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. [246], 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 recognised 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.”
Figs. 253 to 256.
A few figures here given will illustrate this resemblance. Figs. [248 and 251] are two Allemannic urns from the cemetery of Selzen. It will be seen that they resemble in form the East Anglian urns, and the same ornamentation is also found among our general 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. Fig. [252] is a slate-coloured urn, procured at Cologne, and is ornamented with circular stamps. Figs. [249 and 251] are Frankish urns, obtained by the Abbé Cochet from Londinières in Normandy, and show at a glance the identity of the Frankish pottery with the Germanic as well as with the Anglo-Saxon. The second of these is surrounded with a row of the well-known bosses, which are equally characteristic of the three divisions of this Teutonic pottery—Anglo-Saxon, Frankish, and Allemannic. Above these bosses is an ornament identical with that of the East Anglian urn with the sepulchral inscription. Figs. [253 to 256] are urns from the Swiss Lacustrine habitations, for comparison of form.
Fig. 257.
Fig. 258.
