Following on from Saturday’s Environmental Archaeology Workshop, where we processed some samples from a Roman cremation burial, today’s image shows the cremation vessel under excavation alongside an image of the human bone that was extracted from the heavy residue.

The cremation vessel is a large copy of a globular amphora vessel in a local, pink, sandy fabric dating between c. 170-200 AD. The tiny slivers of burnt  human bone shown in the right hand side of the image are all that remain of this heavily truncated cremation. The fragments measure between 2 and 10 mm in length and were painstakingly picked out from the heavy residue by hand by the team who took part in the workshop.