Writing Londinium with the Seven Senses

Trying a garland made by Patty Baker (Kent)

by Caroline Lawrence

[This is a shortened and edited amalgam of two papers I gave in early-October 2018, one for the University of Kent and one for a conference called Sensory Experience in Rome's Northern Provinces hosted by the Roman Society at Senate House in London. Go to #SERNP2018 to see lots more about this]

Archaeologist Lindsay Allason-Jones, a visiting fellow at Newcastle University recently said, ‘It wasn’t until I wrote a book from the point of view of a Romano-British woman that I started to think about things like where did she keep her house key?’  

This is what I have discovered. As I write characters who have adventures in the ancient world, I have to imagine them moving through space with the sights, sounds, smells, and all other sensory experiences in order make it seem real to my young readers. This is especially important for children who need to be grounded in a sensory world. 

Here is how I used the seven senses to portray Roman Britain in my most recent series of books for kids, the Roman Quests, and also in my new work-in-progress The Girl with the Ivory Knife, in which a 12-year-old London schoolboy travels back in time to 3rd century Londinium (Roman London). 

SIGHT is the first of the five senses. For my Roman Quests I wanted to get an overview of what Roman London would have looked like. 

Model of London's port at Museum of London Barbican 

• Ruins aren’t so helpful to me… I need more
• Museums are useful, with their statues, inscriptions and artefacts. The Museum of London and it’s archaeology department MOLA gave me tons of material. 
• Models are very special. Storytellers know the power of the miniature.  
• Interactive maps like the one produced by MOLA are super.

superb Bath Roman Baths

• 3D computer walk-throughs on YouTube are too clean but often introduce light effects. 
• Google maps and Google Earth help me get a birds’ eye view of the terrain or walk along a road from Chester to Leicester, for example. 
• Alan Sorrell’s marvellous paintings and drawings. See my blog about him HERE. 
• Visiting sites like Butser Ancient Farm, Bath Roman Baths & Fishbourne provide 3D spatial and sensory experiences especially when they are peopled by re-enactors. 

Hard to Be a God (2013)

• Re-enactment events provide an abundance of unexpected revelations especially when they are performed by those who are passionate about getting details right. I particularly admire the members of Britannia, the Ermine Street Guard and Leg II Augusta. 
• Watching movies. For my book set in Roman London, a place you would NOT want to visit, I watched Hard to Be a God (2013), like Fellini Satyricon only with more mud, excrement and chickens. 
• Film sets can give you inspiration, too. 

London’s Mithraeum hadn’t reopened when I was writing the Roman Quests and besides, those books are set in the late first century. But I could use the Mithraeum for my new work in progress about the boy travelling back in time.

For my Time Travel book, I tried to think of things we don’t see today that would have been commonplace then. 
• A sky full of stars
• Crucified man on a cross
• People in rags and barefoot
• Indoor darkness – a world with no electricity
• Someone carrying a torch, a very symbolic object
• Someone with a staff (Main purpose? To beat off dogs!)
• The different stages of animal sacrifice
• A mind-boggling array of diseases & deformities
• Especially eye infections, skin disorders and toothache

For the first time I could relate ancient objects to modern ones. E.g.
• A tunic could be described as a big T-shirt and a toga as a blanket
• Mithras’ Persian cap is like a Smurf hat
• A Mithraeum initiation could be described as a flight simulator 
• And the seven grades as ascending levels of a video game...

Sophie Jackson on what smells to put in the Mithraeum

SMELL is one of the most evocative senses, and one of the hardest to convey in words. Giacomo Savani, one of the organisers of the conference, started with a quote from Rosemary Sutcliffe in which she speaks of the ‘blue reek of wood-smoke’. Evidence hints that my time travelling boy Alex might have  smelled burning pine cones in London’s Mithraeum, which he will use as the site of a portable portal to third century Londinium. However, Sophie Jackson (above), one of the key archaeologists involved in recreating the Mithraeum Experience, said the smell of men, cooked chicken and damp might have drowned out any pine freshness! 

A Saturnalia dinner with Stephen Cockings

Other scents from Roman London:

• To Alex, a girl smells like apple pie (clove oil for her aching teeth) and church (frankincense perfume)
• Someone’s breath smells of garlic
• Alex gets headache from breathing oil lamp smoke 
• He also smells the peaty smell of outdoor braziers
• And the roast pork smell of body being cremated 
• With an undercurrent of incense burned against demons

Smelly and Tasteable things

TASTE is one of the easiest of the senses to tap into.
• Posca, water with a splash of vinegar, was often drunk by soldiers.
• I make mine with red wine vinegar but you could use white, too.
(Adding even a little wine or vinegar to water kills bacteria. The Romans didn’t know about bacteria, germs or viruses but somehow they knew adding vinegar to water was good.)
• Honey was a hot food, prescribed for those of a phlegmatic humour. 
• Olives, especially the little bitter black ones are ‘a taste as old as cold water…’ (Lawrence Durrell in Prospero’s Cell)

ELMA mastic gum from Chios

• How did they serve a hot sausage in Roman London? Probably with a cabbage leaf wrapper. A clever idea I got from a fast food stall at a Reenactment event.
• Mastic gum. One of the sniffable objects at the Museum of London’s Roman Dead exhibition (on until 28 October) is something called mastic. I first discovered mastic while reading the first century AD epigrams of Martial. He talks about a man who picks his teeth with a mastic toothpick. But it was mainly used as gum to be chewed to freshen the breath. In fact, we get the word ‘masticate’ from mastic. Read more HERE.

SOUND is harder to replicate than taste in my opinion, especially music. Armand D’Angour has been doing fun experiments into ancient Greek music and I often listen to Indian music to try to get an idea of how exotic Roman music might have sounded. We do know about other sounds, such as: 

interactive sound at Museum of London Docklands

• The crowing of a rooster or cluck of chickens in the street
• Dogs barking in the night 
• The wailing of bereaved, more common and more audible then? 
• The shouts of peddlers, bread sellers, a rag-and-bone woman...
• Tepidarium echoes with the sound of slaps and grunts of masseuse
• Blacksmiths hammering
• Door hinges squeaking
• Bells and rattles to frighten off demons and cover unholy sounds

TOUCH can be experienced not just with fingertips and lips, but also with our bare feet. Here are just a few a time traveller might have encountered in Londinium. 

interactive touch at Museum of London Docklands

• Wet grass against bare legs in a tunic
• Bare Feet on a muddy, gravel-studded road
• Or on a mosaic floor or on London brick
• Glutinous mud of the south bank foreshore
• Warmth of a kiln and hard-baked earth around it
• A piglet snuffling at someone’s armpit
• Itchy mosquito bites on bare legs
• Stepping in squishy, still-warm manure
• loom-woven linen & woollen belt pouch
• Carbantinae (one-piece leather shoes) rub top of feet
(The Roman Dead also has a display where you can touch a replica hobnail boot, top and bottom.)

KINESTHETIC means the awareness of the position and movement of the body. Many of the objects I’ve been talking about are interactive. You have to engage with them in a kinesthetic way. 

Richard and Caroline Lawrence in Nimes

• Wearing the clothes including hobnail shoes on the cobbled streets of a Roman town like Nimes.
• Playing with an oil-lamp or a pigskin lamp
• A Saturnalia Dinner
• Leather bikini bottoms as worn by girl acrobats
• NO Bogus Roman Handshake
• NOT using a sponge stick
• Trying out a wax-tablet
• Using a strigil and oil

Tom, Giacomo and Patty try out a strigil and scented oil

At the Sensory Archaeology Conference, co-presenter Tom Derrick brought homemade oil-based Roman perfume. To demonstrate the difference of smell in the bottle and on the skin he borrowed my replica strigil to let people rub his scented olive-oil on their arms and then scrape it off. One conference member, Mr. Colin Gough, observed, One thing that surprised me was the amount of oil left after a good strigiling (is that even a word?). Unless the Romans were a lot better at it there must’ve been a lot of sticky people leaving the baths plus the oil slick on the water! 

THE SIXTH SENSE is the final sense I want to think about. 

A double flame lamp at a Saturnalia dinner

Have you ever meditated about your site, your text, your historical character, your artefacts, your bones? By meditation I mean a contemplation of your world, characters, etc using your non-verbal visual imagination. It's like a virtual reality game but with added sounds, smells and things you would feel? If you meditate, try it. If you find meditation hard, try writing a fictional piece about your subject. Maybe not the main subject but something peripheral. Someone or something on the edges of your topic. You can even do a poem or haiku. 

At the moment I’m involved in a marvellous project based around the archaeology of the House of Amarantus in Pompeii. I had the idea to write a scene from the point of view of a sixteen-year-old slave girl who has recently arrived in Pompeii from Britannia. She sleeps on a mat in the doorway of her mistress’s bedroom. My idea of showing not telling the kids about the layout of the house is that she wakes up one night in pitch black and has to grope her way to the loo. 

So close your eyes for a moment and imagine waking up in the peristyle walkway of a fairly posh Roman house. Think of five different things your fingers might encounter as you push yourself to your feet and start to grope your way along the corridor. Think of five different things you might hear. Think of five different things you might smell. Where do you have to avoid evil spirits in the house? Think of five different ways your body is reacting to this night-time grope. 


Whether we are scholars, writers, historians, teachers or all of the above, let us study the past not just with our heads but with our hearts and with all the senses.

My Roman Quests are perfect for kids studying the topic of Romans in Key Stage 2. My first time travel book, The Girl with the Ivory Knife, is out early April 2019. It is based on real bones and sites from Roman London. 

Roman Dead for Kids

With its skeletons, skulls, tombstones and ashes of the dead, some will find the current Roman Dead exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands disturbing. For this reason it is not recommended to bring children 8 years old or under. But many children will find it as fascinating as I do. I recently attended several school workshops at the Museum of London Barbican where children aged 8-11 engaged in activities about bones and grave goods with a real skeleton in the room. They were told not to touch the real remains but to treat them with respect and they seemed to accept this as perfectly normal. 

(For more info about these FREE workshops go HERE)

If you think your child or grandchild might be interested in the fascinating customs of Roman Dead, here are my tips for making the most of your visit.  

When you first arrive, go straight to the welcome desk and pick up a Family Trail sheet. This can be folded to make an origami ‘Quiz Machine’ which poses questions to get you thinking. It is fun and interactive and addresses four different categories: Bones, Rituals, Imports and Cremations. For example, IMPORTS Objects found in London graves are made from materials from the furthest part of the Roman Empire and beyond. Can you find the case with these artefacts?  Match their materials to where they came from. 1. Ivory leopard-shaped knife 2. Tortoiseshell bracelet 3. Gold-in-glass beads. Answer- 1 = C, 2 = A, 3 = B

Once you are in the exhibition keep an eye out for the Family Trail cards, down at kids’ eye level. They have a jolly skeleton and look like the one on the left. The exhibition is laid out so that you can go around the perimeter and not have to confront any skeletons close up (apart from some skulls). In the central area, seven full skeletons are laid out in glass cases in the middle of the dimly lit space so you can either approach or avoid them. Chances are your kids will be fascinated!

One of the first things you see upon entering the exhibition is a map of Roman London showing the locations of the several cemeteries we have found. In Roman times, cemeteries are always outside the main area of habitation. In London proper, north of the Thames, they were outside the town wall. In marshy South London where there was no town wall, burial areas were demarcated by canals or ditches. 

APOTROPAIC – This is a big word but a useful one. It is Greek for ‘turns away evil’. Because the Romans didn’t know about germs and viruses, they thought many illnesses were caused by evil spirits and demons. For this reason they had lots of different ways of turning away evil. Bad smells, loud noises and staring faces were all apotropaic. I wonder if fierce animals like stone lions and ivory leopards also protected the person who owned them against evil spirits or tomb raiders. 

SMELL – What did an ancient funeral smell like? Take the circular lids off three different containers and see if you can tell Frankincense and Bay apart. Mastic is a gum from the Greek island of Chios. It was used to flavour drinks as well as make things smell nice. It was also a kind of ancient chewing gum, used to freshen the breath. We get the word ‘masticate’ from mastic. Bad smells were used to drive away demons but these are all nice smells, perhaps to attract protective gods. 

SOUND – Roman funerals were often noisy, not just with tears and wailing but often with music and rattles to keep away evil spirits. Your kids can try out an iron rattle just like some on display, found in and around the cemeteries of Roman London.

TOUCH – You can touch replicas of items in the exhibition: a hobnail shoe (bottom as well as top), a copper-alloy wrist torque and a clay jar. Each one feels different. Be sure to bring some wet wipes for after, or wash your hands! 

SIGHT – I love some of the tiny objects like the die made of Whitby jet and the teenie-tiny glass bottle. I also like to think that the bones of a chicken in a child’s grave were those of a beloved pet rather than a last supper. And don’t miss the jar with a face on it. That face is probably apotropaic. So is anything made of Whitby jet. Because it generates static electricity when rubbed, it was thought to repel evil spirits. 

BIZARRE - There are some real mysteries in the exhibit. Why does a woman have a skull over her hips? Why do some bodies have iron rings that can’t be removed? Why are parts of the bodies missing, like the heads? Perhaps Romans thought some of these things would keep the spirit of the dead person from haunting the living. Perhaps some involved black magic. But we’re not sure. It’s a mystery. I am currently writing a book about the girl who owned the ivory leopard knife. Her bones are not in the Roman Dead exhibition but back at the Museum of London Barbican site for those free workshops I told you about. 

INTERACTIVE – Near the end of the exhibit you will find a foam skeleton. Kids can put it together like a jigsaw puzzle. 

THE GIFT SHOP – Afterwards, kids can buy a replica oil lamp to try out at home (under parental supervision!). There are also other little souvenirs and lots of good books, some factual and some fiction. 

The Roman Dead is a wonderful kid-friendly exhibition. I hope you and your young relatives enjoy it as much as I did! 

I will be giving a sneak preview of my work in progress, ‘The Girl with the Ivory Knife’, at the Museum of London Docklands on Saturday 18 August. My new book is inspired by an exotic and mysterious ivory knife on display in the Roman Dead exhibition. The event is family friendly and free but you must go HERE to book your place. See you there, I hope! 

Mysteries of the Roman Dead

by Caroline Lawrence

I have been obsessed with the ancient Graeco-Roman world for over forty years. I studied Greek and Latin at U.C. Berkeley and later at Cambridge and London. I have been writing historical fiction set in the Classical world for nearly twenty years. But the more I learn about the ancients, the less I feel I understand them. 

A free exhibition called Roman Dead currently on at the Museum of London Docklands presents a dozen ancient skeletons of Roman Londoners, as well as ashes of the cremated. There are tombstones, urns and grave-goods (personal objects buried with the dead). It may sound gruesome, but it’s utterly fascinating. The contents of graves from Roman London show us how much we still have to learn about the ancient Romans.

Here are five mysterious aspects of the exhibition that intrigue me. 

1. Why such a big sarcophagus? 

This is the star piece of the exhibition. Found a year ago (in June 2017) at a site on Harper Road in Southwark, this massive box (and lid) is made of limestone imported from Lincolnshire and weighs two and a half tons. Why put a body inside such a heavy stone box? To stop her spirit from haunting the living? To keep robbers from taking her jewellery? Or to stop grave robbers from doing something even worse? As dozens of surviving curse tablets show, many Romans believed in magic. In a recent blog post, Roman magic expert Adam Parker notes that witches used parts of dead bodies for their spells. So maybe this was a way of keeping the witches or sorcerers out of her grave, i.e. of protecting the dead from the living rather than vice versa.   Is that what’s going on here? Is this massive sarcophagus designed to protect the body from misuse or robbery? If so, it didn’t work. The heavy lid had been pushed aside and part of her arm is missing. A tiny scrap of gold hints that she was in fact robbed of jewellery. Creepily, the partial skeleton of a baby was found with her skeleton. Was it originally buried with the woman? Or did it fall into the sarcophagus when it was robbed? 

2. Why is her skull on her pelvis?

From a grave at Hooper Street near Tower Hamlets, we have the complete skeleton of a woman aged between 36-45. She was buried in a wooden coffin on a bed of chalk powder. Some time after she was buried, when she had started to decompose, someone dug her up again, removed the top of her skull and it placed above her pelvis. Then the coffin was reburied and rocks were piled on top. Among the rocks was a copper-alloy key. Was the key part of the reburial? Or accidentally dropped? Why was she buried on a bed of chalk? But most importantly, why was the top part of her skull placed over her pelvis?! Maybe the newly positioned skull, rocks and key (along with a ceremony we can’t guess at) were designed to stop the woman’s spirit from haunting those still above earth. Romans thought the womb was the seat of uncanny power. 

Listen to a commentary on this and other objects HERE

3. Why is the lucky amulet under a jug?

Also found at the Hooper Street excavations was a young woman in a coffin with jet jewellery. Whitby Jet is not a precious stone but rather ancient fossilised wood from the Jurassic era. When you rub it against wool it produces a static charge that can move hair and other small particles without touching theme. Romans didn’t know about static and believed jet to be a magical substance that could keep away evil. Romans also believed that you could do harm to someone just by looking at them a certain way, hence amulets with staring faces like that of Medusa to ‘reflect back the evil eye’. So a jet medallion of Medusa’s face will be doubly protective. So far so good. But why was this jet medallion hidden under a small ceramic flagon? What is going on here? In addition, her other items of jet jewellery were not on her but near her. Is this magic? 

Listen to a commentary about the lion HERE

4. Why a lion? 

In 1876, Victorian workmen found the remains of a semi-circular tower in the Roman Wall at Bishopsgate, near where the Gherkin stands today. These bastions were built in the 4th century using material from earlier Roman structures. Among the rubble used to build the tower was a stone lion devouring a stag. The stone is imported limestone from the South Cotswolds (London has no local stone) and was carved in the round, so perhaps stood atop a mausoleum. Why a lion? The museum label says the lion stands for the power of death, but I’m not buying it. Why pay a fortune for an expensive carved sculpture made of imported stone just to state the obvious? Could the lion be a warning to people or spirits who might want to do harm to the grave? If the lion is on MY grave, then it’s MY lion. That would be worth paying for. This lion devouring his prey reminds me of the ivory leopard handle of another Roman girl’s folding knife. This is MY knife and therefore MY leopard. Watch out!  

Pinecones for sale in Taormino, Sicily

5. Why a pinecone?

From Great Dover Street, Southwark comes a pinecone made of imported French limestone (shown in the picture above along with the lion). Similar pieces have been found on military sites from the North of England. Ever since I first noticed pinecones for sale in Sicily, I have wondered what they signified in the Graeco-Roman world. Actual pine cones and kernels were found on the site of London’s Mithraeum and also at Londinium’s amphitheatre, as well as at a cremation burial. It is thought that pinecones were burned as incense, perhaps to attract good deities and/or repel evil spirits. At the Roman Dead exhibition, the label suggests they were associated with the god Attis, who represented rebirth and resurrection. Was the pinecone the pagan equivalent of the Christian cross? 

All these mysterious objects remind us that although the Romans were like us in many ways, in others they were very different.

Roman Dead is on until the end of October 2018 at the Museum of London Docklands and it is free. The exhibition is interactive and multi-sensory, with incense to smell, rattles to shake and replica Roman objects to touch. There is even a family trail for kids 8 and older. Ask at the front desk for a free origami Quiz Machine. 

The Key to the Womb

by Caroline Lawrence

I have been studying the remains and also the grave-goods of a 14-year-old girl from 3rd century Roman London as part of the inspiration for a new book provisionally titled The Girl with the Ivory Knife. Dubbed the Lant Street Teen, this girl’s grave was uncovered on Lant Street in Southwark when ground was being cleared for a new development near Borough Tube Station. 

One reason she is of interest is that her DNA and isotopes have been analysed and tell us that she was of European ancestry with blue eyes, but grew up in the southern Mediterranean, perhaps even North Africa. (She was buried near other Roman Londoners of black African ancestry.) We know from her teeth and bones that she came to London aged about nine and died five years later, aged around fourteen. 

Apart from the fascinating story suggested by her DNA and isotopes, her burial was notable for the richness of the grave goods. In a cemetery where other bodies were buried with maybe a couple of clay beakers and some glass beads, the Lant Street Teen had two exotic glass perfume bottles, a wooden box decorated with bone inlay and copper, a copper-alloy key on a chain and an iron clasp knife with an ivory handle in the shape of a leopard. The glamour of a knife with a handle of expensive ivory in the shape of an exotic leopard has slightly eclipsed the other items, in particular the little key. 

One of my obsessions is with the apotropaic devices and charms of the ancient Roman world. We forget how terrifying it was to live in a world of invisible enemies. The Romans had no concept of infection apart from a vague idea of miasma or bad air. Most illnesses, accidents and other calamities were blamed on evil spirits or gods. For this reason, I believe that almost every manufactured item had an apotropaic aspect (i.e. to turn away evil) either as its primary function or in addition to its primary function. The girl’s knife, for example, obviously had many practical functions, but its fierce leopard-shaped handle made from piercing elephant tooth might have had the power to frighten off spirits.

The box may have contained makeup which not only beautified but protected.

Her clothing did not survive, but it almost certainly had built-in protection. In her book Dress and Personal Appearance in Late Antiquity, Faith Pennick Morgan points out that almost all embellishment on ancient garments was apotropaic. Borders, knots and sewn-in talismans were all designed to act as ‘flypaper for demons’, to confuse them and keep the wearer safe. Even colours had special properties. For example, red was considered repellent to demons which may explain why archaeologists have found so many children’s tunics in this colour. (Children were considered especially vulnerable, which is why they also wore apotropaic amulets such as the phallus-shaped charm.)

The two small flasks might have contained perfume; good and bad smells were used to manipulate spirits. In ancient times, the uterus of a woman was considered by the ancients to be a living creature – almost demonic – wandering around and causing damage or death to a woman by harming or squeezing her other internal organs. Plato (Timaeus 91c) writes that the wombs and uteruses of women have in them a living animal that craves children. (Our word ‘hysterical’ comes from the Greek word for uterus.) Ancient doctors suggested that girls marry as close to their first period as possible so that they could bear children and control the wandering womb.

If the restless womb moved too far down, doctors would place pleasant incense near the woman’s head to draw it up while at the same time wafting unpleasant scents such as burnt hair, pitch, cedar resin and squashed bedbugs (!) between her legs to repel the womb. If the womb had wandered too high and threatened to asphyxiate the woman by pressing on her lungs, then they would do the opposite, placing sweet-smelling things below her pelvis and ill-smelling substances by her nose. (see Magical and Medical Approaches to the Wandering Womb in the Ancient Greek World by Christopher A. Faraone) 

This brings us to the last item found in her grave, the key on its chain. 

What might this have symbolised? 

In Roman times, a key on a woman’s belt might well have showed that she enjoyed responsibility in her domain, the household. Sets of keys dangling from belts on a chain became an important status symbol in Late Antique times and gave us the word chatelaine. But the Lant Street Teen’s key seems too small and delicate to be a house or storeroom key. It feels more like the key to a small chest or box. Although we have the evidence that she was buried with just such a small box (above), there is no trace of a lock, which one assumes would also have been in copper-alloy. 

Perhaps the key symbolised the unlocking of the Gates of Death so that the girl’s soul could cross the threshold into the afterlife. This suggestion is made in connection with an iron key found above the pelvis of a Roman woman’s skeleton from Cirencester. (The Western Cemetery of Roman Cirencester p24 & p88) There is another possibility for the Lant Street Girl’s key that I have not seen suggested elsewhere.   

Many Romans believed the soul to be immortal, but another way of ensuring ‘everlasting memory’ was to leave something of yourself behind. Literature, a monument or a fine tombstone were all ways of making a mark. Another way of continuing beyond death was to live through offspring. In this day and age of empowered women we tend to downplay the craving for children, but this was often the deepest desire of many women in ancient times. 

In her book about Dress in Late Antiquity, Faith Morgan writes that keys were found on womb amulets, symbolising control of the opening of the womb to allow conception and pregnancy, and the locking of the womb to prevent miscarriage. (p36) And in his fascinating article about the Wandering Womb, Faraone highlights the many gems of hematite (bloodstone) depicting a womb above a key. The womb is shown as a kind of upside down beaker and the key is usually the kind with teeth like a comb. (The picture above shows a big iron key probably for a warehouse door. On the amulet below you can see the key with crank-like handle and distinctive teeth beneath the opening of the womb.) 

Womb amulet gem from the British Museum

In this position the key clearly symbolises the locking or unlocking of the womb. (This one has a magical seven teeth.) Again, the womb is like a creature that needs controlling. Sometimes a magic name is carved on the other side of these magic womb amulets. This may be the name of the demon or spirit in charge of wombs. Sometimes a sentence on the back addresses the demon or even the womb directly. E.g. ‘Contract, womb, lest Typhon seize you!’ (Faraone Gems of Heaven p 66) 

Reading about keys on womb amulets made me wonder about the small key found with the bones of the Lant Street Teen. Perhaps it was the key to the now-lost wooden box, originally worn with her knife on her belt. But perhaps she also wore it as a talisman to protect a growing baby in her womb. Dr Rebecca Redfern, who probably knows this girl’s bones better than anybody, told me that although the Lant Street Teen was young there is a chance that she might have been a young mother. And we have just seen that it was recommended that girls begin to bear children as soon as possible. Perhaps our girl even died in childbirth. In that case, the little key that protected her womb and helped her bear fruit would be a testimony of her achievement on earth. This is my own idea, and a far-fetched one, I admit, which may or may not end up in my fictionalised account of her life. 

Whether the Lant Street Teenager had a child or not, she has now gained a kind of ‘everlasting memory’ in the ongoing mystery of who she was. 

You can see the Lant Street Teen’s grave goods (though not her bones) at the current Roman Dead exhibition at the Museum of London Docklands. The remains of other Roman Londoners shed light how they lived but also bring home how much we still have to learn.