CEMETERY AT FRILPOED. 583 



layers of the now cultivated fields. There is much more evidence 

 to show that Roman civilisation had taken firm root in this locality, 

 and some of this evidence will appear in the course of my account 

 of the excavations of the cemetery. But two excavations which we 

 made in two spots, about a couple of hundred yards distant from 

 the cemetery, gave us a more vivid idea of the wealth and civilisa- 

 tion of the E/oman or Romano-British inhabitants of the place, 

 which their Saxon conquerors named Frilford, than anything which 

 we found in the burial ground, which both races successively occu- 

 pied. Mr. Aldworth had observed the greater greenness and 

 strength of the crops upon these two patches of ground ; and by 

 his suggestion I dug into them with the result of finding ^, for a 

 depth of ten feet or more, an aggregation of fragments of pottery 

 of the most varied patterns and degrees of fineness mixed up with 

 similarly fragmentary bones of the ox, sheep, pig, and dog, and 

 with other articles, such as knives and coins, which, like the bones 

 and shards specified, would be expected in the rubbish-heap of a 

 great house. The site of this great house I have not found ; but I 

 strongly suspect that the quarry, whence the stones for its con- 

 struction were taken, was employed for, and is now represented by, 

 one or other, or both, of those pits of rubbish. This short^history 

 illustrates the truth of a remark recently made by the Hon. W. O. 

 Stanley ^ as to the imperfection of ' the investigation of sites and of 

 dwellings in the early times ; ' but time and opportunity may 

 enable me to supply this deficiency. In the meantime, the dis- 

 covery in the cemetery of four interments in leaden cofl^ns, and 

 after the Roman fashion, so fully described by the Abbe Cochet ^, 

 furnishes additional evidence as to the character of the civilisation 

 existing here in the times of the Later Empire, which the excava- 

 tion of hypocausts and tessellated pavements might confirm, but 

 cannot be thought necessary to complete. 



Four other kinds of interment, one Romano-British and three 

 Anglo-Saxon, have been observed and described in the following 

 account of the excavations at Frilford. The Romano-British 

 interments difier from those just mentioned merely in being of 

 less expensive character; they constitute the greater part of all 



* See Catalogue, infra, Sept. 24, 1868. 



" 'Ancient Interments and Sepulchral Uma in Anglesea,' p. 19. 



2 ' Normandie Souterraine,' pp. 29, 30. 



