This is a bit of an odd grave. No actual"grave cut" as such was ever found, although it seems that a space was dug, filled in, and covered with baked bricks. At some subsequent time those bricks were chopped away at, and a load of human bones were dumped in the eastern half of the trench. Bones from all over the body were found, but none of the long-bones; even a heavily fragmented skull was present.
No primary burial was ever found - not a single bone appeared in the western half of the 'covered area', suggesting that no body was ever present there. This suggests the space was never actually intended as a burial, although subsequently some human bones were dumped there. At some point following the original infilling of the cut, a secondary truncation was made, possibly at the same time as the mixed charnel deposit was dumped, cutting away at the mud-bricks covering the grave and creating the cut seen today. No cut around the mudbricks was visible, suggesting they were simply laid at surface level, and not buried or sunk into the ground in any way.
Massive truncation of the feature by animal burrows had occurred, particularly in the walls. The whole feature existed within a spit of raised ground, left standing between two burials removed last season. The whole feature was also surrounded by unit 14217 - the general unit assigned to the mixed sediments at this level. |
