Sacrewell

Roman Glass Jar Micro-excavation | What’s at the Bottom?

The final entry in the jar of dirt saga!

We’ve finally reached the bottom of the micro-excavation – and this is the last outing for our Roman glass jar before we hand it over to our glass expert.

There’s more bone at the bottom, but no grave goods. We were hoping for a coin to help us date it…but sadly no luck!

So this is where we leave it – from spotting bits of glass in the ground at Sacrewell, to Jasmine carefully removing the last of the soil. Now we’ll see what our glass expert can tell us.

Also, due to the accidental ASMR in this episode, Jasmine will be doing all due voiceovers from now on. (Jasmine doesn’t know this yet 😉)

Thanks to everyone who’s watched along – we honestly didn’t expect so many of you to become this invested in a jar of soil!

Roman Glass Jar Micro-excavation | What’s Hidden Inside?

To quote a courageous and distinguished adventurer, we’ve got a jar of dirt – so what did we do with it once it was out of the ground?

What’s inside it? And what can it tell us about how it was used and who used it, almost 2,000 years ago?

Part three of our enormous Roman glass vessel discovery from Sacrewell is here!

This video includes references to human remains. If you’d like to find out more about this vessel and its contents, watch on!

See you later, Sacrewell!

Our very first season of excavation at Sacrewell has come to an end for the year – and what an exciting introduction it’s been!

The support of our incredible community meant we could head to Cambridgeshire to explore what was happening around this Roman villa – last investigated 50 years ago – and its surrounding farmland, and to investigate what more this site might have to share about life in the Nene Valley almost 2,000 years ago.

And we couldn’t sign off from Sacrewell for the year without swooning over the dig’s star find, our incredible and enormous Roman glass vessel!

When we caught a flash of broken glass, we had no idea it would be the start of a discovery quite like this!

The enormous turquoise Roman glass vessel you can see above is one of the most exciting finds we’ve made in Trench 1.

Its distinctive hexagonal shape suggests it may date to around the 2nd century AD – so roughly 1,800 years ago – and we think it may contain a cremation, as it was common for large pots to be reused as cremation urns during this period. We also found a number of iron nails nearby, which are likely to be all that’s left of the wooden box this vessel would’ve originally been placed inside.

Buried alongside this vessel, we also uncovered a ploughshare (the iron blade used to cut through soil when a field is ploughed) that we suspect could be a grave good – buried alongside the remains of this person to represent the kind of life they may have lived.

The trench this discovery was made in investigated a series of ditches, and we think the ditch we made this discovery in may have marked the boundary of a small cemetery serving the nearby villa, as it wouldn’t have been uncommon for a large villa estate in the Roman period to have its own small cemetery.

So, could this burial be associated with the villa? Perhaps the owner? Part of their family? Or even someone wanting to be buried with tools that reflected their life?

The vessel is now in the (very careful!) hands of our specialists for micro-excavation, to find out if this is indeed a cremation burial. We can’t wait to share what they find with you!

Massive Roman Glass Jar Unearthed!

We were going to eke this discovery out, but you guys REALLY wanted an update – so here’s part two!

Where are we? What else have we found at this site? And the question we know you really want the answer to – what’s the deal with this enormous glass vessel?

Watch on to find out!

Well..we weren't expecting to find THIS!

Who knew that a glimpse of glass would become one of our most fascinating finds of the season?

So…what exactly do we have on our hands here at Sacrewell? Any ideas?

Keep your eyes peeled for our next update to find out!