178 REPORT ON THE STAPENHILL EXPLORATIONS. 
direction. We found much broken pottery, Saxon and Roman, 
animals’ teeth and horns, very many burnt stones, etc. The 
ground had clearly been disturbed; one kind of pottery of a 
fine reddish-brown stoneware was new to me; the teeth of animals 
were those of the horse, ox, hog, and sheep.” 
This ditch at Fairford resembles very closely the one at Stapen- 
hill (see azfe, p. 168), and I think we must dismiss from our 
minds the idea first entertained, that the ditch at Stapenhill 
was portion of an earthwork which surrounded the cemetery, 
but must rather regard it as a ditch in the ordinary acceptation 
of the term, and which served merely as a convenient receptacle 
for the bones of those animals whose flesh was cooked and 
eaten at the funeral feasts, as well as for various other waste 
and refuse arising from the burial customs of our Pagan English 
ancestors. 
In a large number of burials by inhumation there are signs 
of partial cremation also; the body was not reduced to ashes, 
but only partially burnt, sometimes, perhaps, merely singed. 
Indeed, a close and careful examination goes to show that 
very few burials, north of the Thames, actually took place with- 
out fire. In no other way, I think, can the occurrence of 
charcoal in close proximity to the body, in greater or less 
quantity, be accounted for. : 
In these Anglo-Saxon graves various articles are found accom- 
panying the bodies; thus in the graves of the men we often 
find axes, straight swords, spears, javelins, knives, centres or 
bosses of shields, all of iron; whilst in the graves of 
females and children beads of glass, terra-cotta, or coloured 
pastes, brooches of gold, or bronze gilded over, and _ orna- 
mented with filagree work and various devices, bronze pins, 
tweezers, ivory combs, small iron knives, and an almost endless 
variety of other small trinkets. 
This custom of depositing various articles in the grave with 
the deceased has been usually accounted for by the explanation 
that it was the result of a belief in an after state of existence 
