A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 



brow of the hill above the river near the Lodge was once covered with 

 interments of cremated remains, but very few perfect urns have been 

 recovered from the spot as the land had long been under cultivation 

 before the discovery was made, and the urns had been near enough to 

 the surface to be broken in pieces.' In the British Museum is a well- 

 preserved cinerary urn from Catton, and at Norwich a square-headed 

 brooch from the same site, two miles north of the city ; while in the 

 suburb of Thorpe about the year 1863 what appeared to be a Roman 

 interment had been subsequently disturbed by that of an Anglian warrior, 

 buried unburnt with spear and shield.^ The occurrence of both kinds of 

 burial in the same locality will be noticed more than once in Norfolk, 

 but more important urn-fields must first be considered. 



As long ago as 1 8 1 5 urns from Markshall, three miles south of 

 Norwich, were found and wrongly described as of Roman manufacture.* 

 Four were dug up near the top of a natural elevation in the parish at a 

 distance of two to three furlongs north-west of the Roman camp at 

 Caister St. Edmund's, and were fortunately figured in a plate accompany- 

 ing the original account, so that their date and origin are no longer in 

 doubt. Some contained calcined bones pressed down with earth, but no 

 coins or other metal objects such as were said to have occurred in other 

 urns discovered in this locality.* Possibly these latter were from the 

 cemetery attached to the camp, but it was probably in a meadow just to 

 the north of it that a shallow bronze bowl * of Anglo-Saxon type was 

 discovered, and the burying-place of the Romans has yet to be located.* 

 Similar bowls have been found elsewhere in England, but especially in 

 Kentish graves. The handles were generally of bronze, but those of the 

 Caister specimen were apparently of iron and have disappeared. In 

 particular it was said to resemble one from Wingham, Kent,' now in the 

 British Museum, and constitutes a single link in the chain of evidence 

 which connects East Anglia with Kent in the early part of the seventh 

 century. These remarkable bowls, which in many respects recall the 

 handiwork of the Romans, are rarely found in this country outside Kent ; 

 and there as well as in several places on the Rhine have been found to 

 contain hazel-nuts,* apparently the farewell offering to the dead. An 

 interesting example of this practice has come to light at Worms on the 

 Rhine, where a bowl with hazel-nuts was buried under a tombstone with 

 an unmistakably Christian inscription ; and the discovery adds strength 

 to the conviction that the pagan rites attaching to burial were not soon 

 or easily suppressed. 



Some traces of Anglian cremation have also been noticed on the 



1 Norwich Museum Catalogue (1853), p. 20. ^ Journal of Arch eological Institute, vol. xlvi. p. 337. 



* ArchcEologia, xviii. pi. xxviii. p. 436. Several urns from this site, perhaps inciuding two of those 

 figured, are in Norwich Museum. 



^ An iron bucket and bronze tweezers fi-om Markshall, as well as two urns from Caister-by-Norwich, 

 are in the Castle Museum. 



* Proceedings, Society of Antiquaries, new series, i. p. 106. 



* Journal of Archaeological Institute, vol. xlvi. p. 343. 

 '' Figured in Akerman's Pagan Saxondom, pi. x. 



* A bowl from Faversham, Kent, in the British Museum is so filled. 



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