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Cremation and Inhumation in the Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries

Part of: Anglo-Saxon archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

J. N. L. Myres
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Extract

In his article on ‘The Strategy of Anglo-Saxon Invasion’ in the March number of ANTIQUITY,1 Mr K. D. M. Dauncey discusses the cremation cemeteries of Norfolk and Lincolnshire, and endeavours to draw from their distribution and their supposed relationship to the inhumation and the mixed cemeteries of the same and neighbouring areas certain conclusions which, if justified by the available evidence, would be of considerable historical importance. His claim is that the pure (or nearly pure) cremation cemeteries of this region can be regarded as ‘ primary’, not only from the chronological standpoint, compared With the inhumation or mixed cemeteries, but also socially, as indicative of military rather than civilian settlement. Their distribution is thus held to reflect certain strategic conceptions determining the course and the character of the earliest Anglo-Saxon occupation of the eastern Midlands.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 16 , Issue 64 , December 1942 , pp. 330 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1942

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References

1 ANTIQUITY, 1942, XVI, 51-63.

2 ibid. 177-80.

3 Proceedings of the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society, XXVII, 163-214, 215-49.

4 These are the cremation cemeteries of Drayton, Earsham, Catton, North Runcton, Rushford, and Wolterton.

5 The best known are at Brooke, Hunstanton, Kenninghall, Northwold and Sporle.

6 There is a skeleton from Sedgeford in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and a glass goblet from Markshall is pretty certain proof of an inhumation in that cemetery.

7 Arch. Journal, 1856, XIII, 411.

8 I have noted elsewhere the contrast between the date and character of the settlement of Mercia south and north of the Trent, but I did not draw Mr Dauncey’s inference about the use of the river. See Roman Britain and the English Settlements (1937), 417.

9 The Newark urn has been illustrated several times: for a drawing see Antiquaries Journal, 1937, XVII, 429, Fig. 1 (a). The Caistor urn, no. M48, has not been published.

10 At Hull and in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

11 History, 1935, XX, 250-62.

12 See Roman Britain and the English Settlements, Map X (a).

13 Mr Dauncey will be glad toknow that Norfolk has more than its fair share of these continental urns; examples could be quoted from Caistor-by-Norwich, Brundall and Pensthorpe.

14 I have not forgotten that there are cremation cemeteries of a sort in Kent, but they are in no way comparable to the ‘pure’ cemeteries in Mr Dauncey’s sense of the term, nor in my opinion can any case be made for believing that they represent a period of Kentish settlement before the earliest of the inhumations there.

15 Excavations at the Roman Town at Brough, 1935, fig. 8, nos. 12, 13, and p. 38.

16 Brough, 1936, fig. 16, nos. 1-4; Brough, 1937, fig. 8, nos. II, 12; Elmswell, 1937 (Hull Museum Publications, no. 198), fig. 5, nos. 6, 7; Elmswell, 1938, fig. 13, no. 24; Rudston, Yorks. Arch. Journal, 1937, XXXIII, fig. 14, no. 2. I owe some of the references to the kindness of Mr Corder who writes, with reference to the alleged Frankish sherds, ‘I certainly shall not demur if you do feel inclined to recant’.

17 ‘The Teutonic Settlement of Northern England’. History, 1935, XX, 250-62, especially 260-1.

18 See e.g. the instances from Holywell Row, Suffolk and Caistor-by-Norwich quoted in Antiq. Journal, 1937, XVII, 432; or those from Girton in Hollingworth and O’Reilly Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Girton College, 1925, p. 22-7.

19 Three styles of decoration on Anglo-Saxon pottery’, Antiq. Journal, 1937, XVII, 424-37; ‘The Anglo-Saxon Pottery of Norfolk’, Proc. Norfolk and Norwich Arch. Society, XXVII, 185-212.