Identifying funerary urns and grave goods

Cremation vessels, coffin fittings — and when to stop digging.

Burial evidence has its own signatures: an upturned or upright pot packed with cremated bone (white, warped, fragmentary) is a cremation urn from prehistory to Roman times; coffin furniture — stamped grips, breastplates, studs in tin or brass — marks post-medieval burial grounds; unexpected long bones or a skull mean an inhumation.

Associated grave goods (pots, brooches, weapons in ordered position) multiply a find's importance and its legal sensitivity. Human remains and burial sites are protected by law almost everywhere, and excavating them without authority is both illegal and destructive.

The right action on hitting probable burial evidence: stop, photograph in place, cover, record location precisely, and notify the proper authority (and police if remains could conceivably be recent). Record any already-displaced material honestly — 'urn sherds and calcined bone from plough soil' — and let professionals take it from there.

From the guide library inside Collectors Catalogues, a free app for cataloguing antiques and finds with honest, museum-grade records.

More on religious objects

Seals and seal matrices — Reading a reversed device.

Identifying pilgrim badges and ampullae — Lead-tin devotional souvenirs.

Identifying scarabs and amulets — Egyptian protective forms.

Identifying cuneiform tablets — Wedge-marks in clay.

Identifying reliquaries and devotional objects — Containers for the sacred — from enkolpia to house shrines.

Identifying ushabti figures — The mummiform servants of Egyptian burials — and their million imitations.

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