9

Post-war reconstruction (c. ad 61–70)

Military reoccupation

The city destroyed by British rebels was swiftly restored in a military reoccupation (Fig. 9.1). Excavations at Plantation Place revealed the north-east corner of a small fort built over the town’s ruins between the forum and east gate (Figs. 9.2 and 9.3). A 7-metre-wide, turf-fronted, mudbrick rampart was raised over a lattice of reused burnt timbers set behind a pair of 3-metre-wide ditches. ¹ An intervallum road followed the inside of the defences, giving access to timber buildings that may have included a cookhouse, latrine and granary. No barracks were found, implying that the soldiers lived in tents. A reconstruction based on local topography suggests that the fort occupied an area of about one hectare, making it large enough for a 480-strong cohort.

Fig. 9.1 A proposed reconstruction of Roman London c. ad 63, following the military reoccupation of the city after the revolt. Drawn by Justin Russell.

Fig. 9.2 The Neronian fort at Plantation Place (FER97: after Dunwoodie et al. 2017). Drawn by Justin Russell.

Fig. 9.3 Section through the Neronian fort defences (adapted from Dunwoodie et al. 2017 and reproduced by kind permission of Museum of London Archaeology).

Texts from the Bloomberg headquarters mention personnel drawn from cohorts of Nervians, Vangiones, and Lingones that included part-mounted units (equitatae), which are likely to have been amongst the auxiliary reinforcements that Tacitus tells us came to Britain from Germany in ad 61. ² One document was addressed to Classicus, prefect of the Sixth Cohort of Nervii, who is almost certainly the Treveran noble who commanded a cavalry unit in the Batavian revolt of ad 70. ³ Classicus was a kinsman of Britain’s new imperial procurator, Julius Classicianus, whose patronage may have helped him secure his commission. The presence of these troops accounts for the fact that items of military equipment are more common in assemblages formed after the revolt, and include armour, military dress and cavalry harness fittings from sites within the fort and on the banks of the Walbrook. ⁴

Post-revolt engineering also involved the construction of a timber corduroy across the upper Walbrook valley using massive close-set cleft oak logs felled in the spring and winter of ad 62. ⁵ This was built following British, not Roman, woodworking traditions, suggesting the involvement of a contingent of allies or captive labour. It may have enabled troops and supplies to move between Watling Street and Ermine Street without entering town. In contrast, Watling Street was restored by Roman-trained engineers who re-laid roadside drains using timbers felled in the winter of ad 61/62, and a timber boardwalk was built besides the southern Walbrook crossing using timber felled the following year. ⁶ A V-shaped ditch dug at One Poultry was perhaps a defensive outwork protecting the bridge. Facilities around the forum were also replaced after the revolt. Excavations in Lombard Street revealed the tile-capped masonry foundations of a substantial earth-walled building that preceded the construction of the Flavian forum. ⁷ Masonry foundations were unusual in town houses at this time, and this was probably a public building replacing earlier storage and office facilities.

Building the port

The most significant restoration project took place along the waterfront, where massive Neronian quays were built in sections upriver from London Bridge to the mouth of the Walbrook. ⁸ The earliest section was found at Regis House where enormous squared oak beams, up to 8.2 metres long, were stacked 2 metres high to form boxes extending onto the foreshore that were filled with rubbish and earth to create a riverside terrace (Fig. 9.4). Several of the timbers were felled in the winter of ad 63–4, presumably for building in the spring of ad 64. The need to set base timbers over the submerged foreshore makes it likely that the lowest tier was laid during the low spring tides of March ad 64.

Fig. 9.4 The Neronian waterfront quays and warehouses built c. ad 63 at Regis House (KWS 94: after Brigham 1998). Drawn by Justin Russell.

The builders used a standardized range of thin bladed tools to prepare the timbers, leaving marks consistent with the use of military dolabra axe-picks. A stamp branded onto the end of the longest quay timber probably reads TRAECAVG, suggesting the involvement of a Thracian cohors or ala. ⁹ These works drew on skills and resources usually only available to military engineers, perhaps provided by units brought to London after the revolt. According to Gustav Milne some may have been attached to the Roman fleet, the Classis Britannica, thought responsible for building similar facilities at Dover. ¹⁰ Finds from the infill of the quay included fragments of scale armour (lorica squamata) and leather tents from earlier military activity. Several tent panels were discarded whole without cutting and recycling, despite areas of good leather surviving. ¹¹ This profligacy is characteristic of assemblages formed during garrison redeployment.

The new quays changed the way in which the port operated. Goods had previously been manhandled across temporary jetties and gangways onto waggons and beasts of burden, but the new quays brought transports within reach of fixed cranes capable of managing enormous loads. ¹² Larger ocean-going vessels would still have anchored in mid-stream for unloading by flat-bottomed lighters that beached on the foreshore. Stevedores gained dry access over multiple gangways uninterrupted by the changing tide. In addition to speeding goods handling, warehouses reduced the risk of theft, spoilage, and loss. Their presence made it easier to keep the harbour busy between sailings, and road traffic could be staggered to reduce congestion. This transformed the ability of the port authorities to manage shipments, ensuring that consignments could be properly processed and port dues paid.

This begs the question of why such facilities were not built earlier. The likely explanation is that London lacked access to sufficient resources—skilled engineers, construction manpower, and supplies of timber—for the undertaking. London may have been strategically important before the revolt, but troops and military engineers were deployed elsewhere. The soldiers brought to London in the post-revolt reassertion of Roman authority could, however, be assigned to such tasks when not engaged in policing operations. There are many reasons to suspect a direct military involvement in the construction of London’s Neronian port, and the scale and timing of the building exercise makes it difficult to see this as the product of private or civic enterprise. ¹³

Warehouses were built behind the quays. A large Neronian masonry building, built of ragstone with brick string-courses, at Regis House contained at least four, later six, rectangular bays 4.5 metres wide and 10 metres long. These opened onto the wharf through shuttered openings or wide folding doors. ¹⁴ This row of open-fronted units provided similar facilities to those around Roman marketplaces and fora. The use of stone as a building material, still rare in London, created secure storage for high value goods. One bay contained a succession of small furnaces where a glassworker made luxury items that included faience melon beads, twisted stirring rods, free-blown bottles, and drinking vessels. Large masonry buildings behind the quays included warehouses and granaries, one dendrochronology dated ad 66–8. ¹⁵ Although we suspect that the army built London’s port infrastructure, these buildings might have served private shippers and guilds. The principal Neronian quays were built upriver of London Bridge, an area favoured for supplies directed west along Watling Street. The arrangement meant that tall-masted ships arriving up the Thames would have had to cross the line of the bridge, perhaps by way of a central drawbridge. It is not certain that a fixed crossing was maintained, but a bridge would have better served the needs of cross-river traffic and timber structures antedating ad 63 have tentatively been identified as a bridge abutment. ¹⁶

The town restored

Large wells equipped with sophisticated water-lifting machines were installed on the hillside west of the Walbrook (Fig. 12.3, p. 154). ¹⁷ The earliest was 2.6 metres square and 5 metres deep, lined with oak and cross-braced timbers felled in ad 63. Machinery found at its base consisted of boxes of hollowed-out oak joined in a continuous chain by iron links that had been attached to a gear system, that would have been driven by a human or animal powered treadmill to raise water to a point from which it could gravity feed a piped water supply. The technological ambition of this advanced engineering and the entailment of operational labour show that these waterworks met an important need, perhaps supplying the bathhouse found at Cheapside in 1952. ¹⁸ Although this bathhouse is poorly dated its flint foundations are of an early type, and tiles from a heating system were found in a Neronian assemblage nearby at Bow Bells House. In its primary phase these baths contained three principal rooms arranged in a 21.6-metre-long row. Entrance was through a cold room (frigidarium) which had red-painted walls and a herringbone tile pavement and was furnished with a small cold-water plunge bath. The succeeding warm room (tepidarium) was heated by a hypocaust, as was the apsidal-ended hot room (caldarium) at the end of the range. This had a hot-water bath to one side. A fragment of volcanic pumice used in the baths was found nearby. ¹⁹ The facility may have served soldiers quartered in the district west of the Walbrook, perhaps offering thermal healing for visitors to the adjacent sacred precinct. ²⁰

Post-fire redevelopment generally respected property boundaries established in the 50s, indicating that land interests were registered and respected. The buildings followed earlier preferences for rapidly built timber-framed construction and timbers reused in later constructions at the Bloomberg headquarters show that some had walls only 2 metres high but included cramped loft accommodation under a wooden shingle roof. ²¹ Not all of London was restored. Only three out of thirteen properties were quickly replaced at One Poultry, and the presence of Flavian wares in post-Boudican dumps suggests that rebuilding was sometimes delayed by a decade. ²² A reduced population pressure may account for the conversion of a building plot into a market garden at Whittington Avenue. ²³ Some of those who had lived in London before ad 60 never returned, and the civilian community may have shrunk. The potter responsible for making finewares near Sugar Loaf Court may have been amongst the missing, since his production wasn’t resumed. ²⁴ Elsewhere new potters set up in business: a kiln dated c. ad 60–70 was found in a yard behind buildings within the suburb along the Silchester road at 1 New Change. ²⁵ Luxury imports were in shorter supply for a while, suggesting that the new harbour was not used to bring such goods for local consumption. ²⁶

An unusual ditched compound, some 50 metres across, was established on the north-west margins of town at 10 Gresham Street (Fig. 9.5). ²⁷ A rectangular timber building set in the middle of the enclosure was surrounded by short-lived roundhouses, sheds and animal-pens. Up to fourteen circular buildings were identified, some with south-east facing entrances and central hearths. The architecture was consistent with British rather than Roman building traditions, similar to that found on the fringes of the settlement before the revolt (above p. 82). A narrow room inside the rectangular building was used as a workshop for the manufacture of glass beads in a late Iron Age British tradition, as indicated by the presence of hearths and waste materials. The site contained less pottery than typical for the time, with assemblages dominated by jars and storage vessels. Unlike other suburban developments, these buildings were not placed alongside a main road, but along a route not metalled until the Flavian period. This was a satellite site, tucked beyond the urban margins, occupied by a community that represented itself differently to people within town. The precinct and its houses were cleared away within a decade of its construction, adding to the impression that insular traditions of housing were restricted to marginal and transient communities. It is possible to imagine a situation in which some of the ‘native’ workforce involved in laying the log causeway across the Walbrook in ad 62 was housed in this discretely located compound.

Fig. 9.5 The pre-Flavian buildings and features found at 10 Gresham Street (GSM97). The evidence presented here may belong to more than one phase of construction, but appears to illustrate a rectangular structure surrounded by roundhouses and pens within an enclosure delimited by boundary ditches. Hearths within the main building were associated with debris from glass-bead manufacture following pre-conquest tradition (after Casson et al. 2015). Drawn by Justin Russell.

The construction of new roads, quays and waterworks was compressed into the years when London was occupied by a military garrison. The forces stationed in Britain were subsequently reduced by redeployments to quell an uprising in Gaul in ad 66/67, and others left the province to participate in the civil wars following Nero’s deposition. ²⁸ As a consequence the number of soldiers serving in Britain almost halved between ad 65 and ad 69, probably involving the evacuation of the auxiliary forces stationed in London.

The first cemeteries

Several small burial grounds were placed on the outskirts of the Claudio-Neronian city, following Roman custom in removing the dead beyond the city limits. ²⁹ Roman funerals at this time usually involved a ceremonial procession to the site of a pyre, where orations and offerings were made. The act of burning was the primary rite, using fire to counteract the polluting effects of death. The collection and burial of cremated remains and pyre debris was a secondary activity, resulting in the interment of ashes within containers such as pottery vessels and wooden caskets. London’s principal early cemeteries were in small suburban plots set back from main roads on prominent sites. Two unurned cremation graves containing redeposited pyre debris were found outside the likely site of the town’s east gate on the road to Colchester at 60–3 Fenchurch Street. ³⁰ A cemetery on the other side of this road was found at the corner of Fenchurch Street and Billiter Street where cremations were buried in timber cists, one with a Purbeck marble cover and one in a Spanish amphora. ³¹ Another small cremation cemetery was located at Leadenhall Court, beneath the later basilica. Five vessels, dated no earlier than the late 50s, one of which contained cremated bone, were set into the fills of a disused quarry. ³² A single urned cremation of similar date found north of the ‘decumanus’ at Lime Street was thought to have been a foundation deposit. ³³ These burials were surprisingly close to the town centre and inside the limits of the presumed Claudian defensive enclosure. This may indicate that the town’s northern boundary had moved inside its earlier line in post-Boudican contraction, or that interments were tolerated within the settlement because of London’s ambiguous status.

Three more cemeteries have been identified west of the town on Ludgate Hill: at St Martin’s le Grand, St Paul’s Cathedral, and Warwick Square. ³⁴ The most important was discovered in 1880 during building works at Warwick Square, near the Old Bailey (Fig. 9.6). ³⁵ It occupied an area little more than 12 metres across, overlooking the river Fleet about 75 metres south of the ‘decumanus’. The stand-out discovery was a two-handled urn, some 385 millimetres high, carved from Egyptian porphyry into a shape like a soup tureen, following the perfect proportions of Pythagorean geometry. Simona Perna has shown how this exclusive type of urn, the only one of its kind ever found in Britain, had connections to the Julio-Claudian imperial family and household. ³⁶ It contained the cremated remains of an adult male, around 30 years old, and a single Claudian coin. It was placed near the centre of the graveyard and may have been the burial around which the cemetery formed. A lead cinerary canister containing a two-handled glass jar full of calcined bones was buried nearby. ³⁷ The canister was stamped with the repeated relief of a charioteer racing his quadriga, identified with Helios/Sol. Borrowing from Platonic philosophy, the image of this celestial charioteer may have served as a metaphor for the ever-moving eternal soul. ³⁸ In the light of the Egyptian origins of the adjacent porphyry urn, it might be significant that Helios was held in special veneration in Hellenistic Egypt. ³⁹ The cemetery contained two other important lead ossuaria. One was decorated with an eight-rayed star, cast on the base, which is likely to have been a solar symbol, whilst the other had four pairs of concentric circles that might denote Plato’s divine soul circling the cosmos. This group of burials incorporated cultural and philosophical references drawn from the Hellenistic east, at a time when such ideas were highly influential in imperial ideology. They would have carried meaning to the educated elite amongst the highest officials and businessmen in Britain. Since the porphyry urn contained the ashes a person of the very highest rank it is worth passing mention that the governor Ostorius Scapula died in Britain in ad 52, and inherited a connection with Egypt from the time of his father’s prefecture there. ⁴⁰ The cemetery also contained several ceramic cinerary urns, glass vessels, and a tile lined grave or cist. In 1966 a re-examination of the site by Peter Marsden found ashes from the double burial of an adult and child in an amphora with two lamps to provide light for the soul. ⁴¹

Fig. 9.6 Claudio-Neronian cinerary urns found in excavations at Warwick Square in 1881. These included a rare Egyptian porphyry vessel (bottom right), decorated lead canisters, and glass jars of which one is illustrated (© The Society of Antiquaries of London, and reproduced from Tylor 1884 by kind permission of Cambridge University Press).

London’s most famous Roman tomb stood on the other side of town, on Tower Hill (Fig. 9.7). This was the monument to the imperial procurator Julius Alpinus Classicianus, the stonework from which was reused in the foundations of a late Roman tower added to the town wall at Trinity Square. ⁴² Classicianus succeeded Decianus Catus and died in office c. ad 65 after playing an important part in London’s restoration. ⁴³ His funerary monument was an imposing free-standing altar-shaped structure on a high plinth, of a type known around Trier. The stone was set up by his wife, Julia Pacata, the daughter of Indus a Treveran aristocrat with pro-Roman sympathies. From the evidence of his name it seems likely that Classicianus came from the same region.

Fig. 9.7 A reconstruction of the tomb of the imperial procurator C. Julius Classicianus (drawn by Richard Grasby and reproduced by kind permission of the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, Oxford).

A grave found at Harper Road in Southwark during a training excavation in 1979 presents a contrasting example of Neronian burial practice (Fig. 9.8). ⁴⁴ The body was interred in a wooden coffin at a time when cremation was preferred. It may have been located within an enclosure on slightly higher ground beside Watling Street, about 300 metres beyond the possible sanctuary site on the Southwark borders. Study of the skeletal remains indicates that the deceased was a dark haired and brown eyed woman, physically female but with male chromosomes. She was of northern European ancestry, grew up in Britain and died in her twenties or thirties. She was buried with vessels typical of Roman-style dining manufactured c. ad 50–65: a flagon was set by her head and Samian dishes at her feet. The grave also contained a rectangular bronze mirror, perhaps imported from Italy, and a broken bronze penannular neck ring, or torc. These were precious items. Mirrors are occasionally found in late Iron Age burials in Britain, alluding to other realms, appearance and fertility. ⁴⁵ The torc was an even more curious item. It was decorated with motifs that schematized peacock feathers: widely deployed as a symbol of immortality. Similar decorations were used on torcs found at Baldock in Hertfordshire, and aspects of the design find parallel in a regionally distributed type of armillae that Nina Crummy suggests were used as battle honours gained from service in the Roman army in Britain. ⁴⁶ The design of this torc might, therefore, have contained references to military honour won at the time of the Roman conquest. Since the deceased had been born in Britain prior to the conquest, and was buried with high-status goods that drew on both British and Roman forms of social display, she may have belonged to a pre-Roman aristocracy. Her burial describes an accommodation with Roman power whilst retaining aspects of an identity formed prior to the invasion. This would have made her an unusual figure in an immigrant community where native identities were not widely evident. It has already been argued that pre-Roman farmsteads in Bermondsey and Southwark may have survived the conquest to become part of the Roman topography south of the river, and a case can be made for seeing the dolabra sheath found at 15–23 Southwark Street as a pre-conquest import obtained from service in the Roman army. The evidence of the Harper Road burial can be read in similar fashion. The location, character, and date of this grave are in keeping with what might be expected for the burial of someone native to one of these local settlements.

Fig. 9.8 The Neronian burial found at Harper Road, Southwark in 1979 containing the body of a woman with grave goods that included a mirror and unusual torc (HR77/HR79: adapted from Cotton 2000 and reproduced by kind permission of Museum of London Archaeology).

London’s first burials show remarkable diversity. East of the city lay the imposing tomb of the Gallic nobleman who had served as imperial procurator. Another elevated cemetery west of town contained the cinerary urns of people from the highest ranks of the administration vaunting philosophical and cultural attachments to the Hellenistic east. The southern approaches to town were instead dominated by the resting place of someone connected to the pre-Roman aristocracy, drawing on the Gallo-Roman culture that prevailed prior to the conquest perhaps coloured by military service within the Roman army. These different burials commanded the main routes into London, embedding it within a landscape of Roman power.

Irregular burials

These important individuals, celebrated in death through the attention paid to their burial, can be contrasted with other communities of dead. Several irregular and disturbed inhumations have been found on the borders of early Roman London. These include corpses placed in unusual positions, usually prone or flexed, dispersed skeletal material, and burials of immature individuals. Some inhumations have also been found in unusual contexts, such as ditches and pits, rather than graves. These tend to be found close to the main roads into town. Excavations at Paternoster Square revealed two pre-Flavian skeletons in a ditch perpendicular to the ‘decumanus’ on Ludgate Hill. ⁴⁷ One was laid prone and the other on its side, along with a dead dog and rubbish. On the other side of town, a man buried in the ditch flanking the Colchester road before ad 60–1 had a girl’s cranium placed over his pelvis. ⁴⁸

At Regis House, on the waterfront beside London Bridge, disturbed human remains were incorporated into harbour construction in ad 64. ⁴⁹ Excavations by Gerald Dunning recovered part of the skull of a middle-aged man and the right arm and left humerus of another individual. These bones hadn’t moved far, since the arm retained its articulation. Other body-parts found in 1995–6 included three crania, and a femur with cut marks suggestive of tool or weapon injury. Bruce Watson and Trevor Brigham suggest that these were victims of the Boudican revolt whose unburied remains were incorporated in waste material. Human remains of similar date, including an intact cranium, were found in waterside dumps at the Bloomberg site. ⁵⁰ Here too the body parts were found amidst rubbish next to a river, close to a bridge approaching the site of a town gate. Concentrations of irregular burials have also been identified on the boundaries of sacred precincts (p. 255). Disturbed remains were found in ponds, streams and rubbish dumps dated c. ad 50–70 at Blossom’s Inn. ⁵¹ A disused well contained part of the skull of an adult male, who had suffered a blunt force injury to the head which had healed before death. Two burials were also identified on this site: one a perinate and the other a young adult male buried prone in a shallow grave before being scavenged by animals. At Swan Street on the southern borders of Southwark, at a site of supposed animal sacrifice and votive deposition, two disarticulated human femurs were found in pre-Flavian ditches. ⁵² Human crania have been found in several other late Neronian and early Flavian watery places. ⁵³

These disturbed remains occupied important liminal locations, placed in or near water at entrances to town or on boundaries of sacred precincts and cemeteries. These were recognizably in-between places, where souls might win passage to the underworld. Some bodies were accompanied by dogs: a creature known to guide souls to other realms. Although irregular burials occur at various sites in Rome’s north-west provinces, it is important to stress that this was an unusual treatment. ⁵⁴ Most Roman communities believed that departed souls would suffer if mortal remains were not treated with care. Burial was a moral duty, demonstrating respect for ancestors and kin. ⁵⁵ Dismemberment, whether in corpse abuse or Dionysian sparagmos, was considered a terrible thing. Why then, were some bodies in early London treated in ways considered horrific to Roman society? Richard Hingley has suggested that this was because of ideas borrowed from Iron Age rites of passage involving corpse exposure and the deposition of body parts in rivers and wetlands. ⁵⁶ Rituals involving excarnation are attested in pre-Roman Britain and neighbouring provinces, and placed a particular emphasis on the manipulation of elements of the skull. ⁵⁷ Such practices were of long tradition, witnessed by the prehistoric crania recovered from the Thames. The places where these crania were found had also been used for deposits of metalwork, suggesting a common origin in votive activity. Whilst London may have drawn on ideas that predated the Roman conquest, there is insufficient evidence to suggest a continuity of practice at the site itself. The earliest human remains found in the City and Southwark are likely to be early Roman, whilst the prehistoric votive deposits come from much further upriver. It is, in any case, more likely that London would have adopted customs preferred by those who settled here after the conquest, most of whom appear to have arrived from the continent.

Practices of corpse abuse described in classical sources might account for the evidence found in London. Denial of burial was an extreme punishment directed at those who challenged public order through treason and betrayal. ⁵⁸ Punishment could involve the removal of body parts, exposure to birds and beasts, and the display and dispersal of remains. Eusebius’ description of the ad 177 execution of Christian martyrs from Lyon and Vienne provides an illustrative example. After being beheaded in the amphitheatre, the victims’ bodies were mutilated by beasts, exposed for six days under guard to prevent their burial, then burnt and swept into the Rhône. ⁵⁹ Roman histories also describe how the corpses of traitors were dragged to the Tiber, leaving the river and sewers of Rome filled with bodies. ⁶⁰ The purifying waters of the Tiber and Cloaca Maxima removed these polluting elements and cleansed the city of hostile spirits, where the need for ritualized river disposal was a consequence of practices of corpse abuse that included denial of burial.

London’s Roman evidence also bears comparison with early medieval execution sites. ⁶¹ Attributes that identify these execution cemeteries include decapitation, bodies with hands or feet tied, prone and cramped burials, shallow and intercutting graves, mutilation around the time of death, and a demographic profile skewed towards younger males. Ethnographic parallels suggest that backward (prone) burial may have been adopted to prevent the spirits of those who died badly from returning to avenge themselves on the living. ⁶²

Decapitation was a favoured form of capital punishment in the ancient world, also used in the mutilation of corpses and to prepare trophy heads for display. ⁶³ The head was singled out for separate treatment by virtue of its relationship to the human soul, and the distancing of the head from the body meant that funerary rituals could not be properly enacted nor the remains properly interred. Such practices might account for instances of decapitation followed by the reburial of the skull or cranium. ⁶⁴ The exposure of heads and body parts, thought to derive from victims of Roman judicial and military violence, witnesses excarnation rituals that share characteristics with late Iron Age practice. ⁶⁵ Some of these concepts applied to the treatment of war-dead: studies in both Denmark and Holland suggest that body parts and weapons were collected from late Iron Age and early Roman battlefields for ritual deposition in rivers and lakes. ⁶⁶

Rome’s use of body fragmentation in the annihilation of its enemies, followed by the ritual deposition of selected remains in rivers and wet-places, presents a model that accounts for the evidence from London. Fragmented and irregular burials shrouded the settlement borders, concentrating alongside the main roads amidst a landscape of discard. They occupied the urban pomerium, a zone recognized by Roman law and practice to lie beyond the sacred borders of the city and dedicated to the punishment of criminals and burial of the poor. ⁶⁷ Irregular burials on the borders of Neronian London seem likely to include the mortal remains of those killed by the Roman authorities. In other cases, body fragmentation may have been the consequence of post-mortem corpse abuse or the tidying away of the remains of people unworthy of proper burial. Evidence of this type can be traced down to the third century (p. 266). The late Neronian material was found in contexts associated with post-revolt rebuilding in the early 60s, lending credibility to the suggestion that it included victims of Roman retribution after Boudica’s uprising. There is no need, however, to place too much emphasis on this particular event. Roman authority was underpinned by force, and it would be surprising if London didn’t routinely witness this sort of violence.

There is no need to explain all irregular burial in this fashion. Other troubling deaths warranted unusual ritual. In excavations at Drapers’ Gardens, a short distance north of the earliest town, small oak caskets containing infant burials were carefully buried alongside a tributary of the Walbrook in the pre-Flavian period. ⁶⁸ As Maureen Carroll has pointed out, Roman textual sources express reservations about cremating the very young and those robbed of their future by premature death were also at risk of becoming restless souls. ⁶⁹

Ritual dismemberment and votive deposition were also visited upon statues and effigies. ⁷⁰ The left hand and forearm of a gilded bronze statue found in a pond at Gresham Street may have been associated with a sacred area (p. 77). It had been hacked from a slightly over life-sized statue, perhaps an imperial figure such as Nero himself. ⁷¹ Associated ceramics suggest that the arm was buried c. ad 60–70. The destruction of a powerful and valuable symbol was a significant undertaking, as was the decision to bury rather than recycle the valuable metal. This suggests a votive act, possibly following an act of iconoclasm during the Boudican revolt or on Nero’s overthrow in ad 69. The decision to send this hand of authority into the pond reminds us of the sacred importance of watery places. A marble head detached from a life-size statue found in Islington, probably also of Nero, might similarly evidence trophy hunting by Boudica’s rebels or a damnatio memoriae following his death. ⁷²

Late Neronian London

London’s restoration, enabled by military engineering, was in hand by the summer of ad 62. Neighbouring cities didn’t benefit from an equivalent level of attention: post-war reconstruction may have been delayed for 15 years in parts of Verulamium, and there is little evidence of late Neronian investment in Colchester. ⁷³ London was singled out for attention because of its particular value to the administration rather than because of any more broadly based revival of Romano-British cities. As Mike Fulford has proposed, territories north of the Thames may have been placed under direct military control. ⁷⁴ This followed the arrival of a new provincial governor and procurator, as described in the previous chapter. ⁷⁵ The rebuilding of ad 62–3 directed by this new administration was concerned with roadworks, harbour facilities, storage capacity, and new bathhouses. The priorities were the same as those that gave London shape a decade earlier, in ad 52–3, reinforcing the impression that the earlier programme was also undertaken at the behest of an incoming administration. The resources of the auxiliary forces stationed in London after the revolt allowed, however, for more ambitious engineering.

Coins witness a massive injection of bronze coinage into Britain in the years ad 64–7. ⁷⁶ This served the needs of numerous business transactions, but is likely to have been organized by the procurator’s office following the rehabilitation of London’s port. The London that emerged from Neronian reconstruction remained the principal administrative hub of the province, with a busy port engaged in military supply. Merchants and businessmen connected to the political and military authorities were an important part of this community, but not necessarily as its driving force.

During the decade following the Boudican revolt the distinctive Gallo-Roman styles of consumption and dress that characterized elite society at the time of the Roman conquest fell from use as tastes were realigned around the lifestyles enjoyed by the new regime. ⁷⁷ This was of relatively minor consequence in London, which had already adopted tastes imported to Britain from the Rhineland, but insular traditions of building design and craftsmanship became progressively rare. Whilst the army played an important part in rebuilding London in the early 60s, its presence was reduced towards the end of the decade. The closing years of Nero’s reign left little trace in London. This may in part be a failure of archaeological recognition, but it is not unreasonable to assume that the wars that accompanied Nero’s overthrow checked investment. If so, matters changed following Vespasian’s assumption of power at the conclusion of the civil war in ad 69 as we will explore in the next chapter.