Dr Thomas Matthews Boehmer

I study Roman-period funerary archaeology, particularly in the Roman North (Gaul, Germania, and Britannia). My Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship focuses on the agency of those who buried the dead, and who they may have been, as well as how age was created at the graveside. I enjoy putting together stories about 'normal' communities in the Roman Empire from diverse sources so as to better understand how people interacted with one another, even after death. In doing so, I look at settlement composition, the distribution of finds, and, indeed, the graves themselves.

I am also interested in urban histories in the Roman North and the development of social memory.

My Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellowship (2024-7) at the University of Leicester investigates the agency of the burier and the formation of age classes in the Roman North. I was previously the Research Associate (2021-4) on the AHRC-funded 'Roman York Beneath the Streets Project' at the University of Cambridge where I focused on understanding the character and growth of the Roman colonia there and the relationships between the city, its peripheries, and surrounding rural settlements. During my PhD (2017-21), I looked at the development of identities as demonstrated by changes to burial rites in England and The Netherlands for the period BCE 250 - 200 CE.

New Perspectives on Child and Infant Burial in Britain (100 B.C.E.–C.E. 200)

I organised student-led conferences as part of my PhD.

Select Invited Talks

Roman York's colonia: fact or factoid? (RAC 2024)

Spatial zoning and City Planning in Roman York (RFG 2024)

Francis Drake, the Minute Books, and the Society (ECR Conference, Society of Antiquaries, 2022)

This Generation Must Make the Change? The Placement of Children in South-Eastern England’s Funerary Assemblages (TRAC 2022)

Urban cemeteries in North-Western Europe under Rome: New perspectives (D Caucus, Faculty of Classics, Cambridge, 2021)

Iron Age dislocation: a view from the burial record (Later European Prehistory Group, Department of Archaeology, Cambridge, 2021)

The latest theoretical trends in Roman-period archaeological research (Surrey Archaeological Society Conference, 2021)

Select Sessions Organised

New Perspectives on Roman York (RAC 2024)

 

Ph.D., Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge (2017-21)

M.Phil., Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge (2016-7)

B.A. (Hons), Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Warwick (2013-6)