A HISTORY OF NORFOLK may some day render it. Perhaps Kenninghall affords the best typical instance of an unmixed cemetery of extended burials, as the original accounts are fairly explicit and the relics are preserved in a public collec- tion. A glance at the contents of these graves would probably leave no doubt as to the mode of burial, even apart from the finding of skeletons, but would also perhaps prompt the question whether they belonged to an Anglian or some other Teutonic tribe. Prominent among them are large square-headed brooches differing from the common East Anglian type that only expands slightly and gradually from end to end, terminating in a conventional head most like that of a horse (figs. 4, 6). These larger brooches bear a strong family resemblance to a number of re- markable specimens from areas in the midlands which were brought under Mercian influence before the close of the pagan period, as War- wickshire, Gloucestershire, Leicestershire, Northants, Cambridgeshire and Yorkshire. There seems some reason therefore to class the Norfolk examples as Mercian, and in venturing on a distinction between them and the Anglian examples archaeology would be merely adopting a view that has long commended itself to the professed historian ; namely, that the early English kingdoms were not homogeneous but grew out of successive independent settlements in areas that lay open at particular periods. Mercian influence began in East Anglia about the middle of the seventh century, and the brooches in question may have been deposited in pagan or semi-pagan graves any time between the year 634, when Oswald fell at Maserfield in a despairing effort to save East Anglia from the Mercian, and the abolition of the pagan practice of burying orna- ments with the dead. If that reform be dated in the middle of the eighth century, the graves of supposed Mercians in East Anglia might be expected to show some traces of Christianity, for the Mercian hold on the kingdom was continuous for a century, and was not relaxed till the defeat and death of iEthelbald at Burford in 754. If the Mercian character of the unburnt burials be insisted on by virtue of the resem- blance of the relics to those from known Mercian areas, then it is possible to see in the change from cremation to extended burials the measure of Christian influence among the Anglians of the midlands, who made their new home in the subject kingdom. But it is perhaps impos- sible to draw a strict line between Mercian and East Anglian remains, for both peoples were in the main of the same stock ; and had not both at first burnt their dead, it might be possible for us to show a close con- nection between them by a comparison of the contents of their graves from the earliest times. As it is, little more can be said than that they agreed to that extent in their funeral customs. In addition to the jewels described above, a few objects of Anglo- Saxon date have been found in the county apparently unconnected with interments. There is a bare mention' of brooches at Oxburgh in the Fens, but two drawings are extant of an interesting specimen from ' Norwich Museum Catalogue, p. z i . 346
