CHAPTER XII.
Anglo-Saxon Period—Pottery, general characteristics of—Cinerary Urns—Saxon Urn with Roman Inscription—Frankish and other Urns—Cemeteries at King’s Newton, etc.—Mode of Manufacture—Impressed Ornaments.
The pottery of the Anglo-Saxon period, so far as examples have come down to us, are almost, if not entirely, confined to sepulchral urns. We know, from the illuminated MSS. of the period, to which we are accustomed to turn for information upon almost any point, that other vessels—pitchers, dishes, etc.—were made and used, but for those which have come down to us we are indebted to the grave-mounds; and, in these, sepulchral vessels, almost exclusively, are found to occur. Cinerary urns are, therefore, almost the only known productions of the Saxon potteries, and these, like those of the Celtic period, were doubtless, in most cases, made near the spot where the burial took place, and were formed of the clays of the neighbourhood. This is proved, incontestably, in the case of the urns found at King’s Newton, where the bed of clay still exists, and has very recently been used for common pottery purposes.
Fig. 326.
The shapes of the cinerary urns are somewhat peculiar, and partake largely of the Frankish form. Instead of being wide at the mouth, like the Celtic urns, they are contracted, and have a kind of neck instead of the overhanging lip or rim which characterizes so much of the sepulchral pottery of that period. The urns are formed by hand, not on the wheel, like so many of the Romano-British period, and they are, as a rule, perhaps, more firmly fired than the Celtic ones. They are usually of a dark-coloured clay, sometimes nearly black, at other times they are dark brown, and occasionally of a slate or greenish tint, produced by surface colouring. The general form of these interesting fictile vessels will be best understood by reference to the engravings which follow. One of these (on [fig. 326]) will be seen to have projecting knobs or bosses, which have been formed by simply pressing out the pliant clay from the inside with the hand. In other examples these raised bosses take the form of ribs gradually swelling out from the bottom, till, at the top they expand into semi-egg-shaped protuberances. The ornamentation on the urns from these cemeteries usually consists of encircling incised lines in bands or otherwise, and vertical or zigzag lines arranged in a variety of ways, and not unfrequently the knobs or protuberances of which I have just spoken. Sometimes, also, they present evident attempts at imitation of the Roman egg-and-tongue ornament. The marked features of the pottery of this period are the frequency of small punctured or impressed ornaments, which are introduced along with the lines or bands with very good effect. These ornaments were evidently produced by the end of a stick cut and notched across in different directions so as to produce crosses and other patterns. In some districts—especially in the East Angles—these vessels are ornamented with simple patterns painted upon their surface in white; but so far as my knowledge goes, no example of this kind of decoration has been found in the Mercian cemeteries.
Of these urns—the East Anglian, etc.—Mr. Wright (to whom, and to Mr. Roach Smith, is mainly due the credit of having correctly appropriated them to the Anglo-Saxon period), thus speaks:—
“The pottery is usually made of a rather dark clay, coloured outside brown or dark slate colour, which has sometimes a tint of green, and is sometimes black. These urns appear often to have been made with the hand, without the employment of the lathe; the texture of the clay is rather coarse, and they are rarely well baked. The favourite ornaments are bands of parallel lines encircling the vessel, or vertical and zigzags, sometimes arranged in small bands, and sometimes on a larger scale covering half the elevation of the urn; and in this latter case the spaces are filled up with small circles and crosses, and other marks, stamped or painted in white. Other ornaments are met with, some of which are evidently unskilful attempts at imitating the well-known egg-and-tongue and other ornaments of the Roman Samian ware, which, from the specimens, and even fragments, found in their graves, appear to have been much admired and valued by the Anglo-Saxons. But a still more characteristic peculiarity of the pottery of the Anglo-Saxon burial urns consists in raised knobs or bosses, arranged symmetrically round them, and sometimes forming a sort of ribs, while in the ruder examples they become mere round lumps, or even present only a slight swelling of the surface of the vessel.
Fig. 327.