582 EXCAVATIONS IN AN ANCIENT 



Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon interments were both alike to be 

 found in the Frilford Cemetery, but that the majority of them 

 belonged to the latter of the two nationalities. I have, however, 

 by the discovery of Anglo-Saxon cinerary urns placed superficially 

 to the relicless graves of which Mr. Akerman speaks, been com- 

 pelled to refer these inhumations to a period anterior to that of 

 Pagan Saxondom, and to differ herein from the instructor from 

 whom I have learned and to whom I owe so much. It is upon 

 this discovery of Anglo-Saxon cremation urns, containing half- 

 calcined human bones, and holding when discovered, relatively to 

 relicless or all but relicless skeletons found in the ground below 

 them, a position from 15 to 18 inches nearer the surface, that I rest 

 almost the only conclusion to which I have ventured to come in 

 opposition to Mr. Akerman's views. But it is hoped that a record 

 of the somewhat extensive series of observations made in this 

 cemetery during the last two years may serve to cast some light 

 upon certain moot points upon which Mr. Akerman's investigations 

 did not give him an opportunity of remarking. 



The cemetery is situated in the angle intercepted between the 

 left bank of the river Ock and the road leading from Frilford to 

 Wantage. Frilford ' Field ' is now brought under cultivation, but 

 the tradition that this portion of it is haunted still survives in the 

 recollections of the rustics, one of whom informed me that, though 

 he had never seen them there himself, ghosts were supposed to be 

 particularly likely to be seen at a single thorn-bush ^ which stood, 

 some time back, close to the site of these graves. Great numbers 

 of Roman coins have been and still are found by labourers engaged 

 in ordinary agricultural work all round this spot ; and fragments 

 of very many varieties of Roman pottery are equally accessible, 

 though, of course, much more abundant, on and in the superficial 



^ The growth of this thorn-bush may have been accidental here, but we know that 

 thorns were purposely planted on tumuli. (See Jacob Grimm, 'Verbrennen der 

 Leichen,' Berlin Abhandl. 1849, PP- 203, 209, 242, 244; Nillson, cit. in loo. ; Max 

 Miiller, 'Zeitschrift Deutsch. Morgenland. Gesellsch.' ix. 11 ; Theocritus, Idyll xxiv. 

 87, where Wiistemann remarks in his commentary, ' Omnibus spinarum generibus 

 vim noxarum depeUendarum inesse existimabant veteres.' See also ' Horae Ferales/ 

 p. 69.) The neighbouring tumidus known as Barrow Hill is beset with thorn- 

 bushes at the present day ; and the British barrow of Dinnington, in South Yorkshire 

 (p. 159), on the estate of J. C. Athorpe, Esq., was similarly clothed. The thorn may 

 have belonged to the * certis lignis' used, according to Tacitus, 'Germania,' xxvii, 

 in the cremation of chiefs. 



