Last month’s visit to Chester/Deva got me of Roman Britain. I have previously visited Silchester/Calleva (CA 337, April 2018), Wroxeter/Viroconium (CA 338, May 2018), and London (CA 416, November 2024), but what about other Roman towns and cities? Going through the CA archive, I realised that I touched on Colchester/Camulodunum’s greatness in CA 330 (September 2017), commenting that ‘[it] may win the accolade of being the most-visited site by CA of all’. So this month the only way is Essex, headed to a city that was something big in the Roman world.
Current Archaeology’s first formal visit to Colchester came in issue 26 (May 1971), setting the tone for all subsequent reporting – a professional and detailed update about all known aspects of the city at this time from Ros Niblett, one of the two great names of its archaeological story alongside Philip Crummy. For more on both of these heritage heroes, you can read an interview with Ros in CA 209 (May 2007) and with Philip in CA 185 (April 2003).
The high standards that Ros and Philip instilled from the outset are a crucial part of Colchester’s story: other sites of equal richness were less ably excavated – and less well reported – in this era, when the pace of development and the threat of destruction sometimes led to corners being cut. Not so in Colchester. As that first article explains, the Colchester Excavation Committee (the origins of today’s Colchester Archaeological Trust) had been set up in 1964 in the face of growing redevelopment threats to the city’s archaeology, like many other urban sites at the time. The
Committee provided the formal framework for all subsequent fieldwork and the exceptional quality of reporting that continues to this day – the most recent update being in CA 402 (September 2023). Across the 1970s, the intense pace of work there kept the updates coming, including Colchester’s first cover story (CA 41, November 1973); a focused report on its legionary fortress in the south-west corner of the town (CA 43, March 1974); and a detailed re-survey of the whole city in its wider landscape context (CA 72, July 1980), which is a fascinating demonstration of how much was achieved in under a decade. A further ‘state of the nation’ survey followed in CA 103 (July 1987), the city’s second and sadly most-recent cover story, although new finds from the core of the city continue to be made – see, for example, CA 314 (May 2016) on the discovery of a previously unknown Roman arcade and new finds from the legionary fortress in CA 349 (April 2019).
LIFE AND DEATH IN THE CITY
From the baseline established by the 1960s-1970s fieldwork, reporting in the 1980s-1990s takes a different tone, deepening our understanding of the site and its wider connections. CA 93 (August 1984), for example, highlights one exceptional find: a tiny fragment of silk from a Roman burial that had been imported along the famous Silk Road all the way from China. CA 120 (June 1990) then reported on a likely Roman church dating to c.AD 320-340 (lying adjacent to a Roman cemetery in the south-west outskirts of the city), which remains to this day the earliest known Christian structure in Britain.
Life and death in and around the city was covered in detail in CA 132 (January 1993) and CA 153 (July 1997), examining the early 1st-century AD burials at Stanway that relate to the Iron Age/Romano-Celtic oppidum at Gosbecks two miles to the south of the Roman and medieval town, evidence of the elites who interacted with the Romans both before and after their formal arrival. For more on this pre-Roman history, see also CA 208 (March 2007). The finds from there are spectacular, including high-status ‘princely’ burials containing many fine objects. Among them are the notable remains of a board game, alongside other unusual evidence for the lives and livelihoods of the citizens, such as the burial of a ‘doctor’ identified thanks to the survival of a well-preserved medical kit beside their remains. A very different slice of Colchester’s mortuary practices then features in CA 277 (April 2013), examining a 2nd- to 3rd-century AD funeral pyre site near the circus to the south of the city (more on the latter follows below), with a cluster of burials surrounded by lines of small post-holes. Although little bone survives due to the area’s acid soil, as CA reported at this time, ‘there are almost 400 inhumations and cremations… with a range of subtly varied burial traditions – the overwhelming impression is one of cosmopolitan diversity’.
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE CIRCUS
CA 196 (March 2005) moved back to the Roman city proper (albeit slightly to the south of its walls) with a find that hit the international headlines and became the focus of reporting across the 2000s: that of a chariot-racing circus, the only one known in Britain. Finds at three separate locations made in advance of a proposed housing development on the former military-garrison site confirmed a substantial masonry
In 2020, Colchester played host to some equine visitors in an experimental investigation about horses in the circus, covered in CA 360 by Philip Crummy.
structure over 350m long and 70m wide (1,148ft by 230ft); not as big as the final version of Rome’s Circus Maximus (600m by 200m/1,969ft by 656ft), it is equivalent to that known at Trier in Germany (400m by 80m/1,312ft by 262ft) and by far the largest building in Roman Britain. CA 201 (January 2006) followed up with more detail on this find, one of the great modern-day discoveries of British archaeology, and a campaign was established to purchase and preserve the site, reported in CA 239 (February 2010), CA 242 (May 2010), and CA 245 (August 2010). Thankfully this was successful, with the circus coming into the care of the Colchester Archaeological Trust. CA 360 (March 2020) provides the most recent, triumphant tale from this location, when horses returned to the site as part of an examination of how it operated. Far from the huge animals of movie lore, Colchester points instead to small horses of 10-12 hands (about 1.1m to the tops of their shoulders). Finds from this wider area to the south of the city continue to be made: see, for example, CA 257 (August 2011) on the discovery of a coin hoard of AD 260-270 made nearby.
A SPOT OF BOTHER FROM BOUDICA
The most recent cycle of reporting from Colchester has been focused on evidence for its devastation during the Boudican revolt in the mid-1st century AD. CA 247 (October 2010) provides a useful overview of its impact not just on Colchester but other sites in East Anglia, and subsequent issues highlight finds from the city itself that are stark testament to the scale of destruction at this time. They include, in CA 294 (September 2014), the grisly find of a human jaw and part of a tibia with its end sliced away by a sharp blade, found in a layer of burnt debris associated with the revolt. Most spectacularly, CA 296 (November 2014) and CA 308 (November 2015) reported on what became known as the ‘Fenwick Treasure’, a cache of jewellery from this period, buried in a house that was burned down during the sacking of the city, only to be rediscovered prior to the redevelopment of the former Fenwick department store there (hence the name). It was lifted as a single block to enable its excavation off-site under controlled conditions, a painstaking process that revealed one of the finest caches known from this era, including at least three gold armlets, a silver chain necklace, two silver bracelets and a large armlet, a small bag of coins, and a small box containing two pairs of gold earrings and four finger-rings. This is a fitting place to conclude my report on one of the greatest and richest sites in Roman Britain, a cosmopolitan and wealthy town before, during, and after the Roman conquest that highlights once again how well connected these isles were to the wider Empire at its height.
Visit Colchester have an excellent website that highlights its Roman sites: www.visitcolchester.com/explore/colchesters-history/roman-colchester. You can dive into detail in the city’s online Historic Environment Record too, which is found at: https://colchesterheritage.co.uk/roman-colchester. The Colchester Archaeological Trust’s website is: https://catuk.org.
