588 EXCAVATIONS TN AN ANCIENT 



differently in both Anglo-Saxon and Romano-British, in Frankish, 

 and in Gallo-Roman graves. I was first convinced that these 

 interments, more than fifty of which have been under examination 

 at Frilford since I first became acquainted with the cemetery, con- 

 tained the remains of Romano-Britons, and not of Anglo-Saxons, 

 by the discovery of an unmistakeable Anglo-Saxon urn, about 

 fifteen inches above a skeleton occupying one of these graves 

 (No. vi. Sept. 1867). Two other skeletons, one of an old woman 

 interred with three coins (No. iv. Jan. g, 1868), and one of an old 

 man (No. iii. April i, 1868), were found subsequently occupying 

 the same position relatively to similar Anglo-Saxon urns containing 

 similarly burnt human bones. It is possible, however, to object to 

 this apparently satisfactory argument ; first, that the deeper-lying 

 body may have belonged to a Christianised, and the cremation urn 

 to an apostate, Anglo-Saxon's burial ; or, secondly, that the crema- 

 tion urn belonged to an Anglo-Saxon funeral which took place in 

 the heathen pre-Augustinian period, but that it was carefully 

 replaced^ after having been disturbed, to make room for one of the 

 same race who had died after the evangelization of Berkshire by 

 Birinus. Both these objections — the former suggested to me by 

 Mr. Akerman, and the latter by the reading of Mr. Roach Smith's 

 letter in the 'British Association's Report for 1855/ p. 145^ — are, 

 however, fully met by the discovery, on four different occasions, of 

 Anglo-Saxon skeletons, verifiable as such by their insignia, and 

 with no constant relation to the points of the compass, in the same 

 relative position to these interments as that already described as 

 being held by the cremation urns. (See infra. Catalogue, No. xviii. 

 Feb. 8, 1868 ; No ix. Sept. 25, 1868, infra.) It is possible, 

 though not probable, that an urn, even of much fragility and 

 elegance, may have been replaced in its entirety, heavily laden 

 though it was with its contents ; but it is impossible to conceive 

 that a similar pious painstaking can have laid out a disturbed 

 skeleton a second time in the full and due proportions of the un- 

 articulated bones possessed by the skeletons found lying super- 

 ficially to the * grave-row ' interments of which I am speaking as 

 Roman or Romano-British. The variation in the direction of the 

 two bodies lying one above the other, the deeper being always the 

 oriented one, excludes, of course, the possibility of their having 

 * See also ' Inventorium Sepulchrale/ Introd. p. xvi. and p. 8. 



