A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



centres of activity. The supply of such perishable objects as personal 

 ornaments would soon run short, and there appear to have been in the 

 western half of the county several rude attempts to imitate the brooches 

 which form such a conspicuous feature in West-Saxon interments. 

 These home-made articles found on the outskirts of a tribal district point 

 not only to an absence of facilities for trading, but to the stagnation and 

 poverty which must have become fairly general after the retirement of 

 the legions from the shores of Britain. 



Of the seven interments in which weapons were discovered with 

 the skeleton, two deserve special notice, as examples of a practice which 

 may hereafter be found characteristic of a particular rank, tribe or period. 

 There was a close resemblance between graves Nos. 29 and 30, which 

 were about fourteen feet apart and may have been covered by large 

 mounds of earth. Each contained a skeleton face upwards, with a shield 

 placed flat on the floor of the grave ; the body was stretched out in such 

 a manner that part of the remnants of the shield-handle were found 

 under the hip-bones, and the boss with the point upwards was just 

 between the thigh-bones. Two spearheads were found close together 

 on the right side of the head parallel to the body, and in one case an 

 arrowhead lay at the feet. The iron shield-boss was half full of burnt 

 vegetable matter resembling heath or fern-stems ; and the handle of the 

 shield found in grave No. 30 had had a wooden grip riveted to the 

 curved part of the centre, and itself extended right across the shield, being 

 riveted at both ends to the wooden or leather disc which was about five- 

 sixteenths of an inch thick. The spearheads which were attached to 

 staves of a man's height are of common types, with the exception of one 

 the blades of which are in different planes ' to give a spinning motion.* 



Of the three undoubted instances of cremation in the cemetery^ it is 

 difficult to speak, as the distribution of urn-burials in this country has 

 not been thoroughly investigated, though attention has in recent years 

 been called to the practice by Kemble, Rolleston and Wylie. Urns 

 containing burnt human bones are however mainly confined to Anglian 

 districts, and skeletons to Saxon and Jutish cemeteries, though there are 

 several localities where both rites were practised. The view taken by 

 that zealous antiquary, Charles Roach Smith, was that in cases where 

 cremated remains and skeletons were found in the same cemetery, the 

 urns belonged to prior interments which were disturbed when the graves 

 were dug and afterwards carefully replaced. ' This explanation,' he says, 

 ' will not be at variance with the belief that when cremation had ceased 

 as a general custom, it may in exceptional instances have been used over 

 a considerable period of time. Wherever found, these mortuary urns 

 must be ascribed to the earliest Teutonic tribes which settled in Britain ; 

 for the urns resemble Roman forms and may (in some cases) be of 

 Roman fabric.'* There is no reason to suppose however that urn- 



* Anhtrohgia, vol. xlviii. pi. xxv. grave 1 6. 



2 Comp.-ire Baron de Baye's Industrial Arts of the Anglo-Saxons, p. 22, pi. i, figs. 4, 6, from 

 Harnham Hill, Wilts. 



3 Archtcologta, vol. xxxvii. p. 471. * Collectanea Antijua, vol. v. p. 119. 



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