Message #67754

[Druid]

No Longer Celtic, Not Yet Roman

This is where the Colchester burial site comes in. The doctor of Camulodunum was evidently a rich and respected man. If one assumes that the surgical instruments and divining rods in his tomb weren't just for decorative purposes, healing and soothsaying must have been part of his job description. It's the closest anyone is likely to get to a druid in archaeological terms. Crummy is aware of this, of course. "We know nothing about the dead person. Anything is possible. We don't even know whether the bones belonged to a man or a woman."

For him other questions are far more exciting. "What we're seeing here are the tombs of an elite that ruled when the Romans came to Britain," says Crummy. The artifacts placed in the tombs reflect that the elite was in a cultural transition -- not entirely Celtic anymore, but not wholly Roman either. The set of surgical instruments is similar to other sets found along the Mediterranean. But the instruments have individual designs that are different from their Mediterranean versions. "What was the relationship between these people and the Roman occupiers?" asks Crummy.

"They witnessed with their own eyes how Emperor Claudius rode into Camulodunum at the head of his own army," speculates Mike Pitt. "And there's some probability that they knew Cunobelinus." He was king of the Britons before the Romans came, and he was the inspiration for a mythical figure. William Shakespeare turned him into Cymbeline, the main character of his eponymous tragicomedy.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0%2C1518%2C536402%2C00.html