A Roman sarcophagus unearthed at Westminster Abbey in London may have held the remains of a medieval abbot rather than the wealthy Briton whose name is carved into it, according to a new identification proposed by Warwick Rodwell, consultant archaeologist at the abbey. The burial was discovered in 1820, and fresh analysis of the bones has now placed the death in the late Saxon period, opening the possibility that the stone coffin was reused centuries after it was first made.
The sarcophagus bears the name of Valerius Amandinus, described as a wealthy Briton who lived between about A.D. 300 and 400. But a Latin cross dated to the tenth or eleventh century is also inscribed on the lid, a mark that suggests the coffin was reopened and used again during the medieval period. Radiocarbon dating of the bones supports that reading: the person interred there died between A.D. 987 and 1052.
Rodwell has narrowed the candidates to two men who led the Benedictine monastery at Westminster Abbey in the eleventh century. The first is Aelfwig, who died around A.D. 1020 after serving as abbot. The second is Wulnoth, who succeeded Aelfwig as abbot and died in 1049. «We have two viable contenders for the occupant of the sarcophagus,» Rodwell said in a statement released by Taylor & Francis.
Analysis of the skeleton, carried out by James Young Langthorne of Pre-Construct Archaeology, indicates that the man stood about five feet, nine inches tall and was between 35 and 49 years old when he died. Those details are consistent with a mature adult but do not by themselves distinguish between the two abbots.
The recent study also examined a white residue that marked out a rectangular structure inside the sarcophagus. No physical traces of that feature survived, but Rodwell said it can only have been a timber coffin, which decayed completely during the seven centuries the sarcophagus lay buried in the sacristy courtyard. The white substance has been identified as lime sprinkled over the remains at the time of burial.
The case illustrates how Roman stone coffins were sometimes recycled for later burials, particularly in ecclesiastical settings where older monuments carried prestige. The inscription to Valerius Amandinus records the coffin's original owner, but the cross on the lid and the radiocarbon date of the bones point to a second use in the Saxon era, when Westminster Abbey was still a Benedictine monastery.
The identification remains a proposal rather than a confirmed attribution. With two abbots whose deaths fall within or near the radiocarbon range, the evidence narrows the field but does not settle it. The full scholarly article on the research appears in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association.
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