Fig. 328.
Fig. 329.
“That these vessels belong to the early Anglo-Saxon period is proved beyond any doubt by the various objects, such as arms, personal ornaments, etc., which are found with them, and they present evident imitations both of Roman forms and of Roman ornamentation. But one of these urns has been found accompanied with remarkable circumstances, which not only show its relative date, but illustrate a fact in the ethnological history of this early period. Among the Faussett collection of Anglo-Saxon antiquities is an urn which Bryan Faussett appears to have obtained from North Elmham, in Norfolk, and which contained the bones of a child. It is represented in the accompanying engraving ([fig. 327]), and will be seen at once to be perfectly identical in character with the East Anglian sepulchral urns. But Mr. Roach Smith, in examining the various objects in the Faussett collection, preparatory to his edition of Bryan Faussett’s ‘Inventorum Sepulchrale,’ discovered on one side of this urn a Roman sepulchral inscription, which is easily read as follows:—
| D. M. | ‘To the gods of the shades. |
| LAELIAE | To Lælia |
| RVFINAE | Rufina. |
| VIXIT·A·XIII | She lived thirteen years, |
| M·III·D·VI. | three months, and six days.’ |
To this Roman girl, with a purely Roman name, belonged, no doubt, the few bones which were found in the Anglo-Saxon burial urn when Bryan Faussett received it, and this circumstance illustrates several important as well as interesting questions relating to our early history. It proves, in the first place, what no judicious historian now doubts, that the Roman population remained in the island after the withdrawal of the Roman power, and mixed with the Anglo-Saxon conquerors; that they continued to retain for some time at least their old manners and language, and even their Paganism and their burial ceremonies, for this is the purely Roman form of sepulchral inscriptions; and that, with their own ceremonies, they buried in the common cemetery of the new Anglo-Saxon possessors of the land, for this urn was found in an Anglo-Saxon burial ground. This last circumstance had already been suspected by antiquaries, for traces of Roman interment in the well-known Roman leaden coffins had been found in the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Ozingell, in the Isle of Thanet; and other similar discoveries have, I believe, been made elsewhere. The fact of this Roman inscription on an Anglo-Saxon burial urn, found immediately in the district of the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, which have produced so many of these East Anglian urns, proves further that these urns belong to a period following immediately upon the close of what we call the Roman period.”
The sepulchral vases found in the district of the middle Angles vary but slightly in form from the East Anglian burial urns. An example is given in [fig. 328], from Chestersovers, in Warwickshire, where it was found with an iron sword, a spear-head, and other articles of Anglo-Saxon character.
“If we had not abundant proofs of the Anglo-Saxon character of this pottery at home,” continues Mr. Wright, “we should find sufficient evidences of it among the remains of the kindred tribes on the Continent, the old Germans, or Alemanni, and the Franks. Some years ago an early cemetery, belonging to the Germans, or Alemanni, who then occupied the banks of the Upper Rhine, was discovered near a hamlet called Selzen, on the northern bank of that river, not far above Mayence, and the rather numerous objects found in it are, I believe, preserved in the Mayence Museum. They were communicated to the public by the brothers Lindenschmit, in a well-illustrated volume published in 1848, under the title ‘Das Germanische Todtenlager bei Selzen in der Provinz Reinhessen.’ When this book appeared in England, our antiquaries were astonished to find in the objects discovered in the Alemannic cemeteries of the country bordering on the Rhine a character entirely identical with that of their own Anglo-Saxon antiquities, by which the close affinity of the two races was strikingly illustrated. More recently, the subject has been further illustrated in the description by Ludwig Lindenschmit of the collection of the national antiquities in the Ducal Museum of Hohenzollern, and in other publications. About the same time with the first labours of the Lindenschmits, a French antiquary, Dr. Rigollot, was calling attention in France to similar discoveries in the cemeteries which the Teutonic invaders of Picardy had left behind them, and in which he recognized the same character as that displayed by the similar remains of the Anglo-Saxons in our island. Similar discoveries have been made in Burgundy and in Switzerland, the ancient country of the Helvetii; and it is hardly necessary here to do more than mention the great and valuable researches carried on by the Abbé Cochet among the Frankish graves in Normandy. It has thus become an established fact that the varied remains of the tribes, all of Teutonic descent, who settled on the borders of the Roman empire along the whole extent of the country from Great Britain to Switzerland, present the same character and bear a close resemblance.”
A few figures will be sufficient to illustrate this resemblance as far as regards the pottery, and these are here given, in which figs. [330] and [332] are Alemannic vases from the cemetery of Selzen. It will be seen that they resemble exactly in form those East Anglian urns we have given in our plate, and the same ornamentation is also found among our Anglo-Saxon pottery. These urns are described as being usually made of the clay of the neighbourhood, in most cases turned on a lathe, but many of them imperfectly baked. They are found in graves where the body had not undergone cremation, and were used for containing articles of a miscellaneous description. In one grave, at the feet of the skeleton of a gigantic warrior, was found one of these urns, containing two bronze fibulæ, a comb, a number of beads, a pair of shears, flints and steel, and a bronze ring. [Fig. 334] is an urn procured at Cologne, and is slate-coloured, with an ornament of circular stamps.