LEICESTER, ENGLAND—BBC News reports that traces of a possible Roman shrine, including a broken altar base, have been found under a cemetery next to Leicester Cathedral. More than 1,100 sets of human remains have been removed from the site, where a visitor center will be constructed. “There’s always been a tradition that the cathedral was built on a Roman temple, based on antiquarian discoveries in the nineteenth century,” said Mathew Morris of the University of Leicester. “We are now finding a Roman building that looks like it had a shrine status to it.” The altar base was recovered from what would have been the basement of a large Roman building, he added. Morris thinks a Christian church may have been built on top of the Roman ritual site much earlier than documents dated to the 1220s would suggest. Roman coins dated from the first through the fourth centuries, a Roman hairpin, remains of a brooch, and fragments of pottery made in Gaul with images of a gladiator, and a creature that may be a Pegasus or a griffin have also been recovered. To read about the discovery of a famous monarch's burial in the ruins of Leicester's Greyfriars church, go to "The Grave of Richard III," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of the Decade.
