ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS wide-mouthed vessels of dark-brown or black ware which were but clumsy imitations of the Roman potter's wheel-made productions. The evidence for cremation at Woodford is the sketch of an urn in Cole's manuscript History of Ecton, the original copy of which is in the public library at Northampton ; but in the neighbourhood of Peter- borough traces of the practice have come to light from time to time. It may be an accident that the Anglo-Saxon burials have nearly always occurred on the Huntingdonshire side of the Nene/ for the Romans certainly had important stations on both sides of the river and there was a Roman road running due east through Peterborough across the Fens to Denver in Norfolk.'^ The facilities of communication afforded by this highway to a large extent explain several indications of intercourse between the inhabitants of the eastern portion of the county and the men of Kent and East Anglia. It has recently been pointed out that all the tracks across and along the Fens converged at Peterborough, and it is not surprising to find in this locality types of relics which are generally confined to other parts of the country. Here too are found traces of both methods of burial, but where the body was unburnt the direction of the graves was not uniform in this locality, so that little can as yet be said as to the racial connections of its early settlers. It is unfortunate that Mr. Artis' work on Castor ' contains little else but plates, for a full description of the discovery of a fine series of Anglian brooches would probably have thrown much light on this subject. These consist of five cruciform specimens with different ornamentation, one of the square-headed type, and two bracelet-clasps, all found with human skeletons on the north side of the road between Orton Longueville and Woodstone near Peterborough. From a cemetery at Peterborough, the exact site being unknown, came also a small plain urn, which was found with an iron knife and is now preserved in the British Museum. The nature of the cemetery is uncertain, but the urn is smaller than the usual receptacles for the ashes of the dead. Other objects from Peterborough, perhaps from the same cemetery, are in the same collection, consisting of a cinerary urn, two spearheads, three small square-headed brooches and the bronze-mounts of a bucket,* perhaps the only specimen yet found in the county. These vessels were placed either at the head or feet of the skeleton and are supposed to have contained food as an offering to the dead. The presumption therefore is that here, as at Desborough, both methods of interment were in vogue either together or successively, and there are other localities in central Northamptonshire in which urns containing burnt bones have certainly been found in association with skeletons buried entire. Two mixed places of burial have been discovered at Brixworth, but inquiries as to the direction of the graves have met with no suc- ' For Castor and Chesterton, see Isaac Taylor's Words and Places, p. 173. 2 Journal of British A rchaological Association, 1899, pp. 52, 54. ^ Durobrifer, pi. Iv.
- Figured in jewitl'i Grave-Mounds and their Contents, "p. 28l,(ig.46o ; and a brooch, p. 272,fig.45i.
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