ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS Vessels of pottery rarely occur with these interments, but occasionally fragments, seemingly buried as such, and described as ' hard ' and as ' Romano-British,' have been found. The only other case of a perfect vessel in these isolated interments was at Winster. Here two contracted skeletons were found 9 feet apart in 1856. With the one were an iron spear-head and the lower stone of a beehive-shaped quern ; with the other, a small plain vessel of coarse pottery, a large spear- head and small instrument of iron, a large frit bead, and the upper half of the same quern. 1 Two upper stones of the same shape were found with an ex- tended skeleton in a small barrow near Taddington in 1845, ^ e one at the head and the other at the feet. 2 Quartz and other pebbles have frequently been found with these interments. In one remarkable example near Alsop-in-the-Dale, such a pebble was held in the left hand, 3 but they rarely have any definite position with regard to the skeletons. These, the potsherds, and the occasional chippings of flint, had certainly a religious significance. Of a similar nature, probably, were the bronze bowls occasionally found with these interments. With a late secondary interment at Grind- low near Over H addon, was a 'bowl of thin bronze very neatly made, with a simple hollow moulding round its edge,' and near it was a cir- cular enamel in a silver frame.* Reference has already been made to two or three similar enamels at Benty Grange. Another, with a ' hook attached in the form of a serpent's head, probably for suspension,' ' a shallow basin of thin brass,' and other objects, were found near the head of an extended interment on the Garratt Piece near Middleton- by-Youlgreave, already referred to. Similar discs and remains of thin bowls have been found associated together in graves of the period else- where in the country. As the discs usually have the hook-like process attached, they have been regarded as pendants of some sort ; but years ago the late Mr. C. Roach Smith, F.S.A., suggested that they were mountings of the bowls, and recently Mr. J. Romilly Allen, F.S.A., has collected evidence which proves this beyond a doubt. 8 He finds that a characteristic feature of these bowls is a hollow moulding below the lip ; that the hooked discs, three or four to a bowl, were attached in such a manner that the hollow of the hooks faced that of the rim, and thus provided loops for as many suspension rings ; and that usually a larger enamelled disc was attached to the bottom, and sometimes other decorative devices to the sides. The hook invariably terminates in a grotesque head, and the disc appears to represent, or rather replace, the animal's body. Mr. Allen derives the decoration from two sources. In the more elaborate discs, like that from the Garratt Piece, the patterns may be divided into two parts : (i) closely coiled spirals placed at equal distances apart in symmetrical positions with regard to each other ; and (2) a background of flamboyant work diversified with almond-shaped 1 Diggings, p. 98. * yestiges, p. 85. 3 Ibid. p. 67.
- Diggings, p. 48 ; Jewitt's Grave Mounds and their Contents, p. 284.
- Arch. Ivi. 39.
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