The Walbrook skulls

Abstract

Many disturbed burials, including the river-rolled crania known to archaeology as the Walbrook skulls, are dated to the period following the rebuilding of London after the Hadrianic fire. This rebuilding involved the construction of a new road on the north side of the city which may have connected London with a ford over the river Fleet near King’s Cross. The road was built over partly articulated human body parts, and subsequently attracted a cemetery that included instances of execution and corpse abuse. Hundreds of reworked human crania have been found in waterlogged contexts where this road bridged the Walbrook and at other locations in the Hadrianic city. Various ideas accounting for this evidence are reviewed. Drawing on ancient sources and ethnographic parallels it is suggested that some of the remains were war dead and the victims of retributive violence, subjected to post-mortem corpse abuse, denial of burial leading to body fragmentation, and dedication to watery places on liminal locations in necrophobic ritual. The intensification of such practices in Hadrianic London may have been occasioned by a war that destroyed the city c. AD 125/126. Some of the partially articulated human remains might even mark the site of a battlefield or execution ground.