The Seeing the Dead research project at the University of York investigates the funerary custom, attested in Roman Yorkshire in the 3rd and 4th centuries CE, of using liquid gypsum to cover the clothed and shrouded bodies of adults and children as they lay in coffins of stone or lead.
This took place immediately before the coffin lid was closed and the container in its dug pit was forever buried under soil. The drying and hardening gypsum in the coffin formed a negative cavity around the decomposing body, preserving for us today the contours of the dead and the imprints of the textiles in which they were wrapped. We assumed that the gypsum, a mineral that was heated between 150-200 degrees Celsius to a powder and then mixed with water to create plaster of Paris, was diluted with enough water to make it a fluid and pourable mixture.
However, our recent scrutiny of the gypsum burial casings surprisingly reveals that the gypsum mixture in some cases had the consistency of a soft, pliant paste that was applied by hand to the body. Evidence for this is the spectacular discovery of finger marks and fingerprints preserved in the now hardened gypsum of an adult male and female burial in York, indicating that someone 1700 years ago introduced the wet and malleable gypsum mass into the coffin and patted it down or smoothed it by hand over the corpse. Even the prints from the tip of one of the fingers are to be seen clearly.
These exceptional hand marks and fingerprints provide a unique insight into the performance of Roman funerary rites and the very close, personal contact between the deceased and the last living person to engage with them at the time of burial. They are a striking trace of human activity that is not otherwise known to survive on a body in a Roman funerary context.
It remains to be seen whether the individuals applying the gypsum were undertakers or professional service providers or if they were members of the grieving family of the deceased. In either case, they are an unprecedented indication of a very hands-on approach to rituals of death in Roman York.
The gypsum burial mentioned in this article is in the Collection of the York Museums Trust (YORYM : 2010.1219).