ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS 



burial was in all cases earlier than the burial of the entire body ; and 

 the fact that no weapons but only tweezers, combs, beads and other 

 small objects are found with the cremated burials may very well point to 

 differences of race as well as of period. Thus combs associated with 

 urn-burials have been found at Finedon, Pitsford and Northampton ' 

 (see fig. 1 6). These with other cases of cremation occur generally in 

 the central part of the county ; and where the cemeteries contain mixed 

 burials, the bodies are found lying east and west. A plausible inference 

 is that this part of Northamptonshire was occupied not by West-Saxons 

 but by another tribe who before their conversion to Christianity burned 

 their dead, and afterwards adopted the east-and-west position. 



Sir Henry Dryden's second and fuller paper on the Marston Hill 

 finds was read to the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1882, and it 

 is no slight on his memory to revise the conclusions he drew from what 

 was there brought to light. There is at the present day no necessity to 

 contrast such remains with Celtic, British or pure Roman in order to 

 establish their Saxon origin. Instead of the eighty years which he 

 allowed for interments of the pagan Saxons, it is now permissible to 

 spread them over a period of about two centuries, and to allow another 

 century for a considerable number of burials which show by their 

 orientation the influence of Christian teaching, but at the same time 

 illustrate the pagan custom of burying their ornaments and weapons with 

 the dead. 



The similarity declared to exist between the burials at Marston 

 Hill and others at Cestersover in Warwickshire, and Breach and Chatham 

 Downs in Kent, must therefore be taken in that general sense, in which 

 most pagan burials of the Saxon period in England may be said to 

 resemble one another. There is however no reason to doubt that the 

 interments at Newnham^ were 'precisely similar' to those at Marston 

 Hill, from which the distance is only about twelve miles. About a 

 mile and a half south of Daventry and the British and Roman site of 

 Borough Hill, Newnham lies just north of the river Nene on the geolo- 

 gical formation which seems to have specially recommended itself to 

 the Teutonic settlers in this neighbourhood. Notice has already been 

 taken of its proximity to the line of the Portway, and it may be described 

 as the counterpart of Marston Hill as regards the objects discovered in 

 the graves. About twenty bodies were found in 1829, and the relics 

 passed into the possession of Sir Henry Dryden, by whom they were 

 transferred to the municipal museum at Northampton. The skeletons 

 lay in the same direction as at Marston, with the faces upwards, and also 

 like them interred in small graves. In spite of defective supervision a 

 few bead necklaces were preserved, and among these were some triplet 

 specimens of glass exactly resembling some from Marston. Two large 

 gilt brooches (figs. 3, 4), now preserved at Northampton, are com- 

 pared with the large one from Marston, but the exact similarity of 



1 Society of Antiquaries, Proceedings, vol. xvii. pp. 165, 167. 

 * Archaologia, vol. xlviii. p. 336. 



233 



