Excavations at the New Cemetery, Rocester, Staffordshire, 1985--87

Archaeological excavations at the so-called New Cemetery site took place between 1995 and 1997, adjacent to trial trenches excavated by Dr Graham Webster in the 1960s. The archaeological sequence encountered consisted of seven phases of activity beginning with Roman military activity of the first century. Remains of three successive Roman forts were examined, the last being occupied from the Antonine period (c. AD 140--160) up to c. AD 200. The last excavations uncovered the remains of an almost complete timber barrack building of this third fort, and good associated assemblages of artefacts and environmental material. After abandonment of the fort a civilian centre grew up, the excavated features suggesting that it was, in the third to fourth centuries, a `small town'. Evidence for post-Roman activity was patchy. A late Saxon presence in the area was attested by excavated features and a small number of diagnostic artefacts. Grain processing was conducted on the site in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries, while in the sixteenth century a smithy was operating nearby. The report details the results of the post-excavation analysis of the data recovered from the site. Firstly, a summary description of the stratigraphic evidence is presented, along with a digest of the artefactual dating evidence for each phase of activity and an interpretation of that activity. Full reports on each category of recovered artefact follow (including pottery; ceramic moulds and crucible; glass and faience objects; intaglios; coins; copper alloy objects; ironwork and ironworking residues; lead; flints; quern stones; and miscellaneous small finds) along with reports on the environmental evidence (vertebrate and charred plant remains). Finally, a discussion attempts to place the site in its wider context. Because of a period bias in the nature of the excavated evidence, this concentrates on the Roman military activity at Rocester.