You Can Be an Archaeologist Detective!

My friend Dr. Hella Eckardt (no, that's not her) is a brilliant archaeologist. She knows that the graves of dead people from Roman times provide lots of clues about how they lived. Over the past few years, she and her clever colleagues have studied over 150 skeletons from Roman Britain (between 200-400 CE).

Recently Hella and a team from the University of Reading chose four of the 150 graves to investigate in detail. Together with webmasters from the Runnymede Trust, they have now designed a website that allows schoolchildren (and anybody else) to “look into” those graves and make their own deductions. You can look at the bones of four individuals, including a little girl. You can hear what experts have to say about what the bones, teeth and grave goods tell us.

Then you can make your own deductions and even write a story if you like. That’s what I did. I took the clues the experts gave me and made up a possible story for each of the four. I even got to help name them! We called the little girl Savariana. The young man is Brucco, the exotic and rich young woman from Africa is Julia Tertia and the man from the Black Sea region is Piscarius.

Yesterday a panel of experts spoke to over two hundred schoolchildren in year 3 (aged 8 and 9) at the Museum of London. The children came specially to help us “launch” the new Romans Revealed website.

The speakers were introduced by Dr. Nina Sprigge (far right in the picture below). Her job is to enthuse teachers and schoolkids about the museum's collections and she does a great job.

The children and their teachers got to hear Hella (in the middle) talk about how diverse Roman Britain was, with goods and people coming from all over the empire.

They got to hear Dr. Caroline McDonald (far left below) tell us about all the bones in the vaults of the Museum of London: they have over 17,000 skeletons!

Caroline McDonald, Hella Eckardt, Nina Sprigge & the Spitalfields Lady!

Debbie Weekes-Bernard from the Runnymede Trust brought some booklets with ideas for exciting lessons teachers can build around this new website.

Valentine Hansen & me

Valentine Hansen played the part of an ex-soldier in Britannia. He taught the children to say "hello" in Latin and what it meant to have three names.

I got to speak too! I briefly told the kids how I get ideas by playing with my replica Roman objects, including my infamous Roman bottom wiper: a sponge on a stick! (Learn more HERE!)

Dr. Helen Forte was there, too. She is a Latin teacher but also illustrates the Minimus Primary Latin course and some of my books. She did some of her marvellous drawings for the Romans Revealed website.

But the oldest guest by far was a woman from Rome. She was two thousand years old. You guessed it! She is the skeleton. Although visitors to the Romans Revealed website will only examine virtual bones on the Romans Revealed website, the Museum of London had brought out real bones!

Valentine examines a reconstruction of the Spitalfields Lady

The so-called Spitalfields Lady is probably the most famous of the 17,000 skeletons in the Museum of London vaults. We think she used to look like the bust in the picture up above.

Spitalfields Lady today

But today she looks like THIS! (right)

Dr. Becky Redfern, a researcher at the Museum of London, told us that we can tell by her teeth that she was born in Spain but then grew up in Rome! She then came to Londinium (the Roman name for London) where she sadly died. She was very rich and you can see the objects buried with her in the Museum of London Roman gallery.

You can't see a real skeleton like the Spitalfields Lady unless you visit the Museum of London, but you can visit four other skeletons by a click of the mouse. Have fun and tell me what you think of it!

Romans Revealed!

Caroline Lawrence writes historical fiction for children with kid detectives. She has written over twenty books set in first century Rome including The Roman Mystery Scrolls series – illustrated by Helen Forte – which would be perfect for kids in year 3 or up studying the Romans! Carrying on from the Roman Mysteries, the Roman Quests series set in Roman Britain launched in May 2016 with Escape from Rome.

Roman Silchester

Today I went to check out what's happening at the archaeological excavation of Silchester, which was the Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum. Located between Reading and Basingstoke, about 60 miles west of London, Silchester is one of the biggest teaching digs in the country.

Dr Hella Eckardt -- Lecturer in Roman Archaeology at the University of Reading -- has invited me to come see what was happening because I hope to set a future Roman Mystery mini-mystery at Silchester. Hella's specialty is diaspora in the Roman Empire. In other words, what were North Africans doing in Roman York? And what were people from the Rhineland doing in Silchester? Hella studies their bones and grave goods to get the answers. She likes my books because I have different ethnic groups and nationalities and this reflects what the Roman empire was like! She and I are also going to collaborate on some worksheets for school-children to do when they visit the site.


It is a beautiful summer day with friendly fluffy clouds, the kind of day when England is at its best. Site director Jon meets me at Mortimer train station and drives me to the site. I find Hella and she introduces me to excavation director Amanda Clarke and excavator Mike Fulford, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading. Mike has been excavating Silchester for over 30 years! I ask him what was unique about this Romano-British settlement and he tells me it was special because it thrived from the Iron Age continuously through the Roman period. Then in the 6th century AD it was completely abandoned.

Hella gives me a tour of the site. Over a hundred volunteers (mostly students) are helping to excavate one insula (city block) of the town. This insula had some private houses as well as small industries, like a metal-workers and perhaps fullers' (laundries). Like most archaeological sites, it is quite confusing, with many different layers of occupation. You have to have a certain kind of mind to understand what's going on. Hella does have that kind of mind. I don't. Even though she explains it clearly my attention wanders. I am more interested in the tents and the portaloos and the fact that all the volunteers have to be driven a few miles to take showers! Also, they are having a masked ball in the marquee this evening for their end-of-dig party.

I perk up when Hella shows me some of the artefacts they've found this season. This summer, they have been 'digging in the AD 60's and 70's' which means they're at the level which puts them exactly during the time my books are set. Hella shows me a dupondius of Vespasian (you can recognize his ugly mug even through two thousand years of corrosion) and also one of Claudius, during whose reign Britannia was first occupied. She also lets me examine a bronze fibula, a pair of bent tweezers and two iron signet rings, both with intaglios made of pale yellow glass paste (?). One signet ring has a tiny horse's head and boar's head, the other has a centaur looking at a shrine. I also see a clay tile with the footprint of a dog imprinted in it. Here is evidence of a ancient Romano-British dog running across tiles drying in the sun!

It's the last day of the season and there is a mechanical crane called a 'cherry-picker' there, so that photographers can take aerial views of the site. Amanda says that Hella and I can go up in it! From up here you can get a bird's eye view of the excavation. We look down and can clearly see a well, traces of a round building, the road running from the Northern Gate to the Southern Gate and other such things.

After the breathtaking view from the cherry picker, we sit on a finds bench and eat a sandwich lunch and discuss the site.



Here are some interesting facts about Calleva Atrebatum:

Calleva means 'woodland'.
Atrebatum means 'of the tribe of Atrebati'.
Nobody knows why the town grew up on that particular site.
Nobody knows why it was completely abandoned many years later.
A nearby church is built on the site of a Romano-British temple.
There is an amphitheatre outside the town walls.
There's a strange marker inscribed with 5th century AD Irish script.
(Sadly too late for my books)
Some of the wells are lined with wine-barrels made of silver fir.
Silver fir only grows in the Alps.
The barrels probably contained Rhineland wine.