Museum name: Roman Baths, Welwyn
Location: Welwyn, Al6 9FG, Hertfordshire
Spotlight on: Romans and Replicas
@RomanBathMuseum currently displays the human remains of a woman who died at Welwyn in the 1st Century AD and was buried in a cremation cemetery. We discuss her life and story with visitors but want to explore using replicas to do this more respectfully @AncientDead
The Story:
At the Roman Baths in Welwyn we currently display the human remains of a woman who died at Welwyn in the 1st Century AD. She was discovered in 1990 by Welwyn Archaeological Society during excavations at the Grange Cemetery. Investigation of her bones revealed that she was aged between 45 and 55 at the time of her death and was 1.5 metres or 4ft 11 inches tall. Unfortunately she had back trouble and gum disease and at some point had had a broken rib which later healed over. Unusually she was buried, lying face down, in a cremation cemetery. Although this sometimes indicates sacrifice we have no other evidence to support this.
The information above is displayed with her remains, along with photos from the excavation and next to displays about life at a Roman villa including women’s dress, jewellery and work. We always try and discuss her possible life with visitors and treat her respectfully but would like to do more. We have been discussing using replicas with the Honouring the Ancient Dead team and are looking for funding opportunities to enable us to do this. This would enable us to continuing discussing her life with visitors, such as how she might have got her broken rib, without having her remains on display.
We also have other human remains in our collection that are not on display, some from the same site. These are stored separately in a non-public area of the museum and again are treated with respect. We have documented as much as possible about these people on our collections database including the context of date and place of exhumation. In some instances we also have supporting excavation reports.
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