The Seeing the Dead project team have been working on a particularly special Roman gypsum burial this month - the catchily-titled 'YORYM : 2010.1219'! In the collection of York Museums Trust, the fragments of this burial are still inside the original stone coffin (or 'sarcophagus') and the gypsum inside forms an enclosed casing around the lower half of the body.
The sarcophagus was found during the building of York Railway station in 1877, and has since spent time on display at the Yorkshire Museum and in storage. The first recorded mention of it is in the 1881 handbook to the Museum of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society (page 59, number 65). We therefore know that while the burial potentially contains materials that have been largely untouched since their discovery, we also can't be wholly confident that everything we find is of Roman date and in its original position.
A key part of our work was to remove the upper part of the casing to understand more about how the gypsum was applied – and then hardened – around the body. This would allow us to explore whether any other original materials remain, including items the individual was buried with or human remains such as bones. It would also give us an excellent opportunity to collect samples for scientific analysis from areas of gypsum that we could be confident were within their original positions.
However, the fragments are very delicate, and we were initially unsure whether the upper part of the gypsum casing was still connected to the lower part... which would have made our job very difficult! An initial assessment suggested that things were perhaps not as awkward as we'd first thought though: the upper part of the gypsum appeared to be resting on supports, including old bricks. This confirmed that the burial had in the past been arranged for display – something that we already suspected from the wooden surround at the top of the sarcophagus that had been rather roughly attached to provide a glass 'viewing-lid'.
Whilst this reassured us that the removal of the large upper gypsum fragment would perhaps not be as difficult as first thought, it also suggested that the remains inside would likely not be as untouched as we'd hoped. Regardless, we were able to – very carefully! – lift the large upper fragment up and out of the sarcophagus. We were not disappointed...!
The inside surface of the upper casing retained amazing imprints of the fabrics that the buried individual were wrapped in - as good as many of the previous examples that we have encountered on the project. On the outside of this large fragment was what we think could be finger marks, raising many questions as to why people may have placed their hands onto the still-wet gypsum during the burial process.
Amazingly, the lower portions of the gypsum within the sarcophagus itself (on which the individual would have been laid) contained small, hardened fragments of textile. Many gypsum fragments have the imprints of fabrics, but to find intact textile itself is rare. This is likely due to the fabrics soaking up the liquid gypsum, which then hardened and preserved the fibres, but why textiles were preserved in this situation and not others is as yet unclear.
Covering the floor of the sarcophagus was a thick layer of gypsum dust, which obscured many of the fine details. This needed to be removed in a systematic, careful manner to ensure that no precious information was lost. A grid system was devised that divided the sarcophagus up into defined areas corresponding with the individual's burial position. Dust and materials from the head, hands, feet, etc, could therefore be collected separately to ensure we could trace back the position of our samples to specific locations.
Alongside the important evidence regarding textiles and human remains, we also encountered elements that reminded us of the sarcophagus's journey after it was excavated. Fragments of the wooden display casing were present, alongside rat poison and other potentially hazardous materials that had been placed, accidentally dropped or blown their way in to the sarcophagus over the many decades. Latex gloves and high-grade face masks were therefore important equipment during the close-quarters excavation process!
Full 3D scans of the fragments and sarcophagus were undertaken both pre- and post-excavation. Not only did this capture the cleaned gypsum remains in sub-millimetre detail for analysis, but it also ensured that we were able to 'digitally reconstruct' the sarcophagus and its contents in its pre-excavation form if necessary. We're looking forward to seeing the results of the scientific analyses that will be taking place over the coming weeks and months to see what secrets this burial can reveal and help us understand this fascinating practice further!
If you'd like to learn more about the techniques we're using on the project and our different areas of research, check out our other blog posts and the project's Work Package summaries.