Roman Era Horse Sacrifice?

Some interesting finds are being uncovered during excavations for roadwork in Great Britain.

From the Times of Malta.
Thursday, 26th August 2010

Ice Age and Roman remains surface in Nottinghamshire
Archaeological remains dating back to the last Ice Age together with Iron Age and Roman settlements have been uncovered as part of a Highways Agency scheme to upgrade the A46 between Newark and Widmerpool in Nottinghamshire.

The finds included flint tools and flint knapping debris that date back to about 11,000 BC – around the end of the last Ice Age, when Stone Age hunter-gatherers returned as the climate began to warm up.

Geoff Bethel, A46 Highways Agency project manager, said that as the A46 follows the route of the old Roman road, they expected to uncover a number of artefacts from Roman Britain but finding such rare flint tools dating back to the end of the Ice Age was very exciting.

Mr Bethel added, “We worked very closely with English Heritage, our contractor and the archaeology teams to make sure the road route design avoided the important areas of archaeology during construction.”

The design for the A46 route ensured that the majority of the site of the Roman town of Margi­dunum, near Bingham, was avoided by the new road scheme.

The excavations also provided valuable insight into the Iron Age and Roman communities that used to live in the area. Evidence of an Iron Age settlement at Owthorpe Junction, just east of Cotgrave, was uncovered. Further north at Stragglethorpe junction, a 4,000 year old Neolithic circular monument was located, with eight Bronze Age burials.

Remains of a horse recovered from the site of the newly discovered Roman industrial area.
The horse may have been a ritual sacrifice to bring good luck to the building built over the top,
a practice known from the Roman world. Photo: Highways Agency/PA Wire

The archaeological team uncovered part of the settlement that lined the road leading into the town. Finds included Roman timber buildings, rubbish pits, wells and track ways, as well as a number of burials, all dating back around two thousand years.

Phil Harding, Stone Age expert and presenter of Channel 4’s Time Team, worked on the excavations as a field archaeologist for Cotswold Wessex Archaeology. He said:

“Among the findings was a piece from a Neolithic axe made of greenstone, a type of stone from the Lake District. It was very distinctive, only a chip the size of a stamp, but exciting nonetheless. The stone was very good quality and very distinctive – you could tell a person’s wealth or status by the number of axes he owned, or the flint it was made from.

“Overall, there were enough bits and pieces to suggest we have evidence of hunting people, gathering, camping, and visiting the confluence of two rivers right through to the time of the first farmers.”

Neil Macnab, of Scott Wilson Ltd, principal archaeologist for the contractor Balfour Beatty, said:

“The exciting discovery was of the flint tools and tiny fragments of flint knapping debris, which show very primitive activity occurring in an open area by hunter gathers. To find this in an open area, rather than in a cave is what is unusual, and could mean that they stopped to make something while out on the move.”