600 EXCAVATIONS IN AN ANCIENT 



co-existence in place of cremation-urns and of skeletons inhumed 

 entire there is no doubt ; and, as many authorities seem convinced 

 that the two practices co-existed also in time ^, I should be slow to 

 set against their opinion the fact of the strong feeling which the 

 Christians entertained as to the impiety of cremation. For I read 

 in the passages just referred to, and can believe, that a practice was 

 not always nor immediately discontinued because it was denounced. 

 Still, at Frilford, though in three cases urns were found above 

 Romano-British inhumations, in no case had I any reason to think 

 that one part of the population on this area was practising the one, 

 at the same time that another was practising the other, of these 

 two modes of sepulture. If it should be allowed — in dangerous 

 opposition, it is true, to Mr. Kemble^s dictum, that no pagan Saxon 

 was buried except when burnt 2, — that the Anglo-Saxon inhuma- 

 tions, shortly to be described as without orientation and with relics, 

 may have been the burials of pagans, I should be more inclined to 

 think that the two rites may have been practised contempo- 

 raneously, as we know them to have been by several heathen 

 nations. To the heathen the two modes of sepulture were com- 

 paratively indifferent, and very slight reasons may have determined 

 his choice of the one or the other. With the Christian it was 

 different, and abstinence from cremation was made to seem a corol- 

 lary of some of the most sacred and cherished articles of his faith. 

 Hence I am not disposed to think that the conquered Romano- 

 Britons would continue to use the cemetery of their forefathers 

 when it was constantly being, as they would think, desecrated by 

 the deposition in it of the urns of the unbelievers. The Saxons, 

 on the other hand, as already remarked, had no reluctance against 

 burying in the ground which held the bones of the former lords of 

 the soil, and as the positions of several of the urns show — 



• Little they recked of those strong limbs 

 Which mouldered there below.' 



^ For the co-existence of cremation with inhumation, see Kemble ' Horae Ferales,' 

 p. 918; Neville's 'Saxon Obsequies,' p. 11 ; Wylie, ' Archaeologia/ xxxvii. p. 456; 

 Akerman, ' Further Eesearches at Brighthampton, Archaeologia,' xxxviii ; ' Invento- 

 rium Sepulchrale,' pp. 165, 195; Weinhold, ' Sitzungsberichte Kais. Akad. Hist. 

 Phil. Klasse,' bd. 29, p. 138, bd. 30, p. 176; Lindenschmit, 'Archiv Anth.' iii. 

 114. 



Horae Ferales,' p. 98 ; and, per contra, the Eev. S. Finch, ' CoU. Antiq.' vi. 220, 

 and Thrupp, 'Anglo-Saxon Home,' p. 399. 



