ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS 



belong to different periods cannot at present be determined ; but there 

 are grounds for attributing the best part of the cemetery to a converted 

 population of about the tenth century. The paucity of ornaments and 

 weapons is itself a strong argument in favour of such a view, and the 

 peculiar character of the principal relics marks these interments off from 

 the generality discovered in this country. Of the large number of 

 skeletons 1 discovered, only one was found with personal ornaments of any 

 kind. A woman had been buried with bronze anklets and beads of 

 crystal (fig. 5), carnelian (fig. 7), glass-paste (fig. 4) and silver (figs. 6, 8) 

 apparently strung on a necklace the principal ornaments of which were 

 a pair of floriated bronze discs (fig. 10) and a plain one (fig. 9) 

 with four circular holes in it perhaps once filled with imitation gems, 

 but now retaining but few traces of a tinned surface. The pair are 

 of more especial interest as the design is one that puts at least 

 one limit to the date of the burial. Neither Saxon nor Anglian 

 elements are to be distinguished in this instance, but there are on the 

 other hand close affinities to objects of the Carlovingian period which 

 have been found in Scandinavia, where the heathen practice of burying 

 the dead in full dress lasted two or three centuries longer than elsewhere 

 in north-west Europe. Though it is to Viking ornaments that one 

 turns for the closest parallels, the design of the two discs may also be 

 seen not only on the coinage of that time both in England and France, 

 but on the seal of ./Elfric ' now preserved in the form of a brooch in the 

 national collection and ascribed to about the year 1000. A pendant of 

 the same character is published,* with hollow silver beads that forcibly 

 recall the Walden specimens. 



Further, it is as certain as any deduction from the evidence avail- 

 able can be, that no relic ornamented in this particular style would ever 

 be found in an interment of the pagan period in England. The Carlo- 

 vingian Renaissance of Roman art began about the year 800, and after 

 reaching its zenith about 850, declined during the next century and a 

 half; and the conventional foliage of the Walden pendants has only to 

 be placed side by side with the grotesque animals and geometrical 

 designs of the post-Roman period to render the difference of date and 

 origin apparent to the most casual observer. 



1 Specimens are exhibited in Saffron Walden Museum. 



1 Figured in Victoria History of Hampshire, i. 398. 



3 Memoirei de la Societe Jts antiqualrti du NorJ (1890), p. 217. 



