In this part of the project, we aim to relate the practice of gypsum burials in Yorkshire to mortuary customs of dressing and wrapping the body and employing aromatic substances on the body and textiles as part of lavish funerary displays known in some Roman provinces on the continent from the 2nd century CE onwards.
The use and display of funerary textiles during the lying in state of the dead, the procession to the grave, and the burial ceremony represent an important focus of this research on the archaeology of death and the treatment of the body. Collating a wide variety of comparative archaeological evidence on clothing and shrouds and the colours and decoration of fabrics in the Roman world will enable us to contextualise the nature and function of textiles and how they reflected the social status of the people using them in the funerary sphere.
Furthermore, we are contextualising the use of gypsum in Yorkshire burials in a wider group of burials from the 2nd to 5th centuries CE in continental Europe and North Africa in which white substances, as powders or pastes, served as a bedding or packing for bodies. Data and information on Roman burials in which gypsum, plaster, or chalk was employed will be collated and evaluated, including a small number of burials in Italy (Rome), Tunisia (Hammamet), Germany (Trier), and other sites in southern Britain.
This research already makes it clear, however, that encasing bodies in a poured gypsum "bath" is particularly evident and uniquely concentrated in the 3rd and 4th centuries CE in the Yorkshire region. We seek to explain why and for whom this funerary custom was chosen and to explore the sensory and ritual dimensions of wrapping and enveloping a body in a shroud and covering it in liquid gypsum before interment. Our research will investigate whether this rite was related to status or geographic origin, an expression of religious belief, or a response to disease.
This work will be ongoing throughout the project, using site visits, multi-language published and unpublished information, online reports, archival material, and communications from researchers and colleagues.