604 EXCAVATIONS IN AN ANCIENT 



panied also by the earpick and toothpick and scoop so frequently 

 found in Anglo-Saxon interments^. No sword has as yet been 

 found in the cemetery at Frilford, and the general character of the 

 Anglo-Saxon relics which have been discovered is in keeping with 

 the absence of this mark of condition and authority, if such^ it 

 may be considered to be. In one case a male skeleton was re- 

 ported to me to have been found lying in one of these shallow 

 graves with its face downwards. Unfortunately I was not upon 

 the spot when this skeleton was removed ; but, though Schaaff- 

 hausen ^ has pointed out that unskilled observers may be deceived 

 as to the position of the face in a grave, I am nevertheless of 

 opinion that the workman who had assisted in the removal of a 

 very large number of skeletons from their graves was right in the 

 report he made to me. Because, in the first place, I have myself 

 seen an instance of such a mode of interment in a Romano-British 

 barrow j and, secondly, it is not difficult to understand how such a 

 misplacement could occur with an uncoffined body borne to a grave, 

 the shallowness of which bore, and bears, evidence to a carelessness 

 which the ' lyke-wake ' would be only too likely to intensify. It 

 has often been observed * that the Anglo-Saxons by no means in- 

 variably employed coffins in their interments. When the head is 

 found to have been supported upon stones placed underneath it, it 

 is plain that the interment must have been coffinless. But I do 

 not find in my notes of the class of shallow, non-oriented, Anglo- 

 Saxon interments that the head had been so supported ; and, inas- 

 much as the results of its having been so raised are ordinarily very 

 evident, the cervical vertebrae being impacted between the rami of 

 the lower jaw, and this bone being, not rarely, separated widely 

 from the upper jaw, owing to the changes of position which the 

 perishing of the soft parts has entailed, — it is difficult to think 

 that this peculiar arrangement would have been left unnoticed if it 

 had existed. A nail has occasionally been found in a grave con- 



^ See ' Pagan Saxondom,' p. 70, and pi. xxxv. %. 4 ; * Archaeologia,' vol. xxxvii, 

 Brighthampton, No. i ; vol. xxxviii, Brighthampton, No. 16, preserved in Ashmolean 

 Museum, Oxford ; « Fairford Graves,' pi. ix. fig. 10, object similarly preserved. 



^ See Akerman, • Archaeologia,' vol. xxxix, Further Kesearches at Long Wittenham. 



^ * Die Germanische Grabstiitten am Khein,' p. 119. 



* Wylie, ' Graves of Alemanni,' p. 13 ; Bloxam, * Fragmenta Sepulchralia,' pp. 67, 

 72 ; Akerman, ' Pagan Saxondom/ Introd. p. xvi. Compare plate xiv. with plates 

 xxxix, Ivii, Ixii, and Ixvi, of Strutt's ' Horda Angel-cynnan.' 



