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The doctor's grave at the Stanway site

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• Samian ware
• An amphora
• A flagon
• Medical instruments
• A pan
• Some pottery
• Some rings
• Some rods
• A strainer
• A gaming board

There are various exciting features about the grave. One is the evidence that we have yet again for one of the dead having specialist skills. In this case, the medical instruments show that the person was a medic -- a doctor/surgeon -- who presumably provided care for the person whose remains subsequently ended up in the backfilled chamber-pit near the middle of the enclosure. This discovery supports the earlier view that at least some of the people buried in the enclosures were not relatives of the person represented by the primary burial but professional assistants and personal attendants.

The instruments comprise the elements required for a basic surgical kit. The thirteen are as follows: two iron scalpels, a saw, two blunt hooks, a sharp hook, two pairs of forceps, three handled needles, a scope probe, and a copper-alloy instrument of as yet unidentified function. What was the nationality of the doctor? Was he British, or could he have been a Roman or a Greek? In the Roman world, many doctors were Greek because Greek medicine was rather more scientifically-based than the Roman and thus more successful, whereas Roman medicine depended rather more on magical and religious practices. The medical instruments are informative in this respect since they seem to be nearly all of Celtic rather than standard Roman types. This then is not the equipment of a Roman doctor but of a Briton. The metal strainer seems to support this view. Vessels of this type have a distribution in Britain and central/northern Europe, rather than the Mediterranean. Thus whatever it was used for would appear to have been a Celtic rather than a Roman practice. The presence of the bowl in the grave is thus significant because it appears to support the view that this was the burial place of a Briton rather than a Roman.

Our knowledge of medical practice among the Britons before the arrival of the Romans is extremely limited, so we need to look to the Roman world for clues about how it might have worked. Most, if not all, Roman gods and goddesses were thought to have some healing powers so their help was sought by prayer and by making offerings. Lucky charms and magical incantations were often used in the hope of warding off disease or curing illnesses. On a more practical level, Roman doctors could treat sores and wounds with ointments and poultices and would prepare various medicines from herbs and spices. They could also perform substantial operations although, in the absence of effective anaesthetics, many people died from shock and pain as a result. And for those that did survive, the ineffectiveness of the antiseptics of the time meant that sometimes post-operative infections and gangrene would follow which, in some cases, could lead to amputation or worse. In those days, successful operations depended on the surgeon being accurate, strong, and above all fast. A full medical kit could run to many dozens of different items including scalpels, probes, spatulas, spoons, saws, tweezers, hooks, and forceps. There are many instances abroad (but never in Britain until now) of where medical equipment has been found in Roman graves. In some cases. only a token sample of the kit was placed in the grave.

As far as is known, the only hospitals in the Roman world were built by the army in military bases in the frontier zones. Army surgeons thus played an important role in spreading Roman medicine throughout the Roman world. They were able to develop their skills in the field treating injured and sick soldiers and they benefited from coming into contact with new treatments and drugs as more and more peoples and cultures were absorbed into the empire. The grave of the doctor at Stanway dates to the AD 50s when the Roman settlement of Britain was just beginning. In AD 49, the Romans founded the Roman town of Colchester and they populated it with hundreds of former soldiers who had served their time in the army. However, the Stanway doctor could not have been a retired army surgeon, because all the instruments would have been of standard Roman type which they are not.

Healers in the Celtic world were highly regarded and of high status. They belonged to a priesthood of learned men (and women) on a par socially with or just below that of the noble cum warrior class. These learned people included druids, bards, diviners (or seers), and physicians. Druids were the most senior and they were concerned with natural phenomena and philosophy. They were teachers, philosophers, and natural scientists who could make legal and other adjudications, even between rival tribes. Hence they were more than priests since they controlled the nobles and thus through them the whole of Celtic society. They were also credited with powers of magic and divination. Druidism was a cult which was based on the idea that the soul survives after death by passing to another living creature. This made its followers fearless in battle and is why the druids sanctioned human sacrifice. The two other main categories of learned people were bards (singers and poets) and Vates (diviners or seers) who interpreted sacrifices and natural phenomena. It is hard to tell to what extent these various functions overlapped between the different groupings, and it may be that the medical man at Stanway was in fact a druid. A decree issued by the Roman emperor Tiberius against the Gaulish druids lumped them in with `all that kind of diviners and healers' showing how, even if technically they were not all the same, they were still perceived by some Romans at least as having much in common. The training to become a druid reputedly took up to 20 years and was modular in the sense that, for example, the druids had to learn all that the bards would have had to learn. In the case of Irish bards some centuries later, it is known that they had to study such subjects as verse form, grammar, composition and recitation of tales, philosopy and law and that this took seven years. Hence it is said that all druids were bards but not all bards were druids. The same presumably applied to physicians.

The Romans were keen to stamp out the druids. They claimed that they did not like their practice of human sacrifice, although their objections had more to do with the political power of the druids rather than any gory cult rituals. In AD 54, Claudius issued a decree against the druids in Gaul, and we learn that in AD 60 the Roman army was involved in a big offensive against some druids in Britain who were holding out in a sanctuary in Anglesey. Our possible druid at Stanway died in the AD 50s, when the persecution was at its height. Thus the dating just allows for him to be a druid or at least some kind of `diviner or healer' that the Romans might regard as a druid, although it should be noted that there is no clear proof that the Romans did manage to eradicate the druids in any case.

The rods buried near the gaming board are very mysterious. Each rod is cylindrical in section. One end is flat and the other resembles a triangular blade although it is not sharp. There are eight rods in all and they come in two slightly different sizes. Four of the rods are iron and four are copper alloy so that there are two small rods and two large rods in both iron and copper alloy. The rods lay so closely together in the ground that it seems unlikely that they had wooden handles or other degradable fittings which no longer survive. The rods appear to have been associated with a nearby wooden object of some sort which incorporated eight copper-alloy rings. The rings lay in a row suggesting that the object took the form of a wide, narrow box with an open top where the rings were fixed along its length. Each ring was attached to a cloth or leather covering over the wooden container by a narrow loop of cloth or thread.

We are as yet at a loss to explain the function of the rods or the rings, but there may be a clue in how the rods lay in the grave. Five of the rods had been placed in a neat pile at one end of the box, with the other three at an angle so as to rest on the gaming board. This careful arrangement suggests that, like the gaming board, the rods were laid out as if in use. One explanation for the rods is that they were used for divination. This is not so much a way of trying to tell the future but of trying to find out if the time is right for whatever course of action is being contemplated. The idea then was to see if the gods were well disposed towards whatever action was being proposed. In the case of the rods from Stanway, would-be patients might wish to see if the time was right to submit themselves to the surgeon's knife. Our physician, if that what he was, could thus provide the complete service -- consultation with the gods and then full surgical intervention. Divination could be carried out by observing natural events such as the flight of birds, shooting stars or the physical characteristics of entrails. Sortilege is divination by the casting or drawing of lots. Various techniques have been used around the world and involve such things as bird bones, knuckle bones, pebbles, and arrows. This last method involved drawing specially marked arrows from a container or casting them down on the ground and interpreting the resultant pattern. It is interesting to note that the Stanway rods are rather like stylised arrows. It may be that each ring held a single rod upright and these were then drawn from the container as part of the divination process.

Ralph Jackson confidently discounts any medical or veterinary function for the rods, but there are of course other possible explanations for them. For example, they might have been parts of another game, or they might have been used in conjunction with the gaming board, perhaps to push the pieces around rather like the way a croupier collects counters on a gaming table. The rods look like very large versions of Roman implements called styli which were used for writing on wax tablets, so maybe they were for writing or inscribing letters or symbols on the ground or some similar soft surface. However none of these ideas seems particularly plausible, which is why something like divination begins to look like a serious possibility. Such a use does at least allow for the rods occurring in two different materials when there is no obvious practical reason why this should be so.