, which includes saws, forceps, Schoop probes. 50 00:05:13,880 --> 00:05:18,380 In this period, they would have been quite gruesome instruments to use, I would imagine. 51 00:05:18,380 --> 00:05:25,400 But they as despite the fact that they are referred to as a surgical kit, is is maybe slightly a misnomer. 52 00:05:25,400 --> 00:05:29,600 They are a collection of different instruments that were brought together over time. 53 00:05:29,600 --> 00:05:40,400 What we have here is importations from the Roman world where we see many parallels to Roman military context and surgical kit used there by medicks. 54 00:05:40,400 --> 00:05:47,270 But we also have some implements there were made of Ion's and are likely of more local manufacture. 55 00:05:47,270 --> 00:05:51,950 And what we might see is that they have replicas of instruments found elsewhere. 56 00:05:51,950 --> 00:06:04,100 So it's probably better to see this as an amalgamation of items over time to create a surgical kit rather than a medic's kit that is used by a period, 57 00:06:04,100 --> 00:06:12,350 a person of a particular skill set. And it's also important to realise that these items themselves. 58 00:06:12,350 --> 00:06:18,650 And this is well established in archaeology more generally have a lifecycle of themselves. 59 00:06:18,650 --> 00:06:25,100 So the creation of iron implements in them in the Iron Age has been likened to some two 60 00:06:25,100 --> 00:06:31,610 magical processes the ability of metal workers to be able to create one item out of another. 61 00:06:31,610 --> 00:06:39,440 Turn it into a liquid form and reformulate. It may be seen to have some sort of magical or mysterious property. 62 00:06:39,440 --> 00:06:48,440 The deposition of these items as well. Many parallels that we see on the continent are found in which all contexts are placed in watery locations, 63 00:06:48,440 --> 00:06:54,110 which have a very high occurrence of ritual aspects in this period. 64 00:06:54,110 --> 00:07:00,440 And therefore, the deposition of these items in the grave may not necessarily reflect the ownership. 65 00:07:00,440 --> 00:07:07,130 It may reflect more of a ritual or belief system aspect associated with it. 66 00:07:07,130 --> 00:07:12,790 But it wasn't the only item in the greater precipitant potentially of a medical function. 67 00:07:12,790 --> 00:07:18,780 We have these items here, which is a saucepan, but also a straining bowls, 68 00:07:18,780 --> 00:07:28,240 straining bowl itself had the remains of some environmental material in them which were undertaken are environmental samples. 69 00:07:28,240 --> 00:07:35,330 And the material that was extracted is called our T media, which you some of you may have been heard of. 70 00:07:35,330 --> 00:07:43,090 This has lots of parallels in historical and classical text that refers to it being used for a whole host of medical functions, 71 00:07:43,090 --> 00:07:47,050 including the inducement of sweating or to calm the nerves. 72 00:07:47,050 --> 00:07:53,890 So this relationship in the original excavation volume was seen as quite keen. 73 00:07:53,890 --> 00:08:02,320 However, in terms of the late Iron Age context, these strain of bones have been seen in more of a kind of feasting role that the strain 74 00:08:02,320 --> 00:08:08,290 of bones have in other contexts been found to have the remains of beer in them. 75 00:08:08,290 --> 00:08:13,450 And our team, Mesia, has been used in other contexts to flavour wine as well. 76 00:08:13,450 --> 00:08:18,400 So maybe we need to think about this in a slightly different way, 77 00:08:18,400 --> 00:08:25,680 which is that these items serve the dual role where they were also an aspect of feasting and ritual. 78 00:08:25,680 --> 00:08:34,690 Piecing the related to kind of social context of the late Iron Age are related to more power structures occurring and the formations of communities, 79 00:08:34,690 --> 00:08:38,590 particularly in opera sites where we see this burial. 80 00:08:38,590 --> 00:08:48,400 We also need to look at the possibility that this was maybe associated with general feasting, which is paralleled in other burials in the Iron Age. 81 00:08:48,400 --> 00:08:55,510 And there was a platter of cups and plates which were also found in the grave. 82 00:08:55,510 --> 00:09:02,220 And there might be an aspect there of last feasting rites of the dead. 83 00:09:02,220 --> 00:09:12,840 Moving on to the magical items. This is two sets of of US aspects were considered potentially magical, these iron and brass rods. 84 00:09:12,840 --> 00:09:19,410 There were eight of them for long and for short. They formed these nice kookier pairs in each material. 85 00:09:19,410 --> 00:09:27,510 And these eight rings, which you see on the right hand side here, which were found together, almost stacked on top of one another as well. 86 00:09:27,510 --> 00:09:34,320 The roads themselves were interpreted potentially as representing some sort of divination. 87 00:09:34,320 --> 00:09:37,350 And this quote by Tacitus at the bottom here, 88 00:09:37,350 --> 00:09:48,180 it talks about the casting of lots in order to predict the future and potentially call on spirits and the gods in order to help. 89 00:09:48,180 --> 00:09:54,570 And potentially that might have been a strong association with undertaking some of these medical procedures. 90 00:09:54,570 --> 00:10:02,760 We see parallels in other mediaeval burials of short sticks like death, mostly in would rather than metal, and they're considered one. 91 00:10:02,760 --> 00:10:07,440 So I think the context of the of the burial is quite important. 92 00:10:07,440 --> 00:10:11,760 But some of the objects also share similarities to stylus. 93 00:10:11,760 --> 00:10:15,990 They have the flat flattened end or one or two of the objects. 94 00:10:15,990 --> 00:10:26,010 And literacy potentially forms a role if a a strong theme in the late Iron Age, particularly when it comes to coinage. 95 00:10:26,010 --> 00:10:32,940 And with the preliterate society, potentially the ability to write may have been seen as something is of a mystical, 96 00:10:32,940 --> 00:10:37,250 magical or as part of kind of wider belief system. 97 00:10:37,250 --> 00:10:46,940 The wings themselves had been argued to represent terrorists, which are horse trappings, the elements of the arrival of the horses. 98 00:10:46,940 --> 00:10:53,420 As you can see from this image, they are quite different and they likely were collected over a lifetime as well or over several lifetimes, 99 00:10:53,420 --> 00:11:00,350 much in the same way as a surgical instruments may have. And the context in which they were found is very interesting. 100 00:11:00,350 --> 00:11:06,950 They appear to have been joined together by a small piece of leather and then attached to a piece of wood. 101 00:11:06,950 --> 00:11:15,710 So the the potential there is that they may have been used together essentially as a rattle where they were joined together. 102 00:11:15,710 --> 00:11:20,780 And there's been parallels with musical instruments in the late Iron Age, 103 00:11:20,780 --> 00:11:26,390 although they mostly win these swing instruments rather than rattle such as these. 104 00:11:26,390 --> 00:11:31,490 In other context, raffles have been used to ward off evil spirits and protect the deck. 105 00:11:31,490 --> 00:11:38,690 So this may have been a possible alternative use of this implements. 106 00:11:38,690 --> 00:11:44,960 There are a number of items in the grave, and I think this is one that just worth mentioning, 107 00:11:44,960 --> 00:11:52,610 maybe not because it fits into a magical or medical category, but also because it fits into the wider belief system. 108 00:11:52,610 --> 00:11:58,220 The first being this this gameboard, as you can see here, and I'm doing the outline on that photo, is quite hard to see. 109 00:11:58,220 --> 00:12:02,330 It was made of wood in the head, eroded over time. 110 00:12:02,330 --> 00:12:07,580 It formed an important aspect to the burial because the cremated human remains were placed on top of it, 111 00:12:07,580 --> 00:12:16,170 as were a number of pieces of the surgical toolkit, as were a number of the iron rods that were seen as a potential divination. 112 00:12:16,170 --> 00:12:24,050 And there's been many studies based talking about the symbolic association of of game boards and life and death, 113 00:12:24,050 --> 00:12:32,030 the progression of a game, a journey through life. And it appears from the depositional activities in the grave that we can see that 114 00:12:32,030 --> 00:12:36,170 there were a number of moves made at beginning of the game but didn't finish. 115 00:12:36,170 --> 00:12:41,270 And maybe this was a parallel to life and death in the period. 116 00:12:41,270 --> 00:12:50,320 A modern example might be the movie The Seventh SEAL, where death is it playing a game of chess against the person. 117 00:12:50,320 --> 00:12:57,590 And we see that kind of parallels in other cultures as well. Moving on to a performance. 118 00:12:57,590 --> 00:13:04,430 So this was the largest scale analysis eventually, which looked to the stemware enclosures, as you could see on the left there. 119 00:13:04,430 --> 00:13:12,560 But it was a very detailed an occupied site and there was a number of earthworks that split the settlement to the areas of burial. 120 00:13:12,560 --> 00:13:18,070 What Stanway? So we undertook some quite detailed analysis, experiential analysis. 121 00:13:18,070 --> 00:13:22,400 Are you on the ground looking at some of the routes through the landscape to 122 00:13:22,400 --> 00:13:26,380 understand how people may have moved through the landscape and move to the site? 123 00:13:26,380 --> 00:13:34,060 And we use Blyde, our analysis as well, and looked at the position of the earthworks as they survive in the landscape today. 124 00:13:34,060 --> 00:13:43,070 And we concluded that potentially people move from sites within the settlement along a stream bed, which is quite flooded in the winter. 125 00:13:43,070 --> 00:13:49,670 So that potentially suggests seasonal activity and they may have branched from a spring that's 126 00:13:49,670 --> 00:13:56,540 found on the inside of the settlement along the stream and then up to to the site itself. 127 00:13:56,540 --> 00:14:03,260 And that's important because of the ritual connotations in the late Iron Age with water and in earlier periods as well. 128 00:14:03,260 --> 00:14:12,720 And then this may have been part of the wider process in order to to undertake the burial of the dead. 129 00:14:12,720 --> 00:14:18,830 What I wanted to do with the research is where we should try and reconstruct who's best I could, 130 00:14:18,830 --> 00:14:25,340 how the burial may have undertaken, how the supernatural may have may have occurred. 131 00:14:25,340 --> 00:14:35,170 So this is my attempt. A slight narrative of what's going on and how it may is how that the grave may have ended there. 132 00:14:35,170 --> 00:14:37,370 So we start with the procession. 133 00:14:37,370 --> 00:14:45,200 The body is transported from the spring, within the settlement, along the course of the stream and up the hill to the burial enclosures. 134 00:14:45,200 --> 00:14:54,850 The body is then displayed or stored within the enclosure while the pyre site is constructed and then laid on to the pyre and the pyre itself is lit. 135 00:14:54,850 --> 00:15:03,460 The cremation process takes some time, perhaps six to seven hours, and the sites left to burn out and cool potentially overnight the next day, 136 00:15:03,460 --> 00:15:07,750 the grave has been dug and some of the cremated remains of the deceased are collected 137 00:15:07,750 --> 00:15:13,020 and brought to the gravesite to meet the mourners who have brought the grave goods. 138 00:15:13,020 --> 00:15:20,060 The grave goods were deposited in the grave in a specific order. The gameboard is laid out, several early moves made, 139 00:15:20,060 --> 00:15:27,740 the cremated remains laid on top of the board and there followed by one of the divination rods and then the surgical instruments, 140 00:15:27,740 --> 00:15:33,830 several smaller rods are cast over the items and the remainder of placed in a bundle in the grave. 141 00:15:33,830 --> 00:15:42,940 The rattle, shaken to ward off evil spirits, are placed in the grave also, and the items are covered in a textile substance. 142 00:15:42,940 --> 00:15:51,860 A series of cuts and classes filled with food and drink is offering the place at the other end of the grape as well at a strange bowl and the Penn. 143 00:15:51,860 --> 00:15:58,190 The burial ends, an oak board is placed over the grade. A full emperor is placed in the grave as well. 144 00:15:58,190 --> 00:16:07,370 The mourners disperse while the site is covered over by a mound of earth for potentially commemoration is sometimes later, perhaps a year or two. 145 00:16:07,370 --> 00:16:11,210 The mourners process again along the line of the stream and gather at the site. 146 00:16:11,210 --> 00:16:23,210 They consume food and drink ceremoniously and break the cups and throw them into the ditch that surrounds the enclosure. 147 00:16:23,210 --> 00:16:31,430 I think the process of the kind of analysis of this day, one of the reoccurring themes that I wanted to share was that of memory memory. 148 00:16:31,430 --> 00:16:33,860 It occurred in many different ways. 149 00:16:33,860 --> 00:16:40,310 And we see this in the context of this site because we don't have a written history of the site in the late Iron Age, 150 00:16:40,310 --> 00:16:49,250 but we have more of a pre history, oral traditions, which may have lasted to 300 years and are passed down from one to another. 151 00:16:49,250 --> 00:16:51,820 And part of this oral tradition is through practise, 152 00:16:51,820 --> 00:16:59,600 through the agency and structure in which people undertake their interactions with space and place and undertake these burials. 153 00:16:59,600 --> 00:17:03,530 But these memories are also different and they're persistent in different ways. 154 00:17:03,530 --> 00:17:09,290 The site itself had an midline age origin and a later Iron Age burial ground. 155 00:17:09,290 --> 00:17:13,250 There were ceremonies between event. There was revisiting to the site. 156 00:17:13,250 --> 00:17:18,770 But it was also my individual memories. I visited this site when it was excavated when I was 17 years old. 157 00:17:18,770 --> 00:17:23,230 And this led in part to me being an archaeologist today. 158 00:17:23,230 --> 00:17:27,440 And the site itself only exists in memory because the site has now been destroyed. 159 00:17:27,440 --> 00:17:33,380 And it's now a gravel extraction site. So I feel memory is an important aspect. 160 00:17:33,380 --> 00:17:38,720 So just to conclude, archaeology allows us to understand these complex burial rights, 161 00:17:38,720 --> 00:17:43,580 but it requires us to think beyond one scale, beyond the burial or the site or the landscape. 162 00:17:43,580 --> 00:17:48,050 And it requires us to understand how memory works and how that was passed down. 163 00:17:48,050 --> 00:17:54,680 And I think through constructing in constructing a compelling narrative to discuss these stories, 164 00:17:54,680 --> 00:18:02,380 we need to maintain the accuracy of the archaeological record. But hopefully tell us something that is important. 165 00:18:02,380 --> 00:18:03,898 Thank you very much.