Great Dover Street woman

The Great Dover Street woman is the skeleton of a Romano-British woman discovered in excavations at 165 Great Dover Street, Southwark, London. She is suggested to have been a female gladiator, though this interpretation is contested.

Discovery and context The discovery of the Great Dover Street woman was announced in 2000 following excavations in 1996 at the site by Museum of London Archaeology.

The grave was a cremation dating from the early 2nd- to mid-3rd-century AD, from a bustum funeral over a pit into which the remains eventually fell and were covered. This sort of burial is rare in Roman Britain. Eight unburnt ceramic lamps and eight tazze were added to the grave fill after the cremation. There was also evidence for molten glass, gold textile, burnt pine cones, chicken, bread, and dates forming part of the cremation ritual.

Interpretation as a gladiator Archaeologists at the Museum of London argue that the remains might represent the first female gladiator discovered, with Jenny Hall (then curator of early London history at the museum) saying that this interpretation was "70% probable". The identification of the burial as a gladiator was popularised by an episode of the television series Secrets of the Dead called "Gladiator Girl". It was further enhanced by the publication of a companion book to the programme titled Gladiatrix: The True Story of History’s Unknown Woman Warrior. Nick Bateman concluded that the burial was more likely to represent a complex religious and ritual process which incorporated gladiatorial images rather than representing the life experience of the woman as a gladiator. The Great Dover Street woman's burial has also been argued to have been that of a partner or lover of a gladiator.