Two Roman cremation burials (2 and 10) were excavated in Trench 7. Both had been cut into (i.e. through) the subsoil and were sealed by c.0.35m of topsoil. Burial 2 consisted of cremated human bone contained within a large jar that was covered by an upturned dish. Burial 10 had been truncated in antiquity and comprised the lower half of a large jar containing cremated human bone and a mid-brown clayey silt (12) fill that had probably accumulated post-deposition. Both burials appeared to have been made in circular close-fitting pits, 0.45m and 0.39m wide respectively.<1>

The cremation vessels from burial 2, both in fine grey ware and largely intact, comprise a large narrow-necked jar and a flanged dish which had been used as a cover for the jar. The vessel itself was half-filled with large pieces of cremated human bone. The jar has burnished-line decoration around the girth and a reserve zone with vertical incised line decoration on the shoulder. This is a form Cam 232, described by Hull (1963, 183 <2>) as belonging to the second half of the 1st century AD, but appearing in graves up to about AD 180. The B4 dish is dated by Going to the mid 2nd-mid 3rd centuries but, with the jar, provides a date of c.AD 150-180 for the burial.

Burial 10 had been truncated in antiquity and only the lower half of the container survives. This is also a large grey ware jar, unfortunately not closely datable within the Roman period.

Fragments of cremated human bone, with a total weight of 1540g, were recovered from both burials. The cremated bone (1010g) from burial 2 is friable and was carefully removed from the cremation vessel without the necessity for wet-sieving. There are numerous large and readily-identifiable pieces, many of which have been poorly burnt to a patchy dark blue, rather than the creamy-white resulting from an efficient cremation process. One section of long bone is only partly calcined. Since the cremation urn was intact until discovery, and the contents had been protected by an inverted dish, all of the originally deposited cremated bone will probably be present. No artefacts were observed.

The truncated cremation urn from burial 10 was emptied by hand and the human bone fragments were separated from the fill by wet-sieving over a 500 micron mesh. The dried bone (530g) was separated into coarse and fine fractions using 4mm and 2mm sieves. Bone fragments were extracted by hand from the coarse fraction and comprise mainly creamy-white fragments. A small number of fragments are blue-grey. There are fewer recognisable elements than for burial 2, but sections from long bones, some quite large, are present. There are many small fragments in the unsorted fine fraction. The residue from the coarse fraction was discarded. No artefacts were noted apart from a chip of glass which may be intrusive.