A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE 



down the river, were exhibited to the Archaeological Institute 1 in 1858, 

 comprising a sword, two spearheads, the blade of a dagger or knife and 

 parts of two shield-bosses of the usual form. 2 They were found four years 

 previously during the construction of a railway from Maidenhead to 

 Wycombe at a place called Noah's Ark on the hill about half a mile 

 north of the railway station, and about the same distance from the river. 

 Other weapons of the same material were discovered at the same time 

 but inaccurately described, though there is reason to think that a two- 

 handled basin of bronze also came to light of the kind common in the 

 graves of Kent. Six human skeletons were found near these relics, but 

 they lay in a bed of gravel 9 feet below the surface, and were possi- 

 bly not contemporary. There is a similar doubt as to the Anglo-Saxon 

 origin of several iron spearheads found in raising ballast from the 

 Thames at Cookham and exhibited to the Archaeological Institute in 

 i86o. 3 An isolated burial in the same locality may here be mentioned. 

 Of four barrows opened in Cockmarsh by Mr. A. H. Cocks, three con- 

 tained British burials by cremation and the fourth was erected over the 

 unburnt body of an Anglo-Saxon man, who is described as platycephalous 

 and was buried with his dog and various articles. 4 



From the accounts already cited, it is clear that the mixture of 

 burnt and unburnt burials is by no means an unusual feature in Berk- 

 shire ; and, though no classification can as yet be more than tentative, it 

 may be suggested that a racial difference is here indicated. Discoveries 

 have made it more than probable that cremation was the rite preferred 

 by the tribes who settled in what are usually regarded as the Anglian 

 districts ; while the peoples who were grouped together as Saxons 

 buried their dead at full length in rectangular graves. 



Penda, the champion of paganism, died in 657 (655) after extending 

 his Anglian kingdom to the Thames. Consequently there is some his- 

 torical warrant for the view that the cinerary urns found in Berkshire 

 contained the ashes of Anglians who had come south under the banner 

 of Penda and continued his opposition to the Gospel. As pagans, they 

 would have no scruples about interring their dead in the cemetery of 

 any community they displaced or controlled. Thus cremation may 

 have prevailed at the most important centres of population in Berkshire 

 about the middle of the seventh century, for a Mercian see was not estab- 

 lished at Dorchester till 673," when Theodore was re-organizing the 

 English Church. The gradual extinction of what was then the essentially 

 pagan rite of cremation would naturally ensue. 



The upper Thames valley was however soon recovered by Caedwalla 

 after his accession in 686, and the West Saxon reinstated, though the 



1 Journ. of Arch. Inst. xv. 287. 



2 These relics are now in the Reading Museum. 

 ' Journ. of Arch. Inst. xviii. 76. 



* Proc. Soc. Antiq. xii. 339. 



8 Mr. Plummer thinks that Dorchester was really Mercian abo~.it 679, but there is no direct evi- 

 dence that the town ceased to belong to Wessex till the battle of Bensington (777) permanently trans- 

 ferred the district to Mercia (Bede, Ecclesiastical History, ii. 245-6). 



242 



