Environmental Evidence from the Colonia

Tanner Row & Rougier Street

by AR Hall and HK Kenward

This report deals with biological evidence from two sites within the area of the Roman civil town or colonia close to the River Ouse and the probable Roman river crossing.

The excavations were at the General Accident Extension Site, 24-30 Tanner Row, and 5 Rougier Street, almost opposite one another across Rougier Street. Both sites were extensively sampled and the material has provided the first opportunity in York to examine richly organic waterlogged Roman deposits formed on surfaces rather than as the fills of wells or other subsurface features. In Britain, comparable urban Roman deposits are only known to have been sampled on such a scale for environmental evidence in Carlisle (Cumbria), and in London.

In the laboratory it has been possible to examine a large number of samples and, by means of bulk-sieving, a very large volume of material. The major corpus of data dealt with in this report is the evidence from some 500 samples of deposits from the General Accident site. This site, in particular, has been used to develop procedures for responding to the extremely intensive sampling essential for adequate bioarchaeological investigations of modern large urban excavations

Info: 148pp, 80 figures
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