| Description | Remains suggesting Roman settlement and late Roman/Sub Roman cemetery. Discovered in the area centred on SE 4031 4838, west of St James' Church, Wetherby, during quarrying in 1928 1930. Features included two large ditches, a number of shallow ditches, pits, hearths and at least eleven burials, with additional human remains noted during gravel removal. Finds included animal bone, 1st to 4th c. AD pottery, a flint scraper and flakes, and four coins: two AE 3 of Constans (A. D. 333 350); one AE 2 Magnentius (A. D. 364 378); one AE 3 Valens (A. D. 364 378.) It is unclear from the WYAS SMR card whether or not these coins were found together.
Kent (YAJ 31) attributes ditches, pits and hearths to a midden area on the outskirts of a Roman settlement, which she dates to 3rd/4th c. AD and earlier. The burials consisted of six straightforward burials, four cist burials, and a burial which had been covered with worn stone roofing tiles. See offprint of YAJ 31 for full details of cist burials. Ten of the bodies were orientated with the head to the north northeast; orientation of the eleventh body is unknown.
No grave goods, although one of the graves contained a single sherd of Roman pot. M. Faull argues that the absence of grave goods may indicate Christian burials, and therefore a very late Roman or Sub Roman date for the cemetery. Roman fibulae, coins, pottery and a ditch are reputed to have been found to the east of the 1928 30 site at some earlier date. Archaeological involvement on these sites apparently took the form of a Watching Brief. Finds formerly in the possession of B.W. J. Kent. Although the area has been quarried, the possiblity of surviving archaeology still exists. |