LAUSR

Grave-goods comprised mainly jars and beakers, found with sixteen burials, as well as occasional dress ornaments. The purpose and mode of the fitting of large iron rings found on lower leg bones in two graves is uncertain, but it seems more likely that they were degrading and painful restraints than body ornaments (pp. 95–96). The burials are less distinctive in terms of the health status inferred from skeletal indicators (pp. 122–24); comparison with the sample from the materially richer cemetery around Spitalfields to the east does not suggest an especially disadvantaged population. Yet, whatever the specific status of the buried individuals, the expedient location and impermanence of many interments suggests that the bonds which elsewhere saw mourners return to the tomb to commemorate friends, co-workers, or family members were weaker in the group burying their dead by the upper Walbrook. As well as offering a major new study in Roman funerary archaeology, the volume exemplifies the enhanced understanding of an urban ‘deathscape’ made possible by integrating diverse excavations in a thematic publication.