SDO9639 - Interim Report on Excavations in the Roman Cemetery, Poundbury, Dorchester, 1969. Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society

The fourth season of excavation in the late Roman cemetery at Poundbury lasted for 10 weeks and was confined to a strip 150ft x 75ft, 120 yards E of Poundbury Camp's E gate and 100 ft E of the area dug in the previous season. Within this mechanically cleared strip, work was concentrated on an L shaped area of 3,500sq ft to the south and a smaller area to the north. A single pallisade slot ran for over 200ft across the site in an approximate E-W direction and predated the late Roman cemetery. 40 graves were excvated during this season, generally coffined and aligned E-W, although some later ones cut into earlier graves and were only roughly lined with re-used roof tiles. A badly damaged mausoleum (R7) contained 3 burials, one of which was laid in a ham stone sarcophagus packed with gypsum, in a shroud edged with fine gold wire. A second structure (R8), also of mortared flint and limestone walls, contained fragments of painted wall plaster and leaf-shaped stone roof tiles in the rubble fill. One fragement of painted wall plaster contained images of three important figures with staffs, two in purple robes. Post-Roman remains were excavated for the first time this season. This included various pits and other fatures and three complex but fragmentary timber structures of rectilinear plan. The most complex building (PR2) was of beam slot and post-hole construction and has been tenatively interpreted as having a range of rooms around three sides of a central open area. Finds included abraded Roman pottery and domestic items such as spindle whorl, hones, bone comb, iron knife and socketed chisel.