ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS
same may be said of the small square-headed variety here illustrated (see fig.). Another type is much more concentrated, and is well represented at Long Wittenham, as in many parts of the southern midlands. The bronze-gilt ornament of dish or saucer form (figs. 4, 6, 9 and 12) was not confined to graves of any particular direction, though it is extremely rare with cremated burials; and out of about fifty graves in which brooches of any kind occurred at Long Wittenham, eleven contained in all nineteen examples of the type in question, usually in position on either shoulder of the skeleton. Another pattern somewhat similar but with an embossed plate of bronze-gilt applied to the front was also represented on this site, associated in more than one instance with the saucer-brooch. There seems indeed to be a somewhat close connection between these two forms, and the important cemetery at Kempston, Beds, furnished a large number of both kinds.
Brooches at Long Wittenham were as usual confined to the graves
of women, and mention may be made of a Romano-British bronze specimen [1] of oval form originally set with a carbuncle belonging to a type that seems to have been popular among the Anglo-Saxon population. A
rarity in England is a bronze buckle (fig. 1) from this site ornamented with animal heads in imitation of a Roman original; this with many similar found in Belgium may be assigned to the fifth century of our era,[2] and specimens of late Roman date have been found in the north of France. [3]
In the case of men, the spear and shield are the principal items of grave furniture, and call for no further remark, except that the disposition of the studs found with some of the shield-bosses showed that the shields were oval, not circular as seems to have been the case in the Isle of Wight. [4] The occurrence of only two swords in so extensive a cemetery was duly remarked by the excavator, who was inclined to combat the widely accepted view that this weapon betokened the high rank of its possessor. The thane is commonly supposed to have wielded the sword on horseback, while the ceorl went into battle on foot, armed with spear and shield. The graves containing the swords, and indeed the interments as a whole, give no evidence of special wealth or distinction, and the
common opinion as to swords is certainly not supported by a recent discovery in Hampshire,[5] where in what appears to have been a Jutish cemetery six swords were recovered with other relics that were anything but magnificent.
Besides the small buckets already referred to, which were composed of staves with bronze hoops and handles, there are in the British Museum some iron hoops from a larger vessel found at Long Wittenham, such as occur in a few of the more important graves in England, for example at
1 233 30
- ↑ Arch. xxxix. pl. xi. fig. 1.
- ↑ Sven Söderberg, Antiquarisk Tidskrift för Sverige, xi. pt. v. 17, and Prähistorisde Blätter (1894), pl. xi. fig. 8.
- ↑ C. Boulanger, Mobilier funéraire Gallo-romain et Franc en Picardie et en Artois, pl. 7.
- ↑ Hillier, History of the Isle of Wight, p. 36.
- ↑ At Droxford (Society of Antiquaries, Proceedings, xix. 127).
