Anglo-Saxon Pottery. 119 



with stars arranged at equal distances throughout and then, 

 intersect it by six or eight parallel straight lines, representing 

 the direction of our sight, since the length of each included line 

 will indicate the number of stars it encounters, and con- 

 sequently the brightness of theportion it traverses, we shall per- 

 ceive that the luminosity of such a cluster would increase very 

 rapidly near the edges, but make slow progress towards the 

 centre. If, therefore, we find an object like the present, or 

 the last, exhibiting a very different rate of increasing brilliancy, 

 we are warranted in concluding that it is composed of stars, 

 not equidistant, but centrally compressed in proportion to the 

 abnormal accession of light. 



ANGLO-SAXON POTTERY. 



BY THOMAS WEIGHT, F.S.A. 

 ( With a Coloured Plate.) 



The importance of ancient pottery as an evidence of the date 

 of deposits with which it is connected and of the people who 

 made it, has been much better understood of late years than 

 formerly ; and the pottery itself has been more carefully exa- 

 mined and more accurately classed. We are now well ac- 

 quainted with many varieties of the pottery manufactured by 

 the Romans in these western provinces of the empire, as well 

 as with that of their, successors in the period which in our 

 island we call Anglo-Saxon. The interest of the subject is, 

 indeed, now so great, that a popular article on the principal 

 varieties of ancient pottery will perhaps be from time to time 

 acceptable to the readers of the Intellectual Observer. "We 

 will in the present paper begin with the Anglo-Saxon pottery, 

 which presents one or tAvo points of interest peculiar to itself. 



Our knowledge of the antiquities of the early Anglo-Saxon 

 period originated in Kent, where very extensive excavations in 

 the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries scattered over the Kentish downs 

 were made in the last century, under the direction of Bryan 

 Faussett of Heppington, and the Rev. James Douglas, the 

 author of the Nenia Britannica, one of the most valuable of the 

 older works on our national antiquities. It was only gradually 

 that the real value of these remains was understood, and it has 

 been only fully appreciated within the present generation. In the 

 Anglo-Saxon graves of Kent, however, the quantity of pottery 

 was not great, and a large proportion of that which was found was 

 of Roman manufacture. The Teutonic population of this part 

 of the island buried their dead entire, and cremation did not 

 prevail among them. But the case was different in other parts 



