'Flat furniture for the afterlife': Roman burial bed found in London | Archaeology

Archaeologists in London have made the “extremely important” discovery of a complete wooden burial bed, the first ever discovered in Britain.

The well-preserved bed, described by experts as “unprecedented”, was unearthed at the site of a former Roman cemetery near Holborn Viaduct in central London, along with five oak coffins. Before these excavations, only three Roman wooden coffins were found in the capital.

Wooden remains from the Roman era in Britain (43-410 AD) rarely survive, but as the flooded burial ground adjoins the underground River Fleet, his graves are well preserved.

The burial bed is made of quality oak and has carved legs and joints secured with small wooden pegs. It was dismantled before the burial of an adult man who was around 20-30 years old.

“It was quite carefully dismantled and hidden away, almost like flat furniture for the afterlife,” said Michael Marshall, an artefacts specialist at the Mall archaeologists (Museum of Archaeology, London), although he stressed that much remains to be learned about the burial. Excavations at the site continue.

Part of the site, which lies outside the walls of the Roman city and is 6 meters below modern ground level, was excavated in the 1990s. However, “the bed was a complete surprise because we had never seen anything like it before,” Marshall said. Although there are reports of people being carried on beds in funeral processions and sometimes images of them on tombstones, he said: “We had no idea that people were buried in such Roman burial beds at all. This is why there is no prior evidence from Britain.'

No other grave goods were found with the bed, but it was almost certainly a high-status individual, Marshall said. “This is an incredibly well-made piece of furniture. This is real joinery, as opposed to something that has been knocked off. It is one of the finest pieces of furniture ever found Roman Britain.”

Personal items were recovered elsewhere in the cemetery, including beads, a glass vial that appears to still contain remains, and a decorated lamp believed to date to the earliest period of Roman occupation between 43 and 80 AD .

Amazingly, it's decorated with a picture of a defeated gladiator, “which is pretty cool,” Marshall said. Similar images have previously been found in funerary contexts in London and Colchester. “There is something about the symbolism of the fallen gladiator that makes sense in a funerary context. Obviously, the defeated gladiator is the one who dies, but they also fight to the death.

“So there's evidence that when you analyze these burials, some very subtle variations in how people mourned their dead are starting to emerge.”