Page:VCH Kent 1.djvu/427

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ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS on the south side of the park, were opened during the Congress of the British Archaeological Association ' in the same year, and found to contain burials with the head at the west end of the grave, which had been lined with planks. With a woman had been buried a casket, beads, coins called sceattas, a glass cup with applied threads, and a pottery vase 5 in. high at the feet ; but the other mound, raised over a warrior, was practically unproductive. A little southward, on the same side of the Roman road, as many as 308 graves were opened by Bryan Faussett' on Kingston Down between 1767 and 1773. All but forty-five were marked by small mounds of hemispherical form irregularly placed and fairly close to one another on the north-west slope of a hill overlooking the village of Kingston. In 1749 and 1753 a certain number of burials with feet to the north had been found by workmen in digging chalk within a wood and a few relics recovered. Systematic excavation however showed that this orientation was exceptional, as 294 of the total recorded in the Inventorhim had the head at the west end of the grave. Remains of a wooden coffin were noticed in 183 cases, and of these ninety-seven showed traces of fire, the timber, which was in some cases 3 inches thick, having been burnt to a certain degree (explains the excavator) to make it more durable. In the fourteen irregular burials there was a tendency for the feet to point northwards, while in one case the head was at the east end. In one of these cases the coffin had been burnt, but in eight others no timber could be traced ; and in the whole cemetery there were about 100 graves without coffins or any but the slightest furniture. Previous cremated burials had been disturbed in three cases ; and the bones, collected in the original urn, were carefully placed outside the coffin at the feet of the interred : in one case the urn was of coarse red earth and seems from the illustration^ to belong to a Kentish type of the Bronze Age, as from Highstead, Chislet (British Museum). Another unexpected ceramic type occurred in the grave of a male near the head, and the illustration' shows it to be a so-called ' Samian ' bowl made in the second century, probably in S. France, and stamped with the name of the potter, Caius (OF. CAM). An Anglo-Saxon vase, usually of small dimensions and of rude black ware, appeared at the feet in seven graves ; but these must not be confounded with the earlier cinerary urns, nor with the bottle-shaped vases of buff ware in some of the richer graves elsewhere and at the head of one woman's grave at Kingston. In four graves of women wooden coffers had been placed at the feet, and in two cases at the head ; while in the somewhat richly furnished tomb of a warrior, a bronze bowl lay at the feet. Both the form of this vessel and the design of the four circular mounts' (one under the base, the others below the rim to attach chains for suspension) betray Late Celtic influence, and fall into line with enamelled bowls • Canterbury vol. (1844), pp. 96-100: vase figured. > Inv. Sep. pp. 35-94- » Inv. Sep. p. 66. ■• Ibid. p. 74. ^ Ibid. pi. xvi. figs. 5, 5a. I 345 44