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CEMETERY AT FRILFORD. 597 



border-land between some gradually advancing empire, and the 

 territories of some gradually receding but intermittently aggressive 

 aborigines. 



III. Of the Anglo-Saxon Interments in the way of Cremation, 



Ten urns containing burnt bones have come into my bands 

 during the excavations carried on at Frilford. Of these two were 

 patterned urns, and the rest plain. A fairly perfect patterned 

 [ vessel from this cemetery is to be seen in the British Museum, and 

 two patterned fragments have been recovered by me. These three 

 latter vessels, I incline to think, on account of their size, may have 

 been holy-water vessels rather than cremation urns. The pattern 

 upon them, as well as that upon the patterned urns which were 

 found with burnt bones inside them, is the pattern now so familiar 

 to us as the Anglo-Saxon pattern, from the memoirs of Kemble, 

 Akerman, the Honourable R. C. Neville, and others; and the general 

 style and conformation of all the urns, patterned and plain alike^ is 

 not much less plainly referable to the same type. Neither class of 

 urns has been lathe-turned ; in none of them is the bottom per- 

 fectly flat ; they are all of a darkish colour, and^ though this colour 

 may occasionally have a tawny streaking intermingled with it, it 

 has usually been protected from reddening by the intermixture of 

 vegetable matter with the paste. The figured urns possess the 

 Vandykes, the punched stellate or multiradiate stamps, the circular 

 thumb-made depressions, the encircling zones scored with a pointed 

 stick, and the ' characteristic bumps,' so fully and accurately 

 described by Mr. Kemble in the ' Horae Ferales/ pp. 87 and %%%^ 

 as distinguishing Anglo-Saxon urns found in England as well as 

 urns found in the North-German fatherland ^. 



The Frilford urns are, with the exception of those found at Long 

 Wittenham, the first urns of Anglo-Saxon manufacture which I 

 have seen recorded as found in Berkshire. Mr. Wylie ^ has put on 



^ See also for figures of urns resembling those found at Frilford ; Engelhardt, 

 'Denmark in the Iron Age,' English translation, 1866, p. 9; urn from Smedeby, 

 Slesvig ; Akerman, ' Pagan Saxondom,' Introd. p. xxviii, and pi. iv ; ' Archaeologia,' 

 vol. xxxviii. pi. 20, fig. I ; Hon. E. C. Neville, ' Saxon Obsequies,' pis. 24-33 ; Bloxam's 

 ' Fragmenta Sepulchralia,' p. 59 ; Roach Smith, ' Inventorium Sepulchrale,' Introd. 

 p. XV. For the discovery of a bone-punch for stamping ornaments, see Schaaffhausen, 

 *Die Germanische Grabstatten am Rhein.'p, 139, 1868. 



* 'Archaeologia,' xxxvii. 473. 



