Pervasive Ritual at Wroxeter: The Evidence of the Buried Ceramics from the Bushe-Fox Excavations 1912–14

The excavations at Wroxeter conducted by J.P. Bushe-Fox examined a zone of the Roman city very different to the public baths and macellum complex extensively investigated in the later twentieth century. Bushe-Fox’s work in Insula 8 is the best and largest sample of Wroxeter’s residential buildings investigated to date; the focus of this paper is the large number of complete ceramic vessels included in the pits and wells he excavated. Recognition of the act of burying complete vessels, and of that practice as a meaningful tradition in antiquity, has developed over the last 25 years. Revisiting the Bushe-Fox excavations has provided a large body of new evidence for the practising of domestic rituals at Wroxeter.