The River and the Dead: Case Studies

Jane Sidell and Nathalie Cohen

• Battles at fords• Erosion from

settlements/burials• Ceremonial• Waste disposal

Skulls?Why ?

4230-3970 cal BC

Yabsley Street – see PPS © TVAS

Yabsley St

• ©TVAS

• Gibson 1990

Grave goods – pottery, flints, also hawthorn and emmer wheat

Bermondsey

Bermondsey

From Cotton and Green, TLAMAS 2004

•Neolithic artefacts

Bermondsey: AD 1430-1495

Thames Skulls

Skulls from the foreshore

Edwards et al, TLAMAS, forthcoming

Thames Skulls

Bronze Age examples

Chelsea

Trepanned skull: 1880-1520 cal BC

Femur:1620–1440 cal BC

Putney•390-200 cal BC

Corney Reach

• Tall middle-aged male burial, in an east-west grave on the contemporary foreshore

• AD 410-820

Queenhithe•Two female burials•cal AD 680-860

•Images ©Museum of London

Isle of Dogs

Photo: Nick Stevens

•AD 1735 – 1805•Drowning? Murder? Punishment?

Vauxhall •Truncated skeleton excavated in 1989

Images © Museum of London

Greenwich•Male skeleton excavated (Miles, 1997)•Clothed

Images © Museum of London

Post medieval foreshore burials?

1.Isle of Dogs: • Burrell’s Wharf child: 18th century• Cyclops Wharf ?adult: 18th century• Millbank mandible: date?

2.Vauxhall: • Bridgefoot ?adult: ? 17th century• Nine Elms mandible: date?

3.Greenwich:• Peninsula adult male: 17th -18th century•?Deptford

4. Southwark:• Bermondsey female child: 15th century•Rotherhithe: disarticulated material