ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS belong to different periods cannot at present be determined ; but there are grounds for attributing the best part of the cemetery to a converted population of about the tenth century. The paucity of ornaments and weapons is itself a strong argument in favour of such a view, and the peculiar character of the principal relics marks these interments off from the generality discovered in this country. Of the large number of skeletons 1 discovered, only one was found with personal ornaments of any kind. A woman had been buried with bronze anklets and beads of crystal (fig. 5), carnelian (fig. 7), glass-paste (fig. 4) and silver (figs. 6, 8) apparently strung on a necklace the principal ornaments of which were a pair of floriated bronze discs (fig. 10) and a plain one (fig. 9) with four circular holes in it perhaps once filled with imitation gems, but now retaining but few traces of a tinned surface. The pair are of more especial interest as the design is one that puts at least one limit to the date of the burial. Neither Saxon nor Anglian elements are to be distinguished in this instance, but there are on the other hand close affinities to objects of the Carlovingian period which have been found in Scandinavia, where the heathen practice of burying the dead in full dress lasted two or three centuries longer than elsewhere in north-west Europe. Though it is to Viking ornaments that one turns for the closest parallels, the design of the two discs may also be seen not only on the coinage of that time both in England and France, but on the seal of ./Elfric ' now preserved in the form of a brooch in the national collection and ascribed to about the year 1000. A pendant of the same character is published,* with hollow silver beads that forcibly recall the Walden specimens. Further, it is as certain as any deduction from the evidence avail- able can be, that no relic ornamented in this particular style would ever be found in an interment of the pagan period in England. The Carlo- vingian Renaissance of Roman art began about the year 800, and after reaching its zenith about 850, declined during the next century and a half; and the conventional foliage of the Walden pendants has only to be placed side by side with the grotesque animals and geometrical designs of the post-Roman period to render the difference of date and origin apparent to the most casual observer. 1 Specimens are exhibited in Saffron Walden Museum. 1 Figured in Victoria History of Hampshire, i. 398. 3 Memoirei de la Societe Jts antiqualrti du NorJ (1890), p. 217.
