ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS 



wide-mouthed vessels of dark-brown or black ware which were but 

 clumsy imitations of the Roman potter's wheel-made productions. 



The evidence for cremation at Woodford is the sketch of an urn in 

 Cole's manuscript History of Ecton, the original copy of which is in the 

 public library at Northampton ; but in the neighbourhood of Peter- 

 borough traces of the practice have come to light from time to time. 

 It may be an accident that the Anglo-Saxon burials have nearly always 

 occurred on the Huntingdonshire side of the Nene/ for the Romans 

 certainly had important stations on both sides of the river and there was 

 a Roman road running due east through Peterborough across the Fens to 

 Denver in Norfolk.'^ The facilities of communication afforded by this 

 highway to a large extent explain several indications of intercourse 

 between the inhabitants of the eastern portion of the county and the 

 men of Kent and East Anglia. 



It has recently been pointed out that all the tracks across and along 

 the Fens converged at Peterborough, and it is not surprising to find in 

 this locality types of relics which are generally confined to other parts of 

 the country. Here too are found traces of both methods of burial, but 

 where the body was unburnt the direction of the graves was not 

 uniform in this locality, so that little can as yet be said as to the racial 

 connections of its early settlers. It is unfortunate that Mr. Artis' work 

 on Castor ' contains little else but plates, for a full description of the 

 discovery of a fine series of Anglian brooches would probably have 

 thrown much light on this subject. These consist of five cruciform 

 specimens with different ornamentation, one of the square-headed type, 

 and two bracelet-clasps, all found with human skeletons on the north side 

 of the road between Orton Longueville and Woodstone near Peterborough. 



From a cemetery at Peterborough, the exact site being unknown, 

 came also a small plain urn, which was found with an iron knife and is 

 now preserved in the British Museum. The nature of the cemetery is 

 uncertain, but the urn is smaller than the usual receptacles for the ashes 

 of the dead. 



Other objects from Peterborough, perhaps from the same cemetery, 

 are in the same collection, consisting of a cinerary urn, two spearheads, 

 three small square-headed brooches and the bronze-mounts of a bucket,* 

 perhaps the only specimen yet found in the county. These vessels were 

 placed either at the head or feet of the skeleton and are supposed to have 

 contained food as an offering to the dead. The presumption therefore is 

 that here, as at Desborough, both methods of interment were in vogue 

 either together or successively, and there are other localities in central 

 Northamptonshire in which urns containing burnt bones have certainly 

 been found in association with skeletons buried entire. 



Two mixed places of burial have been discovered at Brixworth, 

 but inquiries as to the direction of the graves have met with no suc- 



' For Castor and Chesterton, see Isaac Taylor's Words and Places, p. 173. 



2 Journal of British A rchaological Association, 1899, pp. 52, 54. ^ Durobrifer, pi. Iv. 



* Figured in jewitl'i Grave-Mounds and their Contents, "p. 28l,(ig.46o ; and a brooch, p. 272,fig.45i. 



245 



