Prepared for their final journeys

Although there are subtle differences between the individual cemeteries, and detailed study of their remains is yet to be completed, the overall pattern is clear.

Most people were buried on the back or on their side. Many were placed in the graves that were dug into the white chalk dressed in their clothes, or perhaps wrapped in a shroud. Many people were buried in wooden coffins, the only surviving traces of which are the iron nails used to fix the timbers together.

Occasionally the head of the dead person had been separated from the neck and placed by the legs. This treatment of the dead is found regularly across southern England, though never in large numbers. It is not thought to have been the cause of death – by decapitation – and may instead have been a way of releasing troubled spirits.

The mourners often placed things in the grave and these objects seem to be connected with a journey to the next life. The most common finds are shoes or sandals, though only the iron hobnails usually survive.

Small pottery beakers to hold drink either on the journey to the next life or during it are also regular finds. Most of the beakers were made in the nearby New Forest potteries. Coins, usually thought to be for paying the ferryman Charon to take the dead over the River Styx, are also found occasionally.

Other types of find are less common and are mainly to do with dress and appearance. They include bangles of copper alloy and of Kimmeridge shale, earrings, bone hair combs, and in one case, a jewellery box full of hairpins. The occasional finds of iron knive may also have been carried on a belt.

The people of Roman Britain worshipped many different gods and it is likely that the most of the people buried at Boscombe Down will have been pagans, though a few may have been Christian.