The shape of the cinerary urns is somewhat peculiar, and partakes of the Frankish form, which may be called degraded Roman. Instead of being wide at the mouth, like the Celtic urns, they are more or less contracted, and have a kind of neck instead of the overhanging lip or rim which is so eminently characteristic of the pottery of that period. Some, however, are tolerably wide at the mouth; but these are usually low and shallow. The cinerary urns were formed by hand, not on the wheel, although on some other vessels evidence of wheel-turning is apparent. This is another proof that these sepulchral urns were made on the spot where wanted. They are as a rule, perhaps, more firmly fired than those of the Celtic period. They are usually of a dark-coloured clay, sometimes nearly black, at other times of a dark brown, and occasionally of a slate, or greenish tint, produced by surface-colouring.
Figs. 245 to 247.—Mayer Museum.
Their general form will be best understood by reference to the engravings, Figs. [232 to 244]. One of these 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-eggshaped protuberances. The ornamentation on the urns from these cemeteries usually consists of encircling incised lines in bands or otherwise, and vertical or zig-zag 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 is 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.
Figs. 248 to 252.
Of the East-Anglian urns, 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. That these vessels belong to the early Anglo-Saxon period is proved beyond any doubt by the various objects, such as arms, personal ornaments, &c., 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. [245]), 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.”