A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE 



Taplow, Bucks, and Broomfield, Essex. There were also found a large 

 number of amber beads roughly facetted, a pair of bronze scales such 

 as a goldsmith would use, and a stout iron knife sometimes called a 

 ' scramasax,' with angular point and thickened back, along which runs a 

 groove. Some of the glass beads found in this cemetery may well be of 

 Romano-British manufacture. As more characteristic of Kentish or 

 Jutish graves may be mentioned a pair of ear-rings with cubical pendants, 

 and a pair of button-shaped brooches engraved with a human face. 



With regard to the physical characteristics of these earliest Teutonic 

 occupants of Berkshire, Mr. Akerman remarked that the skeletons were 

 evidently those of a large and robust race, the thigh bones of the men 

 varying from ao| to 17! inches in length, while those of the women 

 varied from 1 8 to 14 inches. On one occasion he found the skeleton of 



CINERARY URNS, LONG WITTENHAM. 

 (About }.) 



a giantess with a thigh bone over 20 inches in length, but this was clearly 

 exceptional. Several of the skulls were submitted to experts, and the 

 ovoid type, specially characteristic of the Anglo-Saxons, was found to be 

 fully represented. 1 



Exactly one-fifth of the total number of interments found at Long 

 Wittenham were by way of cremation, and though the majority of ciner- 

 ary urns (see fig.) could not be recovered entire, several specimens have 

 been preserved and illustrated. All had been made by hand, without 

 the wheel, and while some were quite plain, others showed a great 

 variety of ornamentation. As is usually the case, the urns contained 

 very little beyond calcined bones, but, as elsewhere, bronze tweezers and 

 a bone (or ivory) comb were among the fragments, and a small knife 



1 A female skull is figured and described in Thurnam and Davis' Crania Britannica, pt. ii. pi. 47. 



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