184 REPORT ON THE STAPENHILL EXPLORATIONS. 
Greek relics; upon axe heads of horn, taken from the graves 
which we attribute to the earliest periods of northern European 
culture ; upon discs or combs of bone and ivory on the Continent, 
as well as in England, at periods which, though not the earliest, 
still infinitely transcend our own; upon the implements even of 
the most savage nations of the oceanic race; and as there is 
nothing in the material itself to define @ priori, and render, as it 
were, necessary the kind of figure and the style with which it is 
to be ornamented ; but, on the contrary, any description of lines, 
whether straight or curved, might with equal facility be scratched 
upon it. This identity in the taste of times and places so widely 
apart from one another becomes a problem exceedingly difficult 
to solve, and suggests questions to which an answer cannot be 
very readily given; and it is further worth noting that the con- 
centric circles have never, or very rarely, been executed with the 
free hand ; for this, they are much too regular, and one sees at 
once that they have either been stamped with a punch or 
produced by some instrument upon the principle of compasses.” 
Only one other similarly decorated bone disc has been dis- 
covered in England, and I am not aware of the occurrence of 
any other in France or Germany. 
POTTERY. 
Perhaps a more frequent accompaniment of the deceased, 
whether burnt or unburnt, than either weapon or ornament, is a 
vessel of earthenware. ‘This, in the case of unburnt bodies, is 
usually found at the feet, or near the chest or head, and always 
in the upright position. These vessels, in connection with burnt 
bodies, are found associated with them in two different ways: 
they either contain the bones or ashes of the cremated person, or 
else the bones are gathered up into a heap and the vessel is 
placed near, or over, or amongst them. 
South of the Thames, most of the pottery found in Anglo-Saxon 
graves is of Roman or Romano-British manufacture, whilst that of 
purely Saxon origin, found in this country, occurs almost exclu- 
sively north of the Thames. This was long classed as British or 
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