It may seem obvious to state that slavery existed within the Roman Empire. Afterall, there is a large corpus of epigraphic and literary evidence outlining the role of enslaved people during this period. Britain is, of course, no exception, with slavery already an established part of the economy by the late Iron Age. Nevertheless, the identification of enslaved individuals and accounts of their lives are underrepresented, or under-recognised, in the archaeological record. Artefacts directly related to the practice of slavery are not commonly encountered. Most urban and rural cemeteries of the Roman period afford relative anonymity to those interred and distinguishing enslaved people from other population groups is extremely difficult.  

The burial of an adult male in a ditch outside the Roman town at Great Casterton, with iron fetters locked around his ankles, provides a unique opportunity to review the evidence for slavery in Roman Britain. A radiocarbon date from the early 3rd to early 5th century AD places the burial of the individual into a period where the small walled town was in use. A broadly contemporary cemetery was discovered during excavations in 1959 and 2004/5, but it is likely that the fettered burial lay beyond the limit of the formal cemetery.

Research by specialists from MOLA (published recently via FirstView in Cambridge journal Britannia and currently free to access) analyses this unusual burial. The osteological and artefactual evidence is presented, and the wider context of the discovery considered, with the aim of understanding the nature of the burial as an event but also to determine what can be inferred about the person and their status in life. Whilst enslavement presents perhaps the most obvious explanation for the circumstances of the burial, other interpretations are explored to consider the limitations of the evidence. Many other non-normative burials, including bound and restrained persons, have been recorded from across the Roman Empire and testify to a complex range of funerary traditions that need not all be equated with enslavement.  

It will never be possible to determine with any certainty whether this discovery represents the burial of an enslaved individual, though on balance it presents the strongest candidate known from Roman Britain. The lockable fetters he wore are the type of shackles most commonly used to restrain and punish living slaves. Whether or not the man also wore these shackles during life, their presence in the burial probably reflects hostility from those who had power over him after death, or at least represents disrespectful treatment.

The remaining uncertainty about the man’s lived identity and precise legal status emphasises the problems associated with identifying slavery in the archaeological record, but also reiterates the importance of engaging with this issue.  The burial provides the opportunity to directly consider the role of enslaved people in Britain, their relative absence from the archaeological record, and how to better frame archaeological questions to reflect the reality of their existence throughout society in Roman Britain. 

The article ‘An Unusual Roman Fettered Burial from Great Casterton, Rutland‘ is out now and authored by Chris Chinnock and Michael Marshall.