Together with York Museums Trust and Heritage360, the University of York is conducting a project on an intriguing and unusual burial practice in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. in York. This is the custom of pouring liquid gypsum over the bodies of adults and children laid to rest in stone or lead coffins before their deposition in the ground. As the gypsum hardened around the bodies and the flesh decomposed, a negative cavity formed that preserved the original position and contours of the dead. The imprint of shrouds, clothing, and footwear also survives in the gypsum, providing precious evidence for perishable materials that rarely survive in graves. 

Roman gypsum burials of varying types have been noted elsewhere in Europe and North Africa, but they are particularly observable in Britain, with a notable concentration of about 50 such burials of this type recorded since the late 19th century in and around York. Sixteen of these gypsum casings survive and are in the collections of the Yorkshire Museum. It is not yet clear why and for whom this ritual was chosen, but it appears to have been a custom associated with individuals of high status. Traces of aromatic resins from the Mediterranean and Arabia found earlier in three of the gypsum burials in York indicate the use of costly and exotic substances in the clothing and wrappings, substances available only to the elite.

Most of the York coffins and casings were excavated in the late 19th-century building boom, the casings often becoming separated from the human remains and grave goods that were deposited in the coffins. Some of these burials have associated contextual information in the antiquarian records, others are recorded in various sources. The project seeks to make sense of these disparate information sources in order to reconnect the excavated body casings with their skeletal remains and coffin contents and to understand the original Roman burial contexts. 

An important component of the project is the transformation of the negative forms in the gypsum casings into positive images through digital technology. Specialists at Heritage360 have produced a stunning 3D model of one of the gypsum casings revealing a family of two adults and an infant who died at the same time and were deposited together in the same coffin. Images here capture the negative forms in the gypsum casing and a still photo of the 3D scan; an interactive 3D model can be found here. In preparation for burial, all of the bodies in this group were completely wrapped from head to toe in shrouds and textiles of varying quality and weave. Details such as the ties used to bind the burial shroud over the head of one of the adults and the bands of cloth used to wrap the infant are clearly visible. 3D scanning has never before been applied to the material in Britain or further afield.

This project, funded by Internally Distributed Funding (IDF) of the University of York, has advanced the Yorkshire Museum's understanding of an under-explored collection and enhanced its data capture, communicated the importance of the burials for Roman York, and brought this restored material to public accessibility for the first time. The project results will lead to further major research funding applications to be able to scan all the gypsum casings and study coffin contents in York and elsewhere in Yorkshire.  The researchers hope to better understand the nature and potential social status of textiles used in the burials and the cultural, ritual, or practical reasons that might have determined this particular method of handling the dead not only in York, but elsewhere in Britain and beyond.