202 Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Harnham. 
some of these appeared to be accidental) the skeletons lay due East 
and West (the heads to the west). One body was found doubled 
up lying north and south; but this may have been owing to some 
unintentional dislocation after burial. 2ndly. It seems to have 
been the practice at this cemetery to excavate the alluvial soil down 
to the chalk bed on which the body was then laid. This mode 
differs from that which is usual in the Anglo-Saxon graves of Kent 
and Sussex, where a cist (or grave) is formed in the chalk below 
the base of the tumulus. 
No trace of a coffin was discovered. The greater part of the 
bodies were protected by large flint stones, placed in coffin-like 
frames, and among the earth in more immediate contact with the 
remains, were found fragments of pottery of an earlier age. Some 
of these fragments were clearly of Roman or of Romano-British 
fabric. They were not the broken remains of earthenware vessels 
that had been deposited entire in the graves, but merely fragments 
thrown over it to fill up. In illustration of this custom, as one 
derived from times antecedent to Christian burial, the passage in 
Shakespeare’s play of Hamlet is referred to, in which the Priest, 
in spite of “Crowner’s quest law,’ expresses his own belief that 
Ophelia had committed “ felo de se,’ and ought to have been 
buried like a Pagan. 
‘« Her death was doubtful : 
And, but that great command o’ersways the order, 
She should in ground unsanctified have lodg’d, 
Till the last trumpet. For charitable prayers, 
Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her.” 
Act, V., Se. 1. 
It may have been the case in England that such a mark of 
reproach accompanied the burial of those who, in the gravedigger’s 
words, had “wilfully sought their own salvation;” but the passage 
applies in the first instance to Denmark, where Ophelia was 
buried. 
In some of the skeletons the jaws were found perfectly closed. 
In many this office appeared to have been neglected. 
Mr. Akerman also observes that several of the skeletons were 
unaccompanied by the common Anglo-Saxon characteristic, the 
