21st April 2013, 03:49 PM
kevin wooldridge Wrote:....most archaeological 'exhumations' these days take place as a result of development of former burial grounds...
Most of the skellies I've dealt with in the last couple of decades have been liberally (and often singly) scattered across the landscape. And often burials come across in trial trenches are of uncertain status - are there 200 more just beyond the trench? Certainly on several of our local Roman sites small 'family plots' of sometimes only a couple of burials are common, and cremations are scattered apparently at random.
How do you define a 'burial ground' or cemetery?
And how are you supposed to know the date of unaccompanied burials at the time of application? - we've got some in the office at the moment which were dug as C3rd-4th Roman but C14 showed to be C8th-9th middle Saxon, thereby shifting them across the AD700 divide...