Trinity Burial Ground, Kingston upon Hull: Archaeological Investigations in Association with the A63 Castle Street Improvement Scheme

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Investigating Cultural Aspects of Historic Mortuary Archaeology: Perspectives from Europe and North America", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Recently, several British post-medieval burial grounds have been archaeologically excavated prior to development. The most northerly, Trinity Burial Ground in the East-Yorkshire city of Kingston upon Hull, was utilised 1785-1860 as an off-site expansion to a small medieval parish graveyard. Investigation commenced in 2015, with trial trenching and a record of hundreds of monuments. Excavation across 3250m2 (40% of the site) was undertaken 2020-22 and utilised a bespoke sampling strategy, digital recording system, and on-site analysis prior to reburial. The remains of at least 8700 individuals were recovered, alongside artefacts and coffin fittings. Preliminarily, these represent a broad demographic, but also a cross-section of Hull’s community, evinced by spatial and temporal variations in organisation, burial practice and intensity, coffin panoply, and memorialisation. Viewed holistically, these data provide an unparalleled opportunity to study the multi-faceted lives, identities and beliefs of Hullensians when their town was fast becoming England’s third largest port.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Investigating Cultural Aspects of Historic Mortuary Archaeology: Perspectives from Europe and North America   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow