Arts in Early England
Arts in Early England
Arts in Early England
EARLY ENGLAND
PI. A
Frontispiece to Vol. lit
See p. 5 1 1 f.
sSSME
II
* * *
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
1915
CONTENTS
PREFATORY NOTE
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
TOMB FURNITURE: (I) ARMS 192
CHAPTER V
TOMB FURNITURE :
(II) THE MORPHOLOGY OF
THE FIBULA 243
vi CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI
PAGE
TOMB FURNITURE: (III) ORNAMENTATION ON
FIBULAE AND OTHER OBJECTS 290
CHAPTER VII
TOMB FURNITURE :
(IV) BUCKLES AND OTHER
ADJUNCTS OF THE DRESS 346
PREFATORY NOTE
The Introductory Chapter (p. i to 55) is intended to explain
the scheme followed in the treatment of the various subjects
in the presentand the following Volume, and the reader is
there informed of the headings under which the letterpress
is divided, as well as of the intention and character of the
illustrations. The present Note is
necessary in order to afford
explanations of the arrangement of the volumes on the
mechanical side, and to give the opportunity for personal
references of a grateful kind.
As is noticed in the Introductory Chapter (p. 3), the
number of things referred to is
embarrassingly large. On
the plates there are figured more than eight hundred objects
or groups of objects, each one of which is described in the
that may have just been referred to, and will also abolish the
'
antea
'
and '
postea
'
(p. ioo) and the different objects on the plates are marked in
clear arabic figures, the plates being distinguished by Roman
numerals. For the reverse process of referring from the
plate to the text the following is the system adopted, and the
reader asked kindly to mark it.
is In a book of this kind to
notice an object on a plate and not to be able to find easily the
page of the opened volume, and the reader who keeps his
finger in the place where the plate comes will find reference
back to it
quite simple. There are cases however when an
object may be described or referred to not, or not only, on
one of these four pages but in some other portion of the text,
and in these cases guidance will be found in the List of
Illustrations that will be found at the beginnings of Vol. in
and Vol. iv. This List gives the colour and half-tone plates,
A to H, and i to clviii, with certain needful details about
each object illustrated,
including as a rule its provenance, its
present habitat, the character and material of the object, and
above dimensions, for as explained in the Introductory
all its
necessary to put upon the plate itself more than its number,
PREFATORY NOTE ix
description does not occur within the four following pages the
correct page reference is the one given within the brackets.
'
'
does not appear under S but as a sub-entry under Arms.'
'
Archaeological Association ;
Handbuch for Professor L.
Lindenschmit's Handbuch der T>eutschen Alterthumskunde ;
that is
happening at the present crisis, it is a pleasure as well
writer owes much and who passed away before the present
evil times the late Professor Hampel of Budapest, and
Robert von Schneider of the Kunsthistorisches Hof-Museum
at Vienna.
G. B. B.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN VOLUME III
COLOUR PLATES
PLATE
A. THE KINGSTON BROOCH .... AT PAGE
Frontispiece Vol. in.
I, vn *, The Kingston'
'
brooch, a disc fibula of gold inlaid with garnets
and glass diameter 3$ in., thickness at the rim
pastes, in., thick-
ness in the middle (not counting the central boss) $ in., found in
glass, 1 in. in diameter, and gold coins imitated from Roman and
Frankish solidi, date second quarter of vn, British Museum (pp.
444,450-
II, vn, Chain of beads, with inlaid pendant and looped gold coins,
Alamannic, Museum at Munich (pp. 431, 451).
III, vn, Inlaid pendants and looped gold coins from King's Field,
Faversham, Kent, about | full size, British Museum (p. 547).
IV, From left, vn *, one of a pair of bronze gilt clasps, 4^ in. long
the
over from the Taplow Barrow (p. 362); above in the middle,
all,
with garnet inlays, 4 in. long, from the Taplow Barrow (p. 352),
all in the British Museum.
xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE AT PAGE
V. SCEATTAS, ENGLISH AND DUTCH, WITH OBJECTS
OF TOMB FURNITURE FOR COMPARISON .81 .
9, Do., do., 189. 10, Do., do., 115. 11, Do. do., 170.
12, Do., do., 116. 13, Do., do., 184. 14, Lord Grantley's Collection.
1, 4, V 3 Small,
cast bronze objects called 'hinged handles,' natural size
c. 1 in. long, with birds and with a leaf ornament ; 1, from Wang-
\
ford, Suffolk, 4, from Lakenheath, Suffolk, Museum at Cambridge
(pp. 105, 107, in).
2, v 3, Outline of leopard (?) from a Roman original stamped on a bronze
pail from Chessell Down, Isle of Wight, figured postea, PI. cxix, 6
(p. 475), British Museum.
3, Cast bronze medallion with hole in rim, no attachments at back, i| in.
in diameter, with full-face head in debased Roman style, found,
1, Model Sun Chariot with Sun Disc, of the Bronze Age, at Copenhagen
(p. 162).
2, viii or ix, Necklet with pendants of late date from Saffron Walden
cemetery, Essex, Saffron Walden Museum.
3, viii, Cast bronze buckle of late style, Frankish, 4I in. long, Rouen
Museum.
4, viii or ix, Golden brooch of Viking period, from Hornelund, Varde,
Jutland, Museum at Copenhagen.
2
5, ix , Bronze pin-head of late style, from Talnotrie, Newton Stewart,
Scotland, 1 in. diam., Edinburgh Museum of Antiquities.
xx LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE AT PAGE
XVII. OBJECTS AND PROCESSES NOT REPRESENTED
IN ANGLO-SAXON GRAVES 175
1, vi 1
, Skeleton
found at Shepperton Gravel Pit, Middlesex, in 1868.
Objects in Guildford Museum.
2, Part of skeleton found in a barrow in the churchyard of Ogbourne St.
Andrew, Wilts. Iron mounts of coffin remain, see Wilts Magazine,
xxii, 345, Devizes Museum (p. 150).
3, vi, Female skeleton from Stapenhill, Staffordshire, with urn, two
brooches, necklace, spindle whorl, buckle for girdle, girdle hanger,
see Trans. Burton-on-Trent Nat. Hist, and Archaeological Soc, 1, 1 56 f.,
Museum of the Society, Burton-on-Trent.
2, Head of wooden coffin hollowed from tree trunk, and wooden post at
head, 2 ft. 8 in. high by 9 in.
square at the base, from Selby, York-
shire, see Philosophical Society's Report for 1876, the Society's
Museum, York (p. 180).
Collection.
2 Cocked hat pommel from near Droxford, Hants, Winchester
' '
4, vi ,
Museum.
3
5, VI ,
Silver gilt sword hilt from Gilton, Kent, length of grip 3 in., see
2, Vii, Enriched sword hilt from Bildso by Slagelse, Denmark, see Sophus
(p. 210).
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xxiii
PLATE AT PAGE
XXVIII. SCRAMASAXES, KNIVES, ETC. . . .
.227
1, vii or viii, Cutlass of abnormal form from Saffron Walden, 10^ in.
Reading Museum.
xxiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE AT PAGE
ii, V s
,
Axe head found in the tomb of Childeric, 7| in. long, Biblio-
theque Nationale, Paris.
12, Axe head of peculiar form found at Bifrons, Kent; Maidstone,
K. A. S. Collection.
2, VI 2
,
Axe head from Chapel Farm, Horton Kirby, Kent, s| in. long,
Maidstone Museum.
3, Axe head of drop-bladed type, from bed of Thames by Reading,
Reading Museum.
4, X, Axe head of characteristic 'Viking' form, 7 in. long, iron, with
inlaid silver ornamentation and gilding, from Mammen by Viborg,
5, v and vi, Pins for the hair with axe-head terminations, Frankish,
Museum at Namur.
vi 1 3
1, *. 2, vi . 5, VI .
2 3
7, vi .
10, 11, v (p. 266). 12 (p. 266).
v3 3 2
1, 4, (p. 258). 2, vi (p. 258). 5, vi 1. 6, 7, vi .
v 3. 2
10, 12, 11, vi (p. 280). 9, 13 (p. 256).
6, 8, v3 .
10, vi
2
(p. 273). 13, vii
1
.
1
3, VI Penannular brooch from Higham, Kent, Rochester Museum.
,
(p. 258).
'
2, iv, Roman '
cross bow fibula, Trieste Museum.
3, IV 1
,
Three silver-gilt triple-coiled fibulae from Sackrau.
4, iv \ Front view of double-coiled fibula of gold from Sackrau, Museum
at Breslau.
5, vi *, Bronze fibula imitating the early sheet silver type, from Enver-
meu, Normandy, Museum at Rouen (p. 253).
6, v l , Part of round headed fibula from Hammoor B, in Museum
at Kiel.
7, v 3
, Round headed fibula from a Frisian terp, Museum at Leeu-
warden, Holland.
Collection.
Newbury.
vi 2 Fibula from near Mildenhall, Suffolk, with traces of enamel,
7, ,
Edmunds.
2, vi 3 From Little Wilbraham, Cambs, 5 in. long. See Neville, Saxon
,
Institute, Worcester.
5, VI s
, From Barrington, Cambs, Ashmolean, Evans Collection (pp. 270,
597).
6, VII !, Foot of fibula similar to No. 3, from Whitehill, Tynemouth,
Northumberland, Black Gate Museum, Newcastle.
7, vi 3
,
From Chesterford, Essex, Liverpool Museum (pp. 270, 597).
3, vi 2 , Fibula of Swastika form with four birds' heads and red enamel
in centre, i in. diameter, bronze, from neighbourhood of Mildenhall,
Suffolk, collection of G. Fenton, London. Mr. S.
5, Ring made of the tine of stag's horn, 3 in. diameter, possibly used as
an annular brooch, from Londesborough, East Yorkshire, Museum
at Hull.
6, vii
J
, Two small annular brooches, about 1 in. diameter, from Uncleby,
East Yorkshire, Museum at York.
7, vii 1 , Annular bronze brooch with garnet settings, ig in. diameter,
as above.
British Museum.
ii, vn 1 , Silver annular brooch, with animals' heads, ij in. diameter,
from Uncleby, Museum at York.
1 2, c. 400, Two animals' heads terminating a golden necklet from near Abo,
Finland, Museum at Stockholm.
4J in., see Arckaeologia, lv, 179 f., Newcastle Museum (p. 292).
4, Buckle of bone, Alnwick Castle Museum.
5, Metal strap-end with spiral inlays, Museum at Worms (p. 292).
6, Burgundian bronze buckle, Museum at Lausanne (p. 303).
7, Enlarged portion of foot of Roman fibula, PI. xxxvm, 2 (p. 304).
8, Piece of bone from Croydon, Surrey, Grange Wood Museum.
i in. diameter.
3, vi 3
,
Saucer brooch from Upton Snodsbury, Worcestershire, in Wor-
cester Museum, i in. diameter.
3
4, vi , Pair of saucer brooches from Mildenhall, Wilts, in Museum at
Devizes, 2J in. diameter.
5, VI , Pair of saucer brooches found at Horton Kirby, Kent, Museum
1
1, VI 1
,
Gilded bronze saucer brooch from Alfriston, Sussex, i in.
Copenhagen Museum.
5, v, Two heads from the golden necklet with three strands on PL lxv,
from Westgothland, Sweden, enlarged four and a half diameters,
Museum at Stockholm.
6, VI 3 , Portion of applied brooch from Barrington, Cambs, 3 in. across,
ornamented with parts of the human form, Museum at Cambridge
(p. 276).
7, vi 1
,
Pair of button fibulae 1$ in. across, from Bifrons, Kent, K. A. S.
3, v 3 Bronze
, plaque or pendant from near Rochester, Kent, tin or silver
inlays on outer rim, Museum at Rochester.
PLATE AT PAGE
LXIII. INTERLACING ANIMAL ORNAMENT . .
.329
2 Bronze
1, vii , probably used, like the Kiel plaques, PI. LXi,
disc, gilded,
as a breast ornament, from Alton Hill, Bottisham, Cambs, diameter
P- 327-
TYPE'. . .
335
2
1, vi Square headed fibula from Market Overton, Rutland, 6
, in. long,
at Tickencote Hall.
1
2, vi , Square headed fibula from Kenninghall, Norfolk, 6j in. long,
British Museum.
3, VI 3, Square headed fibula from High Dyke, near Welbourn, Lincoln-
shire, in Alnwick Castle Museum, Catalogue number 292, 5^ in. long.
1, iv, Three small golden buckles with encrusted plates, from S. Russia,
Museum Volkerkunde, Berlin (p. 348).
fiir
2, Small buckle set with garnets at back of pin, from Crundale, Kent,
British Museum (p. 348).
3, ill, Cross set with carbuncles, from the Crimea, Museum in Odessa,
dated by Prof. Posta II] a.d.
2 with rectangular plate
4, vii , Buckle of silver gilt set with garnets, from
Museum, Ipswich.
2, vii 3 , Bronze buckle, tinned, 3^ in. long, with square plate en suite,
from Sibertswold, Museum at Liverpool.
xxxvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE AT PAGE
3, Bone buckle, i in. across, from Ozengel], Kent, Liverpool (p. 348).
4, vn 3 Back view of No. 2, with Faussett's original label upon it.
,
largest are 1 ^
in. high. The plates are double and the band passed
Collection.
3, vi 1
, Iron buckle from Mitcham, Surrey, at Mitcham Vestry Hall
(P- 355).
4, vi Iron buckle from Croydon, Surrey, in British Museum (p. 355).
1
,
part of vn, 4^ in. long, from the Taplow Barrow, Bucks, British
Museum.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS <xxvii
PLATE AT PAGE
3, vn 3
,
One half of a clasp (?) from Gilton, Kent, enlarged ;
size of
Museum at Lewes.
2, Clasp for wrist, plate bronze tinned, with punched ornament, 1^ in.
high, from Holdenby, Northants, Museum at Northampton.
3, Clasp as above, from Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, Rugby School
Museum.
4, Pair of clasps, front and back view, i in. broad, from Londesborough,
Yorkshire, cast bronze, Museum at Hull.
5, Pair of clasps in cast bronze, from West Stow Heath, Suffolk, Museum
at Bury St. Edmunds.
6, Clasp in cast bronze, from Mildenhall, Suffolk, Museum at Bury St.
Edmunds.
7, Clasp in cast bronze, gilded, 1 ^
in. broad, from North Luffenham,
7, 8, 9, 10, Figures from the carved bone casket of about 650-700 A.D.
called the Franks casket, British Museum (p. 377).
3, Figure of Charles the Bald, latter half of ix, from the Bible of
S. Paolo, Rome.
TO IV 375
1, 2, IV, Groups of Germanic captives from the lower part of the carved
ivory diptych of about iv, preserved at Halberstadt, from a cast.
3
3, ll , Group from the column of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, showing
two Germanic youths, one with trews and tunic, the other with
trews, tunic and cloak, last half of 11 a.d., see Petersen, etc.,
Taf. 98 a.
3
4, 11 , Group from above showing Germanic female captives in sleeve-
less tunics and cloaks, with hair dressed in different fashions, ibid,
Taf. 82.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xxxix
PLATE AT PAGE
Group from above, showing Germanic lady with
3 little daughter
5, XI ,
in a four-wheeled ox wagon, they wear sleeved tunics and the lady
has a cloak drawn over her head like a veil, ibid, Taf. 96 A.
1, vii 1
,
Metallic gold in narrow strips interwoven with woollen threads,
adhering to the back of it, and the latter in a separate piece (p. 380).
4, Bone comb with single row of teeth and handle, found probably in
London, 4 in. long, Guildhall Museum. See Proc. Soc. Ant. xii,
143
xl LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
7, GROUP OF ANGLO-SAXON TUMULI ON BREACH
DOWN, KENT 179
spring 251
stedt, Schleswig . . . . . . .
259
CHAPTER I
1
The Arts in Early England: i, The Life of Saxon England in its Relation
surprising.
Observers of British national idiosyncrasies will have noted
that many of our countrypeople fall unconsciously into the
pose of the ancient Romans, who affected to despise the
practice of the fine arts, and deemed it more dignified to pay
'
'
the foreigner, the hungry Greekling of Juvenal, to produce
for them whatever in this line might be desired. These
people ignore the possibility of any effective artistic ability on
the part of the British born. With others of our fellow
citizens the same peculiarity shows itself in a different form.
They do not despise the practice of the arts, but on the con-
trary glorify it, while at the same time they refuse to credit
their countrymen, past or present, with any special ability in
this department, or if they are driven to admit ability they
confine it to the Celtic element in our population. It is with
and Scotland were the only things that could count as works
of art previous to the Norman invasion.' Even professed
foreign workmen
may very well be figments
of the imagination of later writers for the only really contem-
porary authority for the details of his life says nothing about
such an importation, but even he had brought over crafts-
if
greater or less extent upon what has gone before, and how-
ever fresh and striking may be the resultant product, it cannot
be called in the severe and literal sense original. Looked at
from this point of view neither the art of Greece nor that of
who would do full justice to the artists of his choice, has tjie
following remarks Although the Celts never seem to have
'
:
possessions.
The foreign elements here spoken of may for the present
regions from the Rhine to the Baltic. This being the case,
THE ROMAN INFLUENCE u
we can easily understand the view of those who would credit
Roman influence with the creation of the Teutonic art with
which these pages have to deal. There are some who, like the
late AloisRiegl of Vienna, see Rome everywhere, and would
regard all the artistic development of the migration period as
'
Gross as a mountain, open, palpable,'
it
certainly did not preclude initiative on the part of the
Teutonic craftsmen themselves, nor bar the way to the recep-
tion of other streams of influence setting in from non-classical
intelligible creatures
who wear
'
their backbones,' possess the
designed animals were being cut upon the coin dies at the very
time when the contemporary goldsmith was dotting the field
'
of his design with the * disjecta membra of creatures which
were in doubt whether they were mammals or lizards ; or
twisting together elongated bodies in
ingenious patterns
1
A characteristicexample is figured PI. lii, 6 (p. 293), and M. Besson
illustrates many of the pieces in his work V Art Barbare dans V Ancien
'Diocese de Lausanne, Lausanne, 1909.
2
Altgermanische Tbierornamentik.
VARIETIES IN CONTEMPORARY WORK 15
enough has now been said. Within the wide area thus
defined there are distinct artistic provinces in which the
common forms and motives are worked out into products each
of which has its local
'
cachet.' One of these provinces is
Celtic peoples. A
good part of what follows has for one of
its main
objects the establishment
of our national autonomy in
art in the early mediaeval period, and here it only needs to be
said that the insular craftsman is no mere copyist or dependent,
no ape of Merovingian fashions, but has his own ways of
laying out and of accomplishing his work, so that when he is
following his own
vein he achieves results that are not only
qualities of design.
1
Thierornamentik, p. 290.
AESTHETIC VALUE OF GERMANIC ART 17
effect that is
compassed, of a type common everywhere in
barbaric design, where there is no room for the vacant space.
In certain of the brooches in cast bronze, such as the example
shown on PI. xliv (p. 268), there is a reserve in the treat-
ment that makes for nobility bronze bowls like the fine
;
finish is cavil.
beyond A workmanlike handling of the various
processes of casting, chasing, soldering, gem-cutting, and the
rest, is almost everywhere in evidence, and minute finish, in
which there same time nothing meticulous, proves
is at the
runs through both periods alike and that makes a unity of the
whole. The art referred to is this of coinage, which, begin-
ning amidst pagan associations, is
represented by copious
productions through all the successive Christian periods until
the Norman Conquest. Even here however there is a natural
division between the earlier coins corresponding broadly to the
pagan period, and those of later date which are of a different
form and denomination.
In the second place the two phases of Anglo-Saxon art,
clothing and equipping the corpse was only by very slow stages
relinquished. A
saint so austere in his religiosity as St.
Cuthbert was yet buried in rich vestments with his jewelled
reliquary cross at his breast and his portable altar, and this
was at the end of VII when Christianity had for a hundred
years been preached in the land. More than a century later
the body of Charles the Great was accompanied in the tomb
tecture, while the carved stones and manuscripts with the later
of the term cares for none of these things. The nature of the
age. Warrior and lady were people of flesh and blood with a
time and a place of their own in the Western world, and to
determine these he interrogates the objects thus wielded or
worn. The step, often a hazardous one, from the relative to
the absolute date he must boldly essay. As a basis for this
historical location of the objects it is of the utmost importance
to know where these various objects came to light and especi-
buckle, the clasp, and the pin. Of these objects by far the
most important is the brooch or fibula, and to this in its many
forms and under its various aspects are devoted Chapters v
and vi. These chapters are respectively concerned with
fibula morphology and fibula ornamentation, and they are
made the opportunity for discussing several points of archaeo-
3
The moulds, with ornaments (modern) beaten to shape over
silver
them to show the technique, are figured in Jrts and Crafts of our Teutonic
Forefathers, PI. xxvi.
36 INTRODUCTORY
his way into south-eastern Britain from a period long before
and the craftsmen have been busy as soon as the shield and
spear were laid aside.
There are other classes and sub-classes of objects the dis-
tribution of which is similarly circumscribed, and these
It will
accordingly be understood that the matter con-
tained in Chapters x and following is envisaged mainly in its
historical aspect. Chapter x contains a notice of three classes
of objects found in Anglo-Saxon graves which are shown there
or subsequently to possess special historical significance,
Anglo-Saxon districts.
thesis that the Jutish invasion did not start directly from their
northern seats but from intermediate regions opposite our
south-eastern coasts. Kentish tomb furniture does not remind
us of what we find in northern Germany and Scandinavia but
of Rhineland work, and to some extent of the tomb furniture
of the Franks, though it would be a mistake to assume that
Frankish work in general is the prototype of what we find in
Kent. Resemblances exist but differences are much more
marked, and the English work is quite independent and at the
same time is of special interest and beauty. Its most charac-
teristic form, inlaid gold jewellery, is of central European
origin and is not characteristic of the North. The tradition of
it
probably reached the Jutes from the direction of the Rhine
to which region it had been imported up the Danube valley
from seats of culture further to the east. The same tradition
had been introduced into Gaul by its Frankish conquerors in
V, and the earliest work of the kind found in Kent is of
Frankish origin or closely copied from Frankish models.
Later on however this particular kind of work develops in
INFLUENCE OF FRANKISH ART 43
They are objects in cast bronze, for the most part in the form
of buckles, that are of special interest on two grounds. One
ground is their obviously close connection with Roman work
which always their ultimate source of origin, though they
is
county town, and the same may be said about the valley of the
Nene that intersects Northamptonshire.
It is worthy of notice that these early finds as often as not
indicate the presence of women. In the case of the Teutonic
the writers of the present day have not fully elucidated the
conditions of the Teutonic settlement of England, nor ex-
little evidence.
What becameof the Romano-British population after the
Germanic Conquest is a question that has never been satis-
factorily settled. Few people at the present day find thinkable
the old theory of the extermination by the conquerors of the
British race over all the eastern and central parts of England.
That the country was turned into one vast Anderida while the
* '
*
Saxons and Angles slew all that dwelt therein so that nol
'
even one Briton was there left does not commend itself to the
humane descendent of the sea-rovers in question, but then on
the other hand what did become of the Britons ?
They were
presumably more numerous than the invaders and certainly
more civilized, while the defence they set up proves them by
no means devoid of spirit. The extermination of such a
population by a smaller
number of hardier and more savage
assailants is of course possible, but even if such a fate overtook
the British men the women might have been to a considerable
extent saved alive. If the result of the conquest were
expatriation rather than
massacre then the British women
would doubtless accompany their menkind into exile. Sup-
hand had ensued a peaceable settling
posing on the other there
down side by side of the two races, one would imagine the
fair British maiden, with attractions enhanced by a refining
by the name
c
is a matter
attested Britford,' quite of specula-
tion, but the case of Fairford in Gloucestershire gives us
England at the time to find these old Roman towns still held
in force by the Britons. The pressure of the invading
Teutons towards the west had been checked sixty years
earlier by the great British victory of the Mons Badonicus,
lapse of years that had passed rapidly away though they were
by no means wasted, the writer came back to the suspended
labours, it was with an enlarged view of the work to be done
and with a considerable increase of apparatus. This has made
the book a longer one than was contemplated, but has also, it
teristic of the later pennies in that they are very often inscribed,
and this gives them a great historical value.
They are also
current to a later date than the sceattas proper and overlap
with the pennies, remaining indeed in use in the north till the
Danish invasions of IX.
For the present purpose the sceattas, the earlier enigmatical
pieces, are of more importance than the better defined later
nounced soft like <sh' and the *e' not sounded, so that the word should be
'
spoken shattas.'
58 EARLY ANGLO-SAXON COINAGE
will
presently be shown, but some opinions of experts may here
be adduced. In the British Museum Catalogue of the Anglo-
1
Saxon series Mr. Keary stated that the sceattas were 'rich, as
few coinages of the world are rich, in the variety of designs
by which they are adorned,' and notes the varied and artistic
'
'
1
A Catalogue of English Coins in the British Museum, Anglo-Saxon Series,
London, 1887-93, *> xx ii> xxvii, xxix, lxxvi.
2
1786-186 1, 'Polish historian, geographer, and numismatist' (Enc. Brit.).
He lived in exile in Brussels for the last thirty years of his life, an ardent
student and writer. The work quoted from is his Numismatique du Moyen
Age, Paris, 1835, pt. 11, p. 7.
ROMAN AND GERMANIC COINS
' '
included also halves and thirds of the solidus, the latter under
'
the name '
trientes of much importance in connection with
the barbarian currencies. The solidus exhibited on the
obverse the portrait of an imperial personage either of the
western or the eastern part of the Empire ; the representation
was at first in profile, but from the time of Justinian, VI,
onwards the full face supersedes it. An inscription indicating
the name and of the personage accompanies the head or
titles
bust ;
the reverse devices are multiform. These obverse
types, with head facing or profile, and many of the numerous
reverse types appear in a more or less degraded form on the
barbarian coinages, and we shall meet with abundant examples
1
Traite de Numismatique du Moyen Age, Paris, 1891, 1, 16.
60 EARLY ANGLO-SAXON COINAGE
as we proceed. On PI. i,
1
show two Roman
Nos. i and 2
obverses with profile heads, one helmed, the other bound with
a fillet, and No. 1 on PI. 11 gives in a barbarian copy a
Roman full-faced head of the Emperor Maurice Tiberius.
The reverses of the coins with profile heads show in one
case, PI. 1, 2', two seated imperial personages side by side
with the upper part of a figure of Victory above, in the other,
No. i 7, two captives between whom is a standard with the
letters VOT
and other marks, while another Roman reverse
on the same plate, No. 3, exhibits the same three letters, with
others below, inscribed upon an altar. These are all common
types that reappear on early Anglo-Saxon and other Teutonic
coins. other pieces on PI. 1 are not Roman but of bar-
The
barian origin and will be referred to later on.
The barbarian issues are numerous. possess coins We
issued by the Vandals in Africa, by the Suevi and the Visigoths
in Spain, by the Ostrogoths and the Lombards in Italy, and
purse or pouch worn at the belt, while the rest, of silver, had
probably been placed at the feet of the dead in some kind of
casket.
1
These coins were all either in an official sense Roman
or had been carefully copied from Roman examples. Clovis,
the son of Childeric, and the kings of the Franks that suc-
ceeded him struck similar aurei withRoman types and inscrip-
marks, such as the C
* '
tions, but with certain distinctive
which appears on coins of Clovis himself. It was reckoned a
1 '
Keary, Coinages of Western Europe,' in Numismatic Chronicle, N.S.,
xvm and xix.
2
Revue Numismatique, 1
889 ;
see however Prou, Catalogue des Monnaies
Francoises de la Bibliotheque Nationale, Les Monnaies Mdrovingiennes, Paris,
1892, Introduction, Ch. 3.
MEROVINGIAN TRIENTES 63
The illustrations on PL 11
comprise, first. No. 1, a fine
A
glance at the material thus presented will show that
practically every device
is a
degradation of some classical type
or of the representation of some animal or object in nature.
The monogram types such as those in PI. 11, Nos. 11, 15', or
devices like Nos. 10, 13, on PI. 11, and Nos. 14 to 17 on PI. vi
(p. 85),
are exceptional. In the case of the Celtic pieces the
In the interests of the general reader the coins have been reproduced
1
on an enlarged scale. The sceattas and the trientes are minute coins, not
more than three-quarters the size of a threepenny piece, and the designs
can only be appreciated on the scale of the original by a reader who is either
a practised numismatist or takes the pains to look very closely. Even numis-
matists now sometimes reproduce these little pieces double their natural size.
On the plates which follow the enlargement varies from one and a half to
two diameters.
Ill E
66 EARLY ANGLO-SAXON COINAGE
regale nomisma
'
also to Roman
prototypes, though there are very many devices
especially among the sceattas for which no Roman original can
be produced. The treatment of these classical prototypes
varies in the three classes of coins under review. The Celtic
startwith the best example but not only reproduce it in
degraded fashion but modify it altogether out of existence as
an intelligible representation, reducing it to a
meaningless
jumble of irregular marks. In juxtaposition with the Greek
originals, PI. 11, 16, are placed the obverse and reverse of two
Celtic coins, PI. 11, 17, which show this degradation carried to
preserves his anatomy and the use of his limbs but in No. 19
he has stiffened to lifelessness and in No. 17 he has disappeared
leaving only recognizable by the aid of No. 1 9 two legs, and
by that of No. the detached wheel of the original chariot.
1 8'
67
follow thelife
history of several sceat types and see that each
No. 1, enlarged 1^ diameters; the other coins about 2 diameters. The coins are gold
THE CRONDALL HOARD 69
Crondall hoard.
In the year 1828 a labourer cutting turf on what was a
toshow that the owner, and loser, of the hoard was a moneyer.
There is no proof that he was also the fabricant of the jewelled
fastenings, but it seems at first sight unlikely that a person in
his position would possess choice *
objets de luxe* of the kind
unless he had made them for sale. There is however an
exhibit in the museum at Leeuwarden in Friesland that
days, we
learn that he acquired the art of fine work in gold
from Abbon, who exercised at Limoges the public function of
2 '
a moneyer, and St. Eloi himself is most '
currency preceding the silver, but this is not the case. There
may be instanced the remarkable coin given PI. in, 5. 1 This
is shown
by the inscription LONDUNI(U) to be a product
of the London mint, and it would seem to follow from the
2
N.S.,x, 174.
3
Dr. Joseph Braun, S.J., Die Liturgische Gezvandung, Freiburg i. B., 1907,
P- 577-
4
The upper part of the figures of ecclesiastics on the right of the Emperor
are original. The lower portions, in which the ends of a long stole appear,
are now recognized to be restorations of XII. J. Braun, I.e., p. 576.
74 EARLY ANGLO-SAXON COINAGE
conceivably be the work of Mellitus during his tenure of the
see, 604-c. 617, and the head that of an archbishop, either
1
Vte de Ponton d'Amecourt in Num. Chron., N.S., xn, 80.
2 The caution given on the last page may however be borne in mind.
DATE OF THE FIRST SCEATTAS 75
1
J. Dirks, 'De Angel-Sakscn en hunne oudste Munten (sceattas),' in
fairly distributed
over the extensive region in which they
occur, while Holland they are limited to one or two
in
1
Leeuwarden, 1909, p. 77.
2 Les deux Cimetieres gallo-romains de Vermand et de Saint-^uentin,
Paris, 1
89 1.
SCEATTAS ENGLISH AND DUTCH
away.
There is a certain treatment of the animal form very
common in Holland and comparatively rare in Britain that
alsoseems a product of Frisian mints. This is noticed later
on (p. 91). On the other hand the occurrence on certain
sceattas of the name of London as a place of mintage, and on
certain others the names of known English kings such as
iEthelred of Mercia, establish without a question sceat pro-
duction in our own country, while the fact that London,'
'
*
-ZEthelred,' and other certainly English coins are found on
the Dutch sites shows that importation from England did
actually take place. On the whole it will probably be quite
safe postulate England as the real home of the sceat
to
appearance, while the far hind-leg for the same motive but in
contradiction to what is naturalbrought in front of the
is
1
There may be some doubt as to the kinship of the animals which have
the heads down
with those with the heads turned back, but the obverses are
other day a coin, so like this that one would think it must have
been struck by the same moneyer, came to light in the grave
of an Anglo-Saxon at Broadstairs, PI. iv, 12. The conjunction
is a striking proof of the commercial intercourse across the
North Sea. The well-designed head on PL iv, 3 occurs with
a reverse with the PADA
legend in runes which is fixed to
about 656. The profile heads on the earliest pennies are of
course still
later, special merit, though they must
and are of
have been executed by the same class of Anglo-Saxon workmen
that were busy on the later sceattas.
Without entering further into questions of chronology a
word may be said about an interesting series of profiles in
1
British Museum Catalogue, 1, xiii.
SCEATTAS ENGLISH AND DUTCH
One reverse, PI. iv, 16, offers this same figure equipped with
a very aggressive pair of moustaches. No. 1 5 on PL iv, with
the cross and bird, has the peculiarity that he is seated in a
charmingly wrought.
Some attention has now been paid to various types of heads
that appear on the sceattas, and with these have been noticed
some of the reverse types that accompany them. The relations
between obverse and reverse types on the sceattas are irregular.
A large number of examples may agree in showing the same
devices, but then another example may come to light that with
a similar obverse or reverse to the others has a totally
all
different type upon the other side. This is the case for
example with the moustached figure with the two crosses,
PL iv, 16, the obverse of which is
quite different from the pro-
heads, with which the standing figure is generally associated.
file
fellows.
A of a particularly interesting sceat type that
notice
stands somewhat apart may here be introduced. This is the
female centaur, which occurs twice in the British Museum, at
the Hague, in the Hunterian collection and in the former
THE FEMALE CENTAUR 87
represents its
original motive in an advanced stage of morpho-
logical (p. 100 f.), whether we envisage such change as
change
degradation or evolution, and may accordingly be so late in
the sceat period as to show the influence of the Carolingian
Renaissance. The type of the female centaur is of course
familiar in classical art. Introduced it seems by the painter
Zeuxis, the motive occurs in Pompeian wall decoration, and it
is
interesting also to find it on a piece of Roman silver work
in the form of a cup ornamented with repousse designs found
at Bernay in Normandy and now in the Louvre. This shows
that the type was known
part of Europe, and the
in this
made out and tail, crest, and dewlap finished off with round
knobs. In No. 2 the beast looks the other way, to the right
instead of the left, and this is
just what would happen if a coin
When the die was used for stamping, the impression would of
course be in relief and would be reversed. The copy was
evidently made by a comparatively inexpert artist. It is pro-
These jaws and the general form of the beast affiliate with
'
the reverses of the c Wodan- Monster type some English
pieces of which the British Museum coin, PI. vn, 4, may
serve as a specimen. He
has the turned back head and the
single leg of the monster on the Dutch coin, PI. iv, 9, but the
jaws carry him back nearer to the original of PI. v, 7. Is it
going too far to see in this rendering, PI. vn, 4, and similar
* '
were given PI. 11, 6, 7 (p. 65). Here in one case a single bird
and in the other a pair of them is shown contemplating, but
not actually biting at, a vine. The birds are seen from the
back and turn their heads to the side. The bird on the second
Cahors coin, PI. 11, very well made out and serves to
7, is
explain the less naturalistic Anglo-Saxon rendering, where, as
in the unpublished British Museum example, PI. v, 8, the
upper parts of the two wings are seen like shoulders, while
there is some pretence at feathering along the tail. In some
of our native examples however, as is well seen in the
Evans specimen, PI. vn, 6', the creature is opening its beak
to the extreme limit as if to take in a whole bunch of
1
This is of some importance in relation to the question of the history of
' '
falconry in England that emerges in connection with the falconer on the
Bewcastle Cross.
THE BIRD PECKING AT GRAPES 93
side. Note how effectively the two vine stems with their
curved lines enclose the long oval of the bird and give it a
just relation to the circular field of the coin, and how boldly
the firm straight legs of the animal cross and oppose these
1
In the British Museum Catalogue the wolf and twins are regarded as
the obverse type, but on the Roman coins from which this device comes it is
always a reverse, and appears later on in the Anglo-Saxon penny series, as a
reverse type, PI. vm, 18,
94 EARLY ANGLO-SAXON COINAGE
historically of greater importance than the beautiful main
type. It gives us the twins Romulus and Remus suckled by
the she-wolf, a device that occurs elsewhere in Anglo-Saxon
'
art ason the Franks casket in the British Museum. Roman
'
coins often show it, and one of the best of these, a fine coin of
shown, PI. vii r, 2 1 (p. 99). The twins on PL v are not so well
made out, but in all cases the rendering of the Roman original
is close enough for us to regard the pieces as typologically
early. It
may be objected to this that a much later rendering
of the same on a coin of iEthelberht of East
classical original,
type
*
In favour of this view are the facts (i) that
Wolvin.'
the she-wolf in its proper shape is rare on the sceattas and
would not have acted with the restraining force just accredited
to the profile heads, (2) that the erect spines do occur as we
shall see on the backs of creatures that certainly descend from
of the twins and to leave some over for those of their foster
mother.
This question however of the ultimate origin of the con-
ventional device under analysis may be left uncertain while
is now
attention paid to the curious modifications which the
device suffers, in the course of which it is carried further and
further away from its
primal shape whether that were profile
head or she- wolf body.
These modifications are illustrated on the lower part of
PI. vu, Nos. 10 to 20. They are grouped, it must be ex-
plained, in an arbitrary order and the simplest, No. 10,
from the de Man collection, has been taken as the starting
To set against this is the fact that the triangle, and also the
forked end, are late and are found with obverses of iEthelred
dating from the last quarter of VII, PI. iv, 1, 2. The other
side of No. 17, at Middelburg, exhibits an utterly inchoate
'
ing round the first with a head of its own kind, which is
of special interest because resembles one on a piece of
it
part of PI. vn, but the writer has not found any sceattas
which bear this out. At any rate Nos. and 12 are nonde- n
script radiating forms with birds' legs attached, while in No. 10
the bird form is more or less clearly made out, the rotary
feeling still
being in evidence. No. 10 exhibits a motive,
carried further in No. 14, that combines with the bird form
pecking at the grapes and the Cahors trientes. The fifth line
of PI. viii gives us in No. 14 a rather elegant bird, built on
rotary lines and far less naturalistic than the bird with the
grapes of Plates v and vn, but agreeing with the latter in
pecking at berries or fruit. There is no suggestion of the
vine, but the waving bough is treated with a good deal of
natural feeling. In Nos. 13 and 15 the animal form is absent
and a foliage scroll occupies the field. This is treated in a
fresh and original fashion and is of much interest, especially in
connection with the use of foliage on carved stones of the
foliage is introduced in a
very artistic manner in connection
with the human figure and
quadrupeds. No. 16 on PI. vm
is a very remarkable Youlbury coin in which the standing
102 EARLY ANGLO-SAXON COINAGE
figure in the boat has dropped his two crosses and taken up
instead a couple of tall stems of some flowering plant. This
makes a much prettier device than the orthodox arrangement,
and we may credit the Anglo-Saxon designer with some bold-
ness in discarding the well-established Christian symbol in
favour of a natural object that struck his fancy, and Lelewel
that the relation between the tomb furniture and the coins is
reverses or the wolf forms on the upper part of PI. viii, but
the point is that the conventions of the coin types are totally
from those we find on fibulae or buckles. The dis-
different
membered animal whose acquaintance we shall make in con-
nection with the tomb
furniture never presents himself upon
the sceattas, while conversely the wolves and birds of the coins
make no appearance in the cemeteries. Furthermore the
forms of geometrical ornament which we shall find fairly
common on some classes of funereal objects, such for example
l '
as the saucer fibulae, are not to be found in the monetary
artist's
repertory, the only exception being the pearl border,
formed by a succession of little knobs or bosses. This occurs
frequently on both classes of objects, but it is, we must re-
PL vin, 10, 14, for example show the creature with the two
legs, wing, tail, and upright neck and open beak of the birds
io6 EARLY ANGLO-SAXON COINAGE
of the hinged handle, PI. ix, I, and there may be brought
into comparison also PI. v, 2, 6, where similar creatures are
represented. On another piece of tomb furniture figured
PI. ix, 7, there is a similar bird. This is a cast bronze
pendant ornament that was found at Saxonbury, outside
Lewes, Sussex, and is now in the Museum there. The
shape of the plate is that of a square superimposed on a
quatrefoil, and the right-hand upper corner is mutilated so
that the fashion of the bird's head and neck cannot be clearly
1
made out. Legs, tail, and wing are however quite sufficiently
distinct. This piece may be dated in VI. PI. ix, 8, is part
of the bronze mounting of a bucket from Bidford, Warwick-
shire, in the form of a quadruped, cut out in thin sheet
bronze. an exceptional piece, and the ornamental
It is quite
and is
published in Archaeologia, lxiii, 191. It was found
in St. John's College cricket ground at Cambridge, and is
now in the Museum there. For the present purpose we are
only concerned with the frieze of quadrupeds which are
treated with a naturalism quite unprecedented on tomb
furniture of the period, that may be early VII. In detail it is
not like any of the animals on the sceattas, but is on about
the same grade of art as some of the animals in the lower part
of PL viii, and has been adduced here for the sake of com-
parison.
The very interesting piece, PL ix, 6, exhibits a union of
animal and foliage motives that makes it of especial value for
1
For a careful report on the piece the writer has to thank Mr F.
Bentham Stevens, Honorary Curator of the Museum at Lewes, who kindly
examined it on his behalf.
ANGLO-SAXON LEAF ORNAMENT 107
three, each branch ending with what looks like a flower bud.
In the case of this piece we have Faussett's note of the objects
found with it, and these give indications of a late date that
would however almost certainly fall within VII. It is dis-
(p. 362), and is noticed here and (p. in) on account of its
connection both with the coins and with the early carved
stones. The terminations of the tripartite tail are curiously
like what we find on PL viii, 19, while the creature itself
occurs almost in propria persona on the eastern face of the
Bewcastle Cross, shown PL ix, 9.
The two objects, Pll. v, 12 ix, 4, present to us the most
;
and its relation to the stem are not understood, and it is only
a blundered presentment, the production of a designer who
was trying to copy a bit of Roman foliage ornament without
understanding it. PL
v, 12, was found
Royston Heath, at
alike of the sceattas and of the carved stones that any indica-
tions even of an indirect kind are Employing now
of value.
the scanty evidence to be derived from the side of tomb
furniture as well as arguments drawn from the sceat designs
themselves and the circumstances of the discoveries of the
coins, we may essay a chronological distribution of some of
the principal types within the general limits of the sceat
period.
Comparatively few sceattas have been found in tombs
where associated objects might afford indications of date, or
have appeared anywhere in conjunction with datable objects
such as foreign coins of known origin. The find of sceattas
in one of the recently explored graves at Broadstairs, Kent, is
half that in which a bird hovers over a cross, PL iv, 12, the
obverses being in all cases fairly executed heads. For reasons
given above 84) the standard' coins may date in VI while
'
(p.
the bird and cross is evidence of a date after 600 a.d. The
indications of an early date, even within VI, for the Broad-
stairs coinsis a little discounted
by the fact that some other
DATING OF THE SCEATTAS 109
'
*
Pada coins, we are compelled to use for the dating of the
sceattas either the internal evidence of their designs or else
such indirect indications as those derived from comparisons
with the tomb furniture. The profile head and standard
type be accepted as early, the last half of VI, and a
may
corresponding nearness to Roman or Early Christian proto-
types may be used in favour of an equally early date for the
wolf with twins and bird and grapes. Charles Roach Smith
1
published two sceattas found at Richborough, one of which is
'
'
of type the other of the
this standard type, but unfortun-
logical indication,
for this motive does not appear in the tomb
furniture till VII and greatly flourishes as time goes on. The
evolution of the 'whorl' motive, PI. vm, 7, 9, etc.,
carries
by sea and land.' This same standing figure in PI. vm, 16,
has we have seen dropped his crosses and assumed instead two
flowering stems, and this brings with it the foliage motive to
the use of which we owe the charming designs on the lower
and the sculptor takes the Roman vine scroll for his model
ii2 EARLY ANGLO-SAXON COINAGE
just as it had been taken at an earlier date by the maker of
the cast bronze buckle and hinged handle. The date, and special
connection with sceat designs, of the birds on PL ix, i and 7
are not easy to fix, but the parallelism in the work is undoubted,
and of a few objects of the kind the old theory
in the case
that the moneyer and the metal worker were one and the same
still has its
plausibility.
In leaving now the subject of the sceat coin types we may
notice in a word of summary, first, the place they hold in the
see reason for believing (p. 173) that the use of the pagan
1 In a few exceptional cases this use may have extended into VIII. The
King's Road cemetery at Reading, Berks, is a case in point, and so is Saffron
Walden, Essex.
AN AESTHETIC ESTIMATE 113
sented in the coins of the classic and the Gothic periods and
in some Renaissance pieces, but beauty that is a matter more
belongs to sceattas such as PI. iv, 15, PI. vn, 5, PI. vin, 14,
15, 16, 19, or the bird pecking at the grapes on PI. v. The
artisticmerit of good disposition of masses and composition of
line belongs to very many of the designs that perhaps strike
us first
by their quaintness.vin shows good examples of
PI.
really a term of
praise when we compare the boldness and accent in their
in
CHAPTER III
The tombs that have furnished practically all the objects, save
the coins, noticed in these chapters are grouped in cemeteries
which served the needs of different bodies of Teutonic settlers.
With these cemeteries various topics connect themselves, of
which the following are the most important (1) the Anglo- :
I. It is two periods in
a curious reflection that there are
the history of this country at which the pagan Anglo-Saxon
about 1700 they passed not only out of use but out of
memory almost as completely as did the Roman catacombs,
while within the last century and a half they have resumed a
that as the weapons suggest rather an early date for the inter-
ment the warrior was not himself a Christian and had acquired
the bronze-mounted horn by foray or traffic from France.
Bronze plates of a similar kind with Christian figure subjects
on them may be seen in the Museum at Worms and were
found also at Vermand in northern France. 4
In the last case an early date, not later than 400 a.d., is
indicated by the nature of the cemetery, and the piece in
1
From Collectanea Antiqua, 11, pi. xxxvi.
2
The Arts in Early England, 11, 119.
3
ibid., 1, 258.
4
Pilloy, Etudes, it, pi. 13 and p. 216. For the important Franco-Roman
cemetery at Vermand see postea (p. 549 f.).
5
ibid., 1, 169, 176 ; 11, pi. 12.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CROSS 117
1
Norfolk Archaeology, in, 375, see Chapter x (p. 510).
2
Catalogue of Sheffield Museum, 1899, p. 222.
3
M. Besson, V Art Barbare dans P Ancien Diocese de Lausanne, Lausanne,
1909, p. 64 f.
(Cycle des monstres affrontes.)
n8 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
increase in width as they diverge, will necessarily form itself
if
any one divide a round disc like a pendant into eight
spaces by radiating lines. There is no reason
to suspect the Roman enamelled brooch at
F IG 2.
. (p 5 X 9) tne urut IS nve
Part of a As we saw in the
-
exceptional cases in the first part of VIII there was in the use
of cemeteries an overlap, Christians still continuing to be
EARLY FINDS IN CHURCHYARDS 119
extent the converse holds good and early burials in the church-
' '
churchyard at Minster
Thanet, a site full of memories of
in
1
Coll. Ant., 1, 176 ; Num. Cbron., 1st Ser., vn, p. 187, and Proceedings,
p. 28. The coins are figured later on, PI. cvii, 3 (p. 449).
2
Archaeologia, vm, 449.
3
V.C.H., Kent, 1, 385 ; Ass., xm, 313.
4
Archaeologia, xxxv, 379 f.
120 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
1
Anglo-Saxon type. The
coffined skeleton, a part of which
is shown PI. xviri, 2 (p. 177), was an intrusive burial in a
Bronze Age tumulus in the churchyard of Ogbourne St.
Andrew, Wilts. All these interments however, save the one
at St. Martin's, may be of older date than the respective
churches. On the other hand at Reading there are some
churchyard burials in consecratedground that are held to go
back to the later Anglo-Saxon period but are unaccompanied
by tomb furniture. As a general rule there can be no doubt
that the practice of furnishing the tomb was pagan but sur-
vived by a sort of overlap into the Christian period, so that
tomb furniture might find a place in a Christian burial in a
pagan cemetery. On the other hand even while the older
cemeteries were in use the practice of grave-gifts would be
1
tumuli paganorum,' is
applied to the old burying grounds
'
*
that are contrasted with cimiteria ecclesiae in an ordinance
of Charles the Great. 3 In other cases movable memorials
that might have been erected above new-made graves would
in time be levelled or
destroyed and the place pass entirely
out of remembrance, though accidental discoveries, often
1
Wendover, shows that at any rate at that time and place
burial mounds were no longer recognized as pagan sepulchres.
In some open ground at Redbourne three miles north of
St. Albans there were two eminences called hills of the
'
'
banners because they were gathering places for religious
1
Rolls Series, No. 84/j, p. no.
2
Boulanger, Marcbelepot, p. 3.
3
The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, ed. Charles Sayle, Edinburgh, 1907,
f.
in, 104.
122 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
modern of exploration does not begin till the first
scientific era
1
Stephen,' watched as a boy of ten this opening of sepulchral
tumuli on Chartham Down, and the antiquarian tastes which
this experience and all his early surroundings at Heppington
1
Inv. Sep., 38.
2
He writes of the Beakesbourne cemetery, one of his latest fields of
exploration, p. 146,
'
I am persuaded, that the persons here deposited were
not Saxons nothing which I have hitherto met with, either here or in any
;
other place where I have dug, having the least appearance of the remains of
that people.'
124 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
an earlier cremated interment makes its appearance among a
number of graves tenanted by the unburnt skeletons of the
Teutonic Faussett as a rule recognizes the former as
settlers.
1 2
Nenia Britannica, p. 63 note. ibid., p. 125.
3 4
ibid., p. 114. ibid., p. 121.
5
ibid., p. 113, cf. Inv. Sep., pp. 10, 63.
6 7 8
Nenia Britannica, p. 177. ibid., p. 128. ibid., p. 127.
126 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
what not few in these days would hear with some sympathy,
a
that much of the tomb furniture might have an Eastern origin.
'
To he does, 1 Gothic art in the fashion of the fibulae
see, as
'
is of such
great and permanent value.
In his illustrations also Douglas adopts modern methods.
For example his first plate gives in business-like fashion a
view of the skeleton in its tumulus showing the position of
the tomb furniture, and adds representations of the different
generally a chance one, and the results noticed above have too
often followed. Even the best of the old explorers however
and many of the moderns have paid far more attention to the
1
Archaeologia, l, 385.
2 18.
Hampel, Alterthiimer in Ungarn, 1,
3
Boulanger, Marchelepot, p. 3.
4 Annales de la Societe Arch'eologique de Namur, xix, 43 5 f.
5
Handbuch, p. 91.
6 Max von Chlingensperg-Berg, Das Gr'dberfeld von Reichenhall, p. 39.
CONTINUITY IN BURIALS 131
eiscovE-n.eo 1S11
mW //
T
l'"'
9
A HGLQ'SAytON ,3MvKi
-^
em
""
"? ^-^ -^>
Fig. 3. Recently discovered Burying Ground at Broadstairs.
Fig. 3. Below the level of the Jutish graves there were dis-
1
Bateman, Ten Years' Diggings, Introduction, p, xiii.
BURIALS IN EARLIER BARROWS 133
1
Victoria History, Sussex, 1, 388.
2
Ass., xvi, 254 f.
3
Excavations in Cranbourne Chase, 11, 257,
4
Proc. Soc. Ant., 1st Sen, 1, 241.
5
Coll. Ant., 1, p. 38.
i
34 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
burying ground by successive peoples and by the same peoples
at different epochs of their culture. It was systematically
hole excavated in the chalk below the barrow and filled with
the calcined human bones of an adult. This was probably a
British cremated burial, while near it were some inhumed
bones by iron weapons of an unmistakably
accompanied
Anglian type. Not far from this on Painsthorpe Wold Canon
Greenwell opened a large barrow at Uncleby 3 which contained
evidences of cremated primary interments, some pottery of
the British type, a small polished greenstone axe and other
great interval after the erection of the mound, or, at all events, before any
change had taken place in burial customs or in the manufacture of pottery,
implements, and ornaments,' etc. Greenwell, British Barrows, p. 17.
2 1
such as those of the ox, horse, pig, goat, hare, and dog, also
numerous fragments of pottery of Saxon, Romano-British, and
Roman origin, and a few probably even of Celtic'
accordingly that intrusive interments in burying
It is clear
is
chiefly observable in connection with the barrows with
cremated interments that are often of the Bronze Age and
may date from a millennium before the migration, and not
with the burying grounds in use by the Romano-British
the evidence goes to show that after the Jutish conquest it was
'
abandoned, and for a long time its ruins remained uninhabited
and desolate.' * It is certain that the Saxons did not fix upon
these walled towns as their places of abode, but, like their
kinsfolk on the Continent whom Ammianus Marcellinus de-
scribes as averse from the
of towns, settled in the country
life
2
districts, avoiding even as was noticed before the proximity
of the Roman roads. In regard to these there is to be
noted the curious fact that there are well-attested instances
where Anglo-Saxon interments have been effected beneath the
actual surface of a Roman road. This undoubtedly was the
case on the Watling Street not from High Cross where the
far
Fosse Way crosses the great north-western thoroughfare, 3 and
on the Fosse Way
Cotgrave in Nottinghamshire.*
itself at
8
The well-known antiquary, M. H. Bloxam, is the authority for this
skeletons, which lay buried in the centre and on the sides of the road,' etc.
4
Ass., in, 297. The bodies were ' interred in the line of road, at full
length, in graves cut through the gravel and rubble of which it is composed,
down to the rock, which is met with about two feet from the surface.'
5 6
Arch. Journ., v, 220. Vict. Hist., Notts, 1, p. 197.
140 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
a highway. Actually to break up the surface of a road for the
purposes of interment is a very different matter, and hard to
understand. Mr. Reginald Smith considers the Watling Street
and Fosse Way burials early ones of V or VI, but such a use
or rather misuse of the thoroughfare can hardly be reconciled
with the view which he and others have favoured, that the
Teutonic immigrants employed the Roman roads for their
own movements and traffic. 1 The burials would show that
the purpose of the roads was at the time forgotten or at any
rate ignored.
The fact that the Saxons did not employ the Roman
cemeteries agrees entirely with their avoidance of the Roman
towns, but conversely it invites us to ask whether their penchant
for interment in the British barrows does not imply a similar
settlements, adds that there can be little doubt that very often
'
1
Vict. Hist., Warwick, i, 251.
2
Cambridge, 1897, p. 351.
8
Byways in British Archaeology,
by Walter Johnson, F.G.S., Cambridge,
1912.
SITES OF THE SETTLEMENTS 141
1
down, as Tacitus phrases it, in detached bodies apartfrom each
other, just as spring or field or grove offered attractions, and
that it was only by some chance contingency that they pitched
on the site either of a Roman villa or a British hamlet.
This independence would not of course preclude the
appropriation of older burying grounds where the site of these
was convenient. The barrows were themselves generally at
some distance from the habitations of the living, and they also
1
T>e Mor. Germ., xvi.
142 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
frequently possessed the characteristic of being on compara-
tively elevated ground.
This is the case with Bronze Age
barrows on the SussexDowns by Lewes, with the Wiltshire
mounds, the Bronze Age barrows on the Yorkshire Wolds,
and the Early Iron Age tumuli at Arras near Market
Weighton, Yorks. Now a predilection for an elevated site
for the cemetery has been ascribed not only to the Anglo-
1
Saxons of our own country but, as by Lindenschmit,
2
Barriere-Flavy and others, to the Teutons in general. So far
as English cemeteries are concerned this principle does apply
in certain regions, and there are conspicuous instances in which
a site of commanding elevation has been selected for the inter-
give the aspect of the height from the south, Fig. 6, taken at
right angles to the other view from the east, shows how it
sharp bend to the west, and exhibits the site of the cemetery as
the culminating point of the whole district. As far as situation
i 44 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
goes it would have served well as a federal
cemetery for several
associated communities, but its extent is
only about ioo graves.
A second conspicuous Kentish example
may be found at
Chatham, where in XVIII Douglas opened many graves upon
the commanding heights facing the town of Rochester. At
Farthingdown near Colsdon in Surrey there is a cemetery on a
breezy ridge of the chalk down 400 ft. above the sea.
Taking the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries over the country
generally,
it is
certainly the rule that wherever, as in the
chalk-down country in different parts of England, high
ground is accessible there the cemeteries are elevated, but
to this rule there are plenty of exceptions. The important
'
Faversham cemetery on the site known as the '
King's Field
is near the town and borders the Roman road, though higher
is
by no means elevated, though in the immediate vicinity the
downs rise sharply to 400 or 500 ft. Some of the cemeteries
in Wilts are up on the downs, but in contrast to the elevation
of these the important site of Harnham Hill opposite
Salisbury is at the foot of their escarpment. The Harnham
site an example worth noting.
is The wayfarer who stands
on Harnham Bridge just out of Salisbury to the south and
looks in a south-westerly direction towards the spire of Harnham
church will have his eyes turned in the direction of the Anglo-
Saxon cemetery about half a mile away. This lies at the top
of a gentle slope upwards from the Avon, but at the same
time just at the foot of a very steep scarp of the chalk down
which abruptly from the summit of the gentle slope, and
rises
the cemetery did not seek for any special elevation, but buried
distinctly under the hill and not on the top of it, though on
a site well above the marshy river meadows. In Yorkshire
the wold burials of the East Riding are at considerable
RIPARIAN CEMETERIES 145
place for their dead. The lands from which the Teutonic
invaders of Britain originally came are not by any means
all
marshy or even flat, but the reason suggested may in
remains were placed on a flat stone over which the urn was
turned mouth downwards. A flat stone is
exceptionally
used to cover the mouth of urn when placed in
a cinerary
its normal
position, and an urn might stand with a flat stone
under it. There are examples at King's Newton and
elsewhere. PI. xi, 4 shows a small urn of 3^ in. diameter,
that was not however a cinerary urn, at Colchester, from
Kelvedon, Essex, with the stone that was found covering
it. The urns and the bones are of course always committed
1
At Combe, near Sandwich, Kent, an exceptional discovery was made
of burnt bones within a bronze bowl standing on short legs, that from the
1
Associated Societies' Reports, 1864, p. 288.
2
Hampe], Altertbumer in Ungarn, 1, 76.
3
Etudes, 1, 150, 51.
4
Arts and Crafts of our Teutonic Forefathers, p. 108.
150 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
buried in a wooden coffin was reinterred in an ancient Roman
1
one of white marble found at Grantchester near Cambridge.
One instance of a stone coffin found in a pagan Anglo-Saxon
1
Bede, Hist. Eccl., iv, 11.
2
Victoria History, Suffolk, 1, 339,
3 '
Coffins are not common at this period except in Kent.' Mr. Reginald
Smith in Vict. Hist., Yorks, 11, 95.
SKELETON OF ANGLO-SAXON LADY AT FOLKESTONE
Foreshortened view
COFFINS AND CISTS 151
1
Arts and Crafts, etc., pi. iv, fig. 15, pi. xxiv, fig. 95.
2
Especially in Alamannic regions, as at Oberflacht, cf. Lindenschmit,
Handbucb, p. 121 f.
3
Sophus Muller, Nordiscbe Alter tumskunde, i, 341.
4
Greenwell, British Barrows, p. 376 note.
5
Hillier, Isle of Wight, p. 29.
6
C. Roach Smith in Coll. Ant., vi, 2 1 8.
152 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
cremation such existed, were all quite exceptional and that in
if
the vast majority of cases all over the country the inhumation
of the body was a simple affair. The corpse was certainly
dressed in the clothes worn in life, for the occurrence of
may possibly indicate what was the custom among our Teutonic
forefathers, and the winding sheet like the coffin may have
been the exception, but there is not enough evidence on which
to base a decided opinion. On the whole the probabilities are
that the winding sheet was in pretty general use. There are
very clear traces of it on a spear head at Lewes, which must
either have been enclosed in the same sheet with the body, or
1
Raine, Saint Cutbbert, etc., Durham, 1829, p. 33.
2
e.g. at Harnham Hill, Wilts, Arch., xxxv, 477.
XIII
facing p. 153
the West, where the ground is as a rule too damp and cold.
There remains the view which sees in it a copy of the attitude
of a sleeper, and this is certainly preferable to the very far-
fetched one that it
reproduces the disposition of the human
embryo in the womb.
As a general rule the crouching position when it occurs in
a cemetery quite exceptional among
is the interments, but it is
position but prone on its face and not as is almost always the
case on its back. Dismembered skulls have been found several
times either detached from the vertebral column of skeletons
to which they appear to belong and placed between the thigh
bones, as in some graves at White Horse Hill, Berks, or else
placed in a grave as an adjunct to a complete skeleton, of
which the head is in the normal position. Plural interments,
where two or more bodies are laid in the same receptacle, are
not uncommon, but the systematic disposal of corpses in a
cemetery in two or more layers one above the other is perhaps
more frequent abroad than in our own country, though
*
instances of it occur in the Anglo-Saxon region. This super-
1
Archaeologia, l, 385.
XIV
facing p. 155
X
w
CO
GO
w
z"
w
G
fa
<
z
o
fa
fa
fa
<
CO
pi
w
h
fa
S
w
u
z
o
<
00
6
fa
o
z
<
fa
o
z
o
h
fa
o
fa
ARRANGEMENT OF THE GRAVES 155
where five urns were in a single line about 1 ft. from each
other. This was not however always the case, for at Kettering
*
no order had apparently been maintained,' l though the urns
were sometimes in groups and at Brighthampton, Oxford-
;
cemetery is
curiously like that of a modern graveyard without
its tombstones. As a rule the denizens of it were interred
singly and the receptacle for the body was cut so as to take it
at full
length, some arrangement being often made for giving
a slight elevation to the head as if on a couch, a small pro-
tuberance of the material of the bed of the grave being left, or
a pillow-like stone introduced. Two illustrations are given on
Plates xiv and exhibiting the aspect of skeletons when the
xv
superincumbent earth has been removed. As a rule, though
not always, the graves are arranged in parallel rows, as is indi-
cated by the German term '
tery, the graves being about 10 ft. apart. This held good
for about two-thirds of the whole space, beyond which the
interments were very irregular. When the rows are regular
the distances between them may range from about 18 in. to
nearly N.W. and S.E. Each of the graves here being fairly
and distinctly cut for a single body, one may regard this
portion as the cemetery proper.' The
makes view, PI. xiv,
this plain. Mr. Ecroyd Smith goes on, To the southward
2 *
1
This photograph was very kindly furnished by Mr. A. E. Nichols,
Borough Engineer of Folkestone, who carefully supervised the excavations
of the cemetery accidentally laid bare in connection with operations for
the widening of the Dover road.
2
Jewitt, Grave-mounds and their Contents, Lond., 1870, p. 258.
158 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
1
mound may contain a single interment. As a rule however
such large graves have contained several bodies. The large '
'
and '
the true worshippers shall worship.'
truth,' To turn
churches or graves in one direction rather than in another was
never an obligation upon Christians, and was merely taken
over by them as part of the traditional apparatus of the older
religions, both Jewish and pagan. This taking over was cer-
tainly not very early, for in the Roman catacombs the bodies
are disposed in accordance with the direction of the ambula-
crum in the walls of which are cut the niches that hold them,
or depend for their position on the accident of their location
in the side or end walls of a cubiculum. The direction of
the ambulacrum depends for the most part on its alignment
synagogues with their long axis not towards the rising sun but
towards Jerusalem, so that a synagogue in northern Palestine
would be turned to the south, one in Mesopotamia towards
the west, an Alexandrian house of prayer to the east. Daniel
prayed with his windows open towards the holy city. What
principle determines or should determine the orientation of
Christian churches is not an easy question to answer. In our
own country it makes no practical difference whether Jerusalem
or the sunrise be supposed to prescribe the axial line, but early
in XIX in the case of a church in India it was disputed
head may be to the west and that he direct his feet to the east,
wherewith even in his very position he may be as one that
Christ would appear in the east, and that the dead should be
so placed that they would rise with their faces towards Him,
but it is obvious that this is the same old idea under another
form. Christ is to appear in the east only because that is the
home of life or more prosaically the place of sunrise. It is
1
prayer and sacrifice pagans looked towards the north. In the
romance in question the fox is represented as turning in the
Christian direction while the wolf is content with the heathen
orientation towards the north. It would be an interesting
trait in the early Teutonic character if we could be assured
that the people sought instinctively their sacred region in the
North whence came their spirit of adventure, their romance,
and all that marked them off from the clear-sighted self-
The Reliquary, Jan. 1894, and again in the Victoria History, Durham, 1.
Ill L
162 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
curious anomaly is a reminder that the caution given above
should always be borne in mind.
In determining heathen interments ideas connected with
the sun as well as those haunting the sacred North played their
2
facing the sun,' and with this end, as the crouching body
was always laid on its side, it was placed on the right side
when the head pointed west, on the left side when it
pointed
east, so that in each case the face would be turned to the
sunny southern quarter. Burials of the Later Bronze Age
were as we have already seen as a rule cremated burials in
connection with which the question of orientation does not
arise. In the Early Iron Age again the numerous inhumation
burials in the Marne district of Gaul, where the body is laid at
full length, are very commonly oriented so that the feet are to
3
the east. In the Later Iron Age, that of the Teutonic migra-
1
Guide to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age, British Museum, 1904,
tions, the burials found to the north and east of the Rhine
that are certainly of pagan date are to a' great extent by crema-
tion and furnish no evidence as to the practice of orientation.
A number of Teutonic inhumation cemeteries however have
been explored within the limits of the Empire, about which it
is
antecedently probable that they were at any rate at first laid
out by people uninfluenced by Christianity, and it is interesting
to examine from this point of view the disposition within them
of the bodies. not safe to go for illustrative cases to the
It is
1 '
As well in monuments as in historical traditions the traces of
Christianity can be followed in Hungary during this whole period,' Hampel,
Alterthiimer in Ungarn, 1, 68.
2
Groebels, Der Reihengr'dberfund von Gammertingen.
Menzel, Die Heidengrdber am Lupfen
3 bei Oberjlacbt, 1
Stuttgart, 847.
4
Hassler, Das Alemann'ucbe Todtenfeld bei Ulm, Ulm, 1 860.
164 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
that the body had been burned. Cremation is so rare in the
south German cemeteries that
appearance its
very significant is
1 2
Figured by Lindenschmit, Handbuch, p. 167. Etudes, 1, 279.
3
Annates de la Societe Arch'eologique de Namur, xix, 311.
4
ibid., p. 447.
SUMMARY ON ORIENTATION 165
1
Annales de la Societe Archeologique de Namur, xvn, 482.
2 3
327 f.
ibid., viii, Le Mobilier Funeraire, Introduction, p. xxxii.
4
Arcbaeologia, xxxiv, 224.
1 66 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
influence only in the later interments. Here Herr von
Chlingensperg-Berg's elaborate plan of the graves bears out
his statement that the dead were disposed in all sorts of
'
*
different directions.' There are not only north-south and
east-west interments but the whole compass is boxed in the
various alignments.
'
North looked he long and hard.'
orientation was east and west and exceptional graves ran north
and south, these last were
as a rule very poorly and not richly
furnished. To return to Stowting, that wonderful group of
six female skeletons in a
single grave were there found lying
north and south, and with them there was rich and copious
tomb furniture of a pronounced early type. At Glen Parva
south of Leicester a woman's skeleton accompanied by rich
tomb furniture lay with feet to the north. Here the long
brooches with detached knobs betoken the first half of VI.
Feet to the north was the almost universal rule in the
Gloucestershire cemetery at Fairford about which Mr. Wylie
who '
explored it uses the words these Fairford graves . . .
1
would seem to bear a very early date.' Equally remarkable
are the phenomena of orientation at the great Lincolnshire
cemetery at Sleaford. Here as was noticed above (p. 154)
1
Fairford Graves, by William Michael Wylie, B.A., Oxford, 1852, p. 22.
168 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
the bodies were laid in the crouching position and on their
sides. It was noted by the careful explorer, Mr. G. W.
1
Thomas, that they rested on the left side with heads to the
west so that the face would be turned towards the north, but
there was one exception in which the head was turned east-
wards and in this case the body rested on the right side and
accordingly still faced the supposed sacred quarter.
A phenomenon observed at Bifrons, Kent, casts a light on
the orientation question. The cemetery is on the whole an
early one and it differs markedly from the many somewhat
laterKentish graveyards of its class in that the rule for orienta-
tion is not east and west but north and south. There is how-
ever a topographical reason for this in the fact that the graves
are dug on an incline the slope of which is from east to west,
so that excavation was easier in a direction at right angles to
the fall of the ground where each grave would lie level in the
direction of its
length. If this were the determining cause it
i.e., that east and west burials with little or no tomb furniture
are most probably late and Christian.
In the matter of tomb furniture there rules the same
ing them on the funeral pyre would, one might think, have
been universally observed, for offended ghosts are a peril, and
so is a violated taboo. It is a fact however that the remarks
of Canon Greenwell about capricious or grudging
the
observance of the custom of thus furnishing the tomb among
2
the Britons of the Bronze would apply, though in a
Age
lesser degree, to the pagan Teutons. On the whole abundance
of tomb furniture has come to light but it is by no means
logique, 1893.
XVI
facing p. 171
SUN DISC AND LATE TOMB FURNITURE
1856.
3
Arch. Journ, v. 220 ; Vict. Hist., Yorks, 11, 97.
Notably a fine collection of bronze bangles of a pronounced Roman
4
type, found on a different body from that which wore the necklet described
in the text, see PI. cix, 3 (p. 457).
172 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
offers no parallel. It has been described as '
foliated,' but
there is
really no imitation of vegetable forms. A kind of
framework seems to be represented as made with cords
knotted, doubled, and perhaps fastened in places by pins.
Round this is then twisted a band formed of three parallel
strands, and spaces are filled up with ornamental ends attached
rather awkwardly as tangents to the loops. A close parallel
to this design will be found on two beautiful golden brooches
in the Museum at Copenhagen from Hornelund near Varde
in Jutland, dating from the Viking period VIII to X. One
of them is illustrated PI. xvi, 4. Again, the silver bead with
the spiralsis
closely paralleled by a hollow sphere of bronze,
ornamented in the same fashion and used for the
PI. xvi, 5,
neighbours.
However this may be, it seems pretty clear that our ceme-
teries do not as a rule come down to so late a date as those across
the Channel, while on the other side they are not so early as
the German cemeteries on the Lower Elbe, or as some Frankish
ones that belong to the time prior to the invasion of Gaul in
force under Clovis. Hence the bulk of the objects contained
in Anglo-Saxon graves belong to VI and the early part of VII.
A fair
proportion may be dated in the latter part of V, the
tendency of the moment being rather to exaggerate the
174 THE ANGLO-SAXON CEMETERY
number of these, and comparatively few can be assigned to a
later time than about the middle of VII. It would be rash to
set any definite limit to the use of the pagan cemeteries, but
so far as tomb furniture is concerned the evidence for it can
hardly be carried further than VII.
The comparatively early cessation among the Anglo-Saxons
of the practice of furnishing the tomb may in some degree
account for the fact that certain classes of objects, characteristic
abroad of the later Merovingian period, make no appearance
objects of a third class, such as the brooch, the buckle, and the
knife, may be found accompanying the bones of either sex
indifferently. Many of the objects of course are of a kind not
specially Teutonic, but like the mounted wooden buckets, the
bronze bowls, the beads, the vessels of glass, are found in Celtic
or in Roman cemeteries, though as a rule in each genus there
is a distinctively Teutonic species so that the products have
spear lies
by the side. No. 2 has been noticed above (p. 150).
With regard to the condition of preservation of the bones and
relics there are great differences the reasons for which have
never been made the subject of scientific inquiry. The skeleton
often remains pretty well entire, but there are cases in which
we are told that every trace of it had disappeared except the
enamel crowns of the teeth ! In the case of objects of wood
and iron the state of preservation greatly varies, and there is a
1
down.' Sometimes a local appellation preserves the memory
of the earlier aspect of a cemetery of the kind. This was the
case at Harnham Hill near Salisbury, where the site bore the
name of the {
Low field' which suggested to Akerman the
'
very shallow, in this case only about 6 in., we may infer the
previous existence of tumuli. Tumuli appear to have been
most common in Kent especially in the eastern part where, it
5
has been noticed, Celtic tumuli are particularly rare, so that
the surviving mounds in that region represented primary
'
'ft Ufa
churchyards.'
2
whole, On arrangement of the
the if the
K
Fig. 8. Runic Tombstone from Sandwich.
At the same time suggestions have been made that traces of the
older British population are to be looked for, especially among
the skeletons of females, the inference being that the Teutonic
warriors took to themselves wives from the older inhabitants of
the land. In connection with one of the most recent explora-
tions of a cemetery, that at East Shefford, Berks, it was urged
that there was cranial evidence that the older females were for
the most part at any rate of British race. This meant re-
opening a question that anthropologists considered practically
settled in favour of community of race between the sexes. In
connection with another of the more recent discoveries, that of
the cemetery on Dover Hill above Folkestone, Kent, Professor
1
F. G. Parsons reported in 91 1 that
'
the female skulls and
1
Chapter (p. 50 f.) and the net result so far as our present know-
ledge extends is that the distinction between Celt and Saxon
has left no appreciable mark in the cemeteries.
The other question (b) whether the population of the
is
they are at best obiter dicta, and a much more serious and
systematic study is required before we can be satisfied that
there were specific differences in bony structure among Saxons,
Jutes, and Angles. This part of the subject may at any rate
be left in the meantime with the words recently penned by
Dr. W. L. H. Duckworth, 1 '
it is
very desirable that an ex-
tensive investigation should be made of the skulls from all
treating the body and arranging the grave but there seems no
evidence that these differences are really racial ones. The
most striking of these differences is that between cremation
and inhumation, but it is the view taken in this book and
developed later on (Ch. x) that this difference depends on
time and locality rather than race. Then there is the common
use made of coffins in Kentish interments while coffins else-
1
Cambridge Antiquarian Society's Communications, vol. xvi, 191 2, p. 128.
CONTRASTS AMONG CEMETERIES 187
where are rare, and there is the difference between the custom
of laying the body flat on the surface of the subsoil or the
stratum below the alluvial deposit, or excavating in this a
distinct grave.
It is clear that differences of this kind are not sufficiently
be that the first named is rather the earlier, there was in the
first case no sign of cremation and in the second abundant
cremation. Why this contrast? Many cemeteries in East
twenty-six skeletons had their feet to the east two had theirs to
'
the west and these were both children, which,' he says, seems
'
with the inmates of this family tomb, and had brought the
skulls of husband and wife (for such we may consider their
TOMB FURNITURE :
(I) ARMS
192
BIFRONS CEMETERY 193
hardly a trace of it
except in the Derbyshire tumulus at Benty
Grange, where some iron chainwork was found which the
'
figures
on the Franks Casket in the
in the representations
*
British Museum (p. 205 note 1) some are shown with coats of
mail, PL lxxxi, 7 (p. 377). It must be remembered also
that the heroic poems as we have them are later than the finds,
and the Germanic warrior of the early migration period pre-
ferred to have his limbs free, caring more for weapons of
offence than for protective ones. The Benty Grange inter-
ment is late (p. 772). Coats of mail were worn by the Roman
soldiers who may have borrowed the equipment from the
1
Now in the Pierpont Morgan Collection, New York. Seymour de Ricci,
Catalogue of a Collection of Merovingian Antiquities belonging to J. Tierpont
Morgan, Paris, 19 10. Plates x and xi.
2
Bateman, Ten Tears' Diggings, 1861, p. 32.
3
Grobbels, p. 35.
HELMET AND SHIELDS
says
'
from the impression on the metal it is evident that the
outside was covered with plates of horn disposed diagonally
2
so as to produce a herring-bone pattern,' whence we can
'
Schuppenpanzer or
'
'
lorica squamata that was coated with protective scales.
Now Ammianus Marcellinus
3
tells his readers that the Quadi
wore breastplates made of horn scraped and polished affixed to
doublets of linen, so that the scales of horn were like a bird's
feathers,and Sarmatian horsemen appear to be equipped in
this on the Trajan Column.
fashion The Benty Grange
helmet is an Anglo-Saxon example of this technique. It has
another very interesting peculiarity that the figure of an animal,
6
The Deeds of Beowulj, by John Earle, Oxford, 1892, p. 47, line 1453.
196 THE SHIELD
But the Benty Grange helmet bears another device. On
the front of it over the forehead, on the extreme left in the
THE SHIELD
The only weapon of defence represented at Bifrons, and
as a rule in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries as a whole, is the shield.
The was apparently very commonly borne by the
shield
Germanic man-at-arms. The Franks who descended into
Italy in 539 a.d., 100,000 strong,
had each a shield, 3 and so
had their Alamannic allies who fought with them against
4
Narses at Capua. That these might be of a rough and ready
order is shown the fact that, when Theodoric was leading
by
his Ostrogoths on the eventful march into Italy in 488, his
soldiers could only oppose shields of wicker work to the lance
5
thrusts of enemies who met them on the way. Hence it is
1 2
Grobbels, Coll. Ant., 238.
p. 15. 11,
c
W
-
Q
Z
<
as
p
z
<
go
PQ
FORM AND SIZE OF SHIELDS 197
vived while the wooden orb of the buckler has passed out of
existence. These mounts may have belonged only to the
shields of the well-to-do, but in any case they are fairly
numerous and occur at Bifrons as in every other large
cemetery.
These surviving parts of the shield present practically the
same shapes all over the Anglo-Saxon area, but there are some
significant differences of detail in the forms that are of chrono-
logical import. The Anglo-Saxon shield appears to have been
an orb of light wood, generally circular, though in the cemetery
1
at Bifrons and also at
Long Wittenham, Berks, traces showed
that there was oblong or oval, 2 varying in diameter from
it
6
f in. The shield was held not by passing the arm through
loops but in one hand, and for this purpose a round hole,
about 2^ or 4 in. across, is cut in the centre of the orb and
crossed by a bar that was grasped by the fingers of the left
hand. In two cases, at Brighton Museum and in an umbo
7
found Brighthampton, Oxon, a portion of the skeleton of
at
the hand still adhered to the rusted iron of the handle. For
the protection of the hand the aperture in the shield orb is
covered with a hollow boss of iron projecting some 3^- in. to 6 in.
and called generally by its Latin name ' umbo.' This umbo
1
Archaeologia, xxxvin, 136.
2
As also at Reichenhall in Bavaria, Rekbenball, p. 81.
3
At Chessell Down, Isle of Wight, Hants, and Sarre, Kent.
4
At Ringmer above Lewes, Sussex, and Folkestone, Kent.
5
Marston St. Lawrence, Arcbaeologia, xlviii, 334; Kempston, Coll. Ant.,
vi, 205.
6
Inventorium Sepulchrale, pp. 5, 10, 116, also Brighton Museum.
7
Arcbaeologia, xxxvn, 391.
198 THE UMBO
was attached to the woodwork by means of rivets run through
holes in a horizontal rim like the brim of a hat at
its base, and
out on to the wood beyond its rim on the same Plate, No. 3.
Other were occasionally disposed round the outer margin
rivets
of the orb, as at Folkestone, Kent. These rivets are often
preserved and may, as in the case just mentioned, give the
sizeof the orb, while by measuring the length of their shank
an estimate can be made of the thickness of the wood of the
shield. This
often curiously thin, but not so thin in this
is
ing shapes. The most common shape, found in all parts of the
'
2
the female breast. From the inner edge of the horizontal rim
there rises an erect
cylindrical piece that is sometimes worked
1
Engelhardt, Denmark in the Early Iron Age, Lond., 1866, p. 48, and
Thorsberg, pi. 8.
2
Fourteen examples were found at Bifrons.
XXIII
tacing p. 199
UMBOS
employment impossible.
The
chronological point connected with the umbos is the
following. Nearly all the mammiform umbos found in this
country are dome-shaped with a convex outline, but on the
Continent there is represented an earlier form of which the
upward curve of the dome is a concave one. It is a Late-
x
Celtic form that Professor Bela Posta notes was diffused later
on over northern and western Europe, and typical examples
umbo found in the chieftain's tomb at Vermand
are the gilded
and dating from before 400 a.d., 2 and that from Herpaly
at Budapest,
figured later on, PI. lii'i, 10 (p. 305). This
same form is constantly represented in the cemeteries in the
region of the Lower Elbe that are an archaeological generation
earlier than those in our own
country. Two at Liineburg,
from the cemeteries of Nienbiittel and Boltersen, are shown
PI.xxin, 5, 6. The derivation from that region of some
of the forms met with in English cemeteries of the first
period of the Teutonic occupation is a fundamental fact in
Anglo-Saxon archaeology to which reference will often have
to be made. It so happens that in one particular British
filling after the pattern of the conical helmets. There are six
ribs fashioned with the section of T iron, and the plates are
carefully fitted in between these with strengthening pieces
1
cunningly adapted.
On
the question of the external finish of the shield we
have practically no information. From the fact that in the
Laws of iEthelstan the shieldwright who used inferior leather
was to be fined we may infer that a covering of hide was
usual, but this covering if it existed seems to have left no
trace in the graves. Whether colour or painted devices
diversified the surface, as was common in classical and also
fa
fa
<
APPLIQUES 203
beak appears the eye of the creature with the brow curving
round it, and the rest of the dismembered animal consists only
in two one the joint of which forms the sharp
legs, a larger
of one of the pieces with the rivets and their washers.' The '
surface to which they were fixed must have been | in. thick.
The fish form it will be seen is represented, see No. 3, slightly
enlarged, also the equal armed cross, No. 5, and the bird with
hooked beak. An ornament made up of two such birds with
bodies joined, in the corner close to the number '
3,' has
THE SWORD
Of arms of offence the most important though by no means
the most common was the sword, and the weapon possesses
a dignity as well as an archaeological interest that justifies an
extended treatment. On the position of the sword in early
times Kemble remarks 2 that it is the alter ego of the man, his
most trusty and constant companion. '
His arrow he shoots
1
Mr. Hubert Elgar, of the Kent Archaeological Society's Museum at
Maidstone, has recently discovered documents which show that Buttsole was
as a fact the locality of the find. See postea (p. 708).
2
Horae Ferales, Lond. 1863, 47.
AN ARISTOCRATIC WEAPON 205
Alfred's Will, 'the spear half and the spindle half,' may be
1
1 have a weapon . . .
1
Earle's Beowulf, p. 55, line 1695. 'On the mounting of sheer gold
there was with rune-staves rightly inscribed, set down and said, for whom
that sword had erst been wrought.' It is worthy of remark that on a sword
the fact that while some splendid sword hilts and scabbard
mounts found in the tomb of Childeric, 1 at Pouan, 2
like those
8
or at Flonheim, have come to light in Teutonic graves, the
total number of swords excavated in proportion to other
weapons is very small. When Lindenschmit wrote his
Handbuch in the '8o's of the last century he could say that at
any rate in nearly every man's grave contained a
Germany
spear head, whereas, except along the middle Rhine, where
swords are more numerous, the aristocratic weapon was rarely
4
met with. It has been calculated that in the graveyards of
the Ripuarian Franks on the middle Rhine, dating from the
middle of VI, from 8 to 10 per cent, of the tombs have
furnished swords, but only two long swords are mentioned by
the explorer of the large Bavarian cemetery at Reichenhall
further to the east, and Hampel only reckons three as
1
Now in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.
2
Now at Troyes. 3 In the Museum at Worms.
4
Altertbumer der Merovingischen Zeit, pp. 163, 220.
5 6
Altertbumer in Ungarn, i, 187. Etudes, m, 13.
7 de Baye, Industrie Longobarde, Paris, 1 888, p. 12.
208 THE SWORD
excavations at Sarre in Thanet showed that one grave in ten
out of the 272 reported contained a sword, and at Bifrons six
or seven were the outcome of the exploration of some 150
1
Victoria County History, Derbyshire, 1, 268.
2
By Charles Roach Smith in Inventorium Sepulchrale, p. xxxvi, and more
recently by Professor Hampel, Alterthi'imer in Ungarn, 1, 186.
XXV
facing p. 209
ANGLO-SAXON AND OTHER SWORDS
xxy
costly jewels of his lady, which were however, like the Kingston
brooch, duly consigned to the darkness. Another way of
accounting for the scarcity of the sword is to suppose it the
5
weapon exclusively of the mounted warrior, and it has been
said that it was too heavy to be used by a man on foot. But
the Gauls who fought the Romans with still longer and heavier
arms were infantry soldiers. The discovery in a number of
instances of spear heads in the same grave with swords pre-
cludes the supposition just noticed, for the spear which was not
a lance, see below, is pre-eminently the footman's
long weapon.
The weapon under consideration, as found in Anglo-Saxon
1 '
There did many an eorl of Beowulf's unsheath his old heirloom,'
Earle's Beotvulf, p. 26, line 800.
2 3
ibid., p. 48, line 1490. 51, line 1558.
ibid., p.
*
Professor Ham pel says, I.e., 'wenn es besonders werthvoll war,
legte
man es nicht ins Grab.'
5 See Lorange, Den Yngre Jernaldcrs $v<erd, Bergen, 1889, p. 79, for
the use of the later Viking sword by cavalry.
in o
210 THE SWORD
graves, possessed a broad straight two-edged blade, about
two feet six inches long ending in a hilt that gave it four or five
1
inches more, about two-and-a-quarter inches wide at the hilt
and tapering very slightly if at all till it ended abruptly in a
rather blunt point. The blade had no central groove nor
median rib. The hilt, and the scabbard which was generally
of thin wood, might be mounted, covered, and artistically
enriched in different fashions, the latter having an ornamental
band round the mouth and a binding of metal, also often
enriched, round the bottom of the sheath forming what is
known as the chape.' The examples from Croydon shown
'
side of the skeleton with the hilt uppermost and has nearly
exceptional length and measures 3 ft. 2 in. over all. As to the question of
weight, some experiments indicate an average of something under 2 lbs.
(pp. 633, 685).
ROMAN AND GERMANIC ARMS 211
the spatha it was designed for the thrust rather than the
This word is
popularly applied to work in textiles and in
metals in which a variegated surface pattern is
produced.
The weavers and metal workers of mediaeval Damascus were
specially cunning in such crafts and this explains the name.
The kind of damascening here in question is not inlaying but
the production by skilful forging of wavy devices within the
texture of steel and iron. Wires or strips of these metals
differing in quality and degrees of hardness are laid side by
side in a certain order and then at white heat welded together
on the anvil. With a little ingenuity, by twisting the hammered
piece and again forging it, or by similar artifices, all kinds
of mottlings and curly patterns may be produced, and these
DAMASCENED SWORD BLADES 215
come out more strongly when the metal has been corroded
by time and the softer strands have been eaten away. The
Nydam swords show this, and PI. xxv, 7, gives a character-
istic specimen. Blades of the Danish period in this country
and Viking weapons generally exhibit the same technique. A
'
'
scramasax or short single-edged sword of comparatively late
date in the British Museum from Little Bealings, Suffolk, has
an unmistakable band of damascening along the blade, and
the same appears on certain arms of the Danish epoch in the
national collection from Hurbuck in County Durham.
In the period intermediate between that of the Nydam
deposits and the age of the sea-rovers this same practice of
damascening is referred to, about the beginning of VI, in a
letter from Theodoric the Great, then lord of Italy, to a king
of the Vandals who had sent him from North Africa a present
of sword blades *
more precious than gold.' They had the
hollow median groove and within it there was the appearance
as of twisted worms that gave an effect of changing light and
shade as if the steel were of many colours. 1 These blades,
wherever they were forged, clearly represent the same tradition
of sword making that we have just been following, but they
are not the spatha blades that are found in the cemeteries of
the migration period. These spathas of to VII, whether we V
find them at home or on the Continent are not damascened
and have no median hollows, and seem to stand apart alike
from the earlier Nydam pieces and those of the later Viking
2
period. If inboth these cases we are dealing with a pro-
duction based on provincial-Roman traditions which may
also have been operative in the case of the Vandal blades,
the ordinary spatha of the cemeteries of our period may re-
1
Cassiodorus, Variae Epistolae, w, I. The translation in Dr. Hodgkin's
Letters of Cassiodorus, Lond., 1886, p. 264, is
faulty for there is no question
of 'enamel' in the original.
2
Den Yngre Jernalders Svesrd, p. 73.
216 THE SWORD
Mr. Lorange admits that the Germans and Scandinavians had
their weapon smiths, expert enough in such tasks as forging
umbos and spear heads but not competent for the more exalted
achievements. In this way perhaps we may explain both the
inferior character as a weapon of the spatha and its unlikeness
to the Nydam and the Viking swords.
The spatha is deficient in quality as a blade, and also as we
shall see in a moment in the character of its hilt, and it has
even been suggested that it was not really an effective weapon
of war but was carried by the man of rank as a kind of badge
of office. Such a theory would require strong evidence to
support implies that in the whole long and illustrious
it. It
ceremony. Why, we
utensil of may ask, should the sword
have been not a sword just at this particular epoch in its
history ? It seems safer to assume that it was then as ever a
death-dealing implement though not one of any great efficiency.
Archaeologically speaking the most important part of the
spatha for this exhibits changes that can be arranged
is its hilt,
in
morphological order so as to supply indications of compara-
tive dates. In the normal sword of all times and countries
' '
the blade ends at the upper part in a ' tang or *
strig round
which is placed some material arranged to accommodate the
grip of the hand. To prevent this material slipping off the
stem of metal the latter has to be beaten out at the end, and
this is
generally done over some button or plate or block that
'
and also to keep the hand from slipping on to the blade. The
guard in some comparatively modern swords becomes the
c '
basket hilt that encloses the hand in a hemisphere of steel
migration period, and one that brings into light its comparative
independence of older traditions, that it seems to exhibit the
development of the hilt from its very beginnings, as if no
effective swords had ever previously been known. The far
earlierswords of the Hallstatt and La Tene periods had hilts
that sometimes assumed elaborate and fanciful forms. The
Roman sword had a serviceable handle with a pommel gener-
ally of a spherical shape, as may be seen in an example in
the Edinburgh Museum of Antiquities from Newstead,
PI. xxv, 8. Here the blade is 17 in. long while the length of
the grip, which with the pommel appears to be of bone, is not
much over 3 in. The end of through the
the strig
is carried
guard and heavy pommel with the median hollow along the
blade.
The
peculiarity of the early sword of the Teutonic
migrations is that it has not only no guard but at first no
pommel. Some device to prevent the handle slipping off of
course existed, but the earliest or at any rate the simplest
swords have the end of the iron tang beaten out into a button
form that only takes the middle part of the wooden grip or at
any rate does not project beyond its circumference. The
'
handle of a short cutlass or scramasax,' see below, found at
Lussy Switzerland
in in 1908 and now in the Museum at
Fribourg, has retained its wooden grip though this may have
shrunk a little through time, see PI. xxvi, 1. The Folkestone
specimen xxvur, 6, evidently had a hilt of the same kind,
PI.
with the button beaten out of the metal of the tang. When
an ornamental head is desired for the hilt this also need not
project, and here we can say with certainty that this applies to
the earliest swords in point of time. That found in the tomb
of Childeric, who died in 481, possesses a grip straight and not
concave in outline, but there is no trustworthy evidence of a
pommel.
1
The swords from Pouan in the Museum at Troyes
are adorned with admirable garnet inlays of a somewhat
simpler kind, and are obviously of the same style and date as
the Childeric sword or swords, though we need not necessarily
believe the former to have been carried in the battle against
Attila in 45 1 This is happily preserved complete and shows
.
1
The way the pieces of the sword or swords with their scabbard
mounts are put together in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris is not to be
trusted. M. Pilloy has had no difficulty in showing this, see his Etudes,
in, 5 f. The hilt as at present arranged will be found figured later on,
PI. H. 11
(p. 533).
XXVI
facing p. 219
SWORD HILTS
I is Continental
EVOLUTION OF THE POMMEL 219
hole in the iron cap and is fixed by being beaten out. As the
tang about 4^ in. long there is room here too for a wooden
is
knob below the cap. This little iron cap is really the begin-
ning of the pommel. It soon assumes a more definite shape,
SWORD HILTS
Will
I, 2, are Continental
ADJUNCTS TO THE HILT 221
further. A little distance, say in., below this first plate there
comes another of equal size, and the two are riveted together
through a disc of hard wood that is introduced between.
PI. xxvi, 3, shows this still in situ. Furthermore, in 3 and 5
on PI. xxvi and 4 on PI. xxvn, one of the rivets, shown best
in the last-mentioned example, terminates above the upper
surface of the end of the cocked hat pommel in a ring, and in
this fixed ring a second ring is made loosely to play. The
purpose of this seems to be to afford means for the attachment
of a cord to the hilt that could be tied round the wrist, so that
the weapon might be temporarily dropped from the grasp and
easily recovered again. For the sake of securing a solid
attachment for this fixed ring the rivet one piece
which is in
examples however the ring and its attachment do not act, but
occur only as survivals in the form of solid lumps neither
useful nor particularly ornamental. PI. xxvn, 1, shows a
1
ttudes, in, 217 f.
2
Lindenschmit, Altertumer unserer beidniscben Vorzeit, v, p. 165, pi. 30.
3
Pilloy, I.e.
222 THE SWORD
are quite hollow and obviously mere decorative finishes to the
hilt. To the left is a golden ornament that originated in
the ring and attachment of a hilt such as PI. xxvi, 3 and 5,
but is a mere dummy and has no longer any significance.
'
PI. xxvn, 2, shows the use of the 'cocked hat as a decora-
1
Figured in colours in Akerman's Tagan Saxondom, pi. xxiv.
2
Altgermanische Tierornamentik> p. 10 1.
THE BRIGHTHAMPTON SWORD 223
then bronze ones cast pretty solid and plain and employed
aperture nor traces of the rust which one would expect to find
where it had once been, but such a conjecture seems forced
upon one by the existence of the hole and the fact that in other
examples such as PI. xxvi, 6, 7,the strig is actually seen in the
Along the blade near the back there almost always ran two or
three longitudinal grooves that are sometimes filled in with
some differently coloured metal, and were perhaps always
intended to be so treated. The old notion, founded on a
2
Historia Francorum, iv, 52.
Ill P
226 THE SCRAMASAX, ETC.
cultris validis, quos vulgo scramasaxos vocant.' The fact that
* '
the term culter,' knife,' is thus used as equivalent to scra-
masax may give a key to its history. It began as a knife and
later on was enlarged into a sword. The knife is found early
and is the most common of all
implements in Germanic graves
both of men and women, being found also with children, and
the knife is nearly always in form a small scramasax. The
one indeed runs into the other through a series of intermediate
sizes about some of which it is difficult to say whether they
are knives or cutlasses. In his account of the exploration of
l
the cemetery at Herpes in western France M. Delamain says
that the abundant knives were of all sizes, some were utensils,
others poniard-like, while a third class were veritable scrama-
saxes. The connection of knife and scramasax is also indicated
by terminology. The meaning of the first part of the compound
word uncertain, but the last part is the familiar Anglo-Saxon
is
SCRAMAS^
because this particular arm ' only makes its appearance towards
the end of the 6th century.'
*
We
have therefore to distin-
guish four different species of the same genus.
1. The
knife pure and simple which was perhaps called
'
1
seax
by our forefathers and of which innumerable examples
have come to light in graves apparently of all periods. The
form of this is
pretty constant. Its special characteristic is its
6 in. and
reproducedas on the plate are
approximately to
\ scale. Nos. 16, 18 are from the cemetery at Bifrons and
are about 5 in. long 14 and 17 are
;
from Saffron Walden ;
blade with the characteristic grooves near the back that in this
case are filled in with bronze, as is another in the Museum at
Mainz. No. 10 was found of London together
in the City
back slopes off towards the point in a straight line, and this
form is very common in our own country though exceedingly
rare abroad, where a curved line is almost universal. This
is one of many minor details in which the independence of
the Saxon craftsman is proclaimed. The Kentish example at
Maidstone, PL xxvm, 4, may be regarded as a small scra-
masax for though it is only about 9 in. long the form and
of the latter and the blade is 1^ in.
proportions are those
wide, while there are traces of the wooden sheath. The
sheath of continental scramasaxes is
very often more or less
well preserved and is adorned along the back with a series of
large studs.
3, 4. We have thirdly the complete scramasax, and in the
'
fourth place the so-called Langsax,' or slender version of the
scramasax, which is however so closely connected with it that
the two must be taken together.
The scramasax developed form as we find it in
in its fully
length that they must have been wielded with both hands.
At a later date in the middle ages, at the famous battle of
Bouvines in 12 14 a.d., a weapon of the kind was tremen-
dously effective in the hands of the Emperor Otho, who we
1
are told brandished with both hands a sword with a single
edge like a knife, and was striking down man and horse with
a single blow. In our own country scramasaxes when they
occur are as a rule comparatively small. One very fine scra-
masax however of the continental size and shape was found at
Kidlington, Oxfordshire, in 1892 with human remains, and is
now in the Museum at Bristol. Its length is no less than
THE AXE
In the use of the scramasax we seem to obtain a differentia
between the Frankish and the Saxon warrior and the same is
1
Le Tombeau de Cbilderic, p. 1
27.
XXX
facing p. 233
I, 4, 5, are Continental
EXCEPTIONAL AXE HEADS 233
Herpes France
in western and with specimens in the plates
of M. Barriere-Flavy's work. 2
The form occurs also in
3
Hungary. The presumption is accordingly in favour of an
Anglo-Saxon date. It is not of a Viking type, but might
2
Les Arts Industriels, etc., pll. xvi, 1 ; xvn, 1 ; xix, 5.
3
e.g. Hampel, m, Taf. no.
234 THE SPEAR
PI. xxix, 4, etc., the broad-bladed type PI. xxix, 10, and
if the name
the drop-bladed type, may be used, PI. xxx, 3.
It is important to distinguish the earlier forms of the
axe head, which have here been illustrated, from the axe head
of the Danish or Viking period. No better example of this
could be found than the fine iron axe head with inlaid silver
and gilt ornaments found at Mammen near Viborg in
pure
*
francisca form and (b) the form erroneously called
'
THE SPEAR
The Spatha, the Scramasax, and the Axe we have seen
to be comparatively rare weapons among the Anglo-Saxon
warriors, but these seem to have been universally armed with
the Spear. Spear heads are by far the commonest of all the
weapons found in Germanic cemeteries and appear in all parts
in varied forms and sizes, the differences in which seem to be
smith had fashioned the effective part of the head of solid iron
he would beat out thin the portion destined for the socket and
*
The Industrial Arts of the Anglo-Saxons, p. 20.
236 THE SPEAR
it isevident that the weapon smith delighted to exercise his
12 is Continental
DETAILS OF SPEAR HEADS 237
THE ANGON
Noself-respecting writer on Teutonic antiquities can
help referring to the description by Agathias of the weapon
known as the ' angon,' a barbed spear of peculiar construction
and use. Agathias, a Byzantine historian of VI, wrote in
Greek an account of the wars waged by the generals of
Justinian against the Teutonic invaders of Italy. In Chapter 5
of the second book of his History he describes the manner
of fighting of the Franks and Alamanni whom Butilinus had
led across the Alps and who were now opposed by Narses.
Their chief weapon he says was the angon.' These angons,' ' '
*
he goes on, are spears, not very small but at the same time
of no considerable size, suitable for use as javelins, if need
arise, and also serving for a charge
against opponents fighting
hand to hand.' He
also tells us that the
javelin was barbed,
and when had pierced a shield or entered a body it could
it
not be withdrawn, while the shaft of it was for the most part
plated with iron. From this last it followed that the head
could not be cut off so as to free the stricken man from the
encumbrance. It is natural to think here of the Roman
1
pilum, which Vegetius describes as a missile weapon that
'
could not be cut away when fixed in a shield,' and which has
come down to us in actual examples as well as in represen-
1
De Re Militari, i, xx.
2
Lindenschmit, Tracbt und Bewaffnung des Romiscben Heeres, p. 12 and
Taf. iv, xi.
ANGON AND PILUM 239
very heavy javelin, with point and iron shaft about 2 ft. 6 in.
long, that was fixed at the butt end to a shaft of wood
so as to make the whole length, as may be judged from
tombstones, between six and seven feet.
'
'
1
Arts and Crafts of our Teutonic Forefathers, ch. hi.
2
e.g. W. M. Wylie in Archaeologia, xxxvi, p. 82, 'historic evidence
seems rather opposed to the opinion that the angon was merely an imitation
of the pilum.' De Baye, in Industrie Longobarde, Paris, 1888, p. 31, le role, '
and is
preserved in the Public Library at Croydon.
The angon proper Lindenschmit has shown to possess as
its
special characteristic a solid point square in section with
barbs that, at any rate in the present condition of the weapons,
1
lie close to the shaft.
Typical pieces of the kind are preserved
in the Museums at Mainz and Wiesbaden, but perhaps the
most perfect specimen is that from the Belgian cemetery of
Harmignies now displayed in the Musee du Cinquantenaire at
Brussels and figured here PI. xxxn, 12. The photograph in
the middle shows the whole weapon the length of which is
3 ft. 6 in., and those above and below give on a larger scale
the butt end where a wooden shaft was inserted, and the point,
the length of which with the barbs is 3 in. Nothing has been
found in our own country so well preserved as this, but the
specimen from Croydon, PI. xxxn, 15, 3 ft. 2|- in. long, has
an unmistakable square head, though the barbs in the present
condition of the piece make no show. Angons, as a rule in a
somewhat mutilated condition, have been found several times
in Kent, and may be seen in the Museum of the Kent Archaeo-
logical Society at Maidstone, at the Gravesend Free Library,
in the British Museum, and at Ferring Grange, Sussex. A
barbed spear head 26 in.
long was found in the barrow at
Taplow.
SPEAR SHAFTS
Thesubject of the spear
cannot be left without a word as
to the wooden shaft. Fragments of the wood remain in many
cases adhering to the socket, and the rivet or rivets that held
the head to the shaft often remains as in the example figured
PI. xxxi 1, 2. Analysis has shown in many cases that this wood
was ash. The length of the shaft can be judged from the fact
1
Handbucb, 178 f.
THE BOW AND ARROW 41
that the weapon was often furnished at the butt end with a
ferule or conical point by which it could be fixed firmly in the
ground. This, being of iron, has like the point been preserved,
and as the two lie in a freshly opened grave the distance be-
tween them gives the length of the shaft. This seems to have
been a little longer than the warrior's own height and the
weapon could accordingly be laid by his side in the grave, as
was the case in the Shepperton burial figured PI. xviii, 1.
Faussett gave the lengths of 6 ft. and 7 ft. for two Gilton
specimens.
The diameter of the shaft can also be estimated from the
data furnished by the head and the ferule. Faussett found
that a spear in grave 12 at Gilton tapered from a diameter of
1 in. at the head to in. at the ferule. The closed spear
socket at Derby, PL xxxn, 3, measures |-
in. in internal
diameter. About f in. to 1 in.
may be assumed as the
average diameter of the Anglo-Saxon spear shaft.
Of the two ferules shown, one, PI. xxxn, 13, of conical
form, is in the Guildhall Museum at London and another such
FIBULAE AS WORN
All Continental
CHAPTER V
TOMB FURNITURE (II) THE MORPHOLOGY OF
:
THE FIBULA
Je ne sais meme
si Ton en a tire une seule des sarcophages du
Bas-Empire, ou pourtant les broches et les fibules abondent.
C'est que si l'armille est si la fibule est romaine, la
gauloise,
boucle a son tour est essentiellement teutonique.' As regards
the historical position of the buckle and the relation between
1
Le Tombe au de Childeric, p. 233.
243
244 FORMS OF THE FIBULA
it and the brooch as objects of use there are some good
remarks in Alois
Riegl's much discussed work on the art of
1
the period. Their comparative importance depends upon the
styles of dress of which they form the complement. The
classicalvesture was free and flowing the edges of the stuff
;
almost displaces. At
the beginning of the migration period
the brooch, or, to use its classical name, the fibula, was in full
XXXIV
XXXV
facing p. 245
XXXVi
XXXVI
facing p. 245
000 x
THE FIBULA AND THE BUCKLE 245
on the other hand only seems to have come into use in imperial
Roman times. It appears at Pompeii for example in the
simplest possible shapes, though an ornate example was found
at Herculaneum. The somewhat enigmatical object figured
in Faussett's Inventorium Sepulchrale, pi. vin, 1 1, is a buckle
of Roman (not barbaric) workmanship, and one of similar
shape but in the similitude of the head of a cat or leopard has
recently passed with the Trinity College Library Collection to
the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology. Some archaeologists
have held that the buckle was independently invented in
northern Europe at the beginning of the migration period, but
whether this was the case or whether the Germans took it
over from the Romans, it was used at first in a comparatively
undeveloped form. Its history is accordingly traceable in
though special forms of the object, such as the safety pin, may
for centuries have passed out of vogue.
The subject of the Germanic fibula, a somewhat large and
complicated one, may be suitably introduced by a survey of the
different types thathave been collected from the one repre-
sentative cemetery of Bifrons that we have been keeping
all round ;
a circular ring
;
and a broad flat ring, or, if we like
to call it so, a disc with the centre pierced out. The first kind,
'
Nos. 6, 10, is best called a
'
disc fibula ;
the second, Nos. 1, 5,
' '
'
inour own time for the sake of securing the young of the
human species from its natural enemy the insistent pin-point.
The invention is quite three thousand years old, and the
evolution of the type can be traced from the very earliest
Fig. 10. Below, early fibula of the Pesciera type, natural size ;
are substitutes for the neolithic pins of bone, or the still more
primitive thorn, with which Tacitus, who was possibly theoriz-
ing, tells us the Germans of the Hinterland fastened their
clothing.
1
To
prevent such a pin from slipping out there
would at some time or another present itself the device of
bending or doubling over the upper part of it and giving it a
catch round the point where this projected through the stuff.
Such a catch could be undone when the pin was to be with-
drawn, and remain as a sort of loop to take the point again
when it had been reinserted. A recognition of the elastic
1
De Mor. Germ., xvn, '
spina consertum.'
250 FORMS OF THE FIBULA
properties of hammered metal wire would suggest giving a
spiral turn to the shank of the pin where it was doubled over,
and this would secure
a spring which would keep the catch
always pressed against the pin just at the point. The simplest
of modern safety pins referred to above illustrates this arrange-
ment, but it is interesting to note that one of the very earliest
of all fibula types, that named from the place of discovery
Pesciera on Lake Garda, is of almost exactly the same form,
and the same may be said of a specimen found in an Anglo-
Saxon tomb in Kent, in conjunction with one of the most
till, when the wire was brought back to the middle, it was
sent straight down towards the foot to form the pin. An
example of this type in bronze in the Museum at Innsbruck
is shown PI. xxxviii, 1. This arrangement induces lateral
breadth in the fibula head which becomes an important element
in the subsequent developments. The coils were sometimes
carried out on either side to a considerable distance and they
then needed a support in the form of a central axis round
which they were twisted, while to finish this central axis and
to prevent the coils slipping was terminated at both
off" it, it
4
254 FORMS OF THE FIBULA
are genuine spirals connected together and both coiled out of
the same length of wire, they naturally needed a sort of frame-
work for their support, the projecting bars of which were
furnished at their ends with knobs. At Sackrau this com-
plicated arrangement is allowed to be pretty well in evidence
from the front view, but contemporary Germanic craftsmen
seem to have preferred it hidden, and this led to the device so
well represented on Pll. xxxiv and cxliv of covering plates,
behind which the spiral coils were concealed, though the pro-
PI. clv, 12, 14 (p. 563). Pieces of this kind may be ulti-
1
Tbierornamentik, p. 10.
2
'Bci den nordgermanischen Volkern entstanden die spater allgemein
. . .
j, 6, y, are Continental
THE RADIATING FIBULA 255
its affinities.
We have now
any rate come to understand the origin
at
and original significance of the knobs which project beyond
the outline of the semicircular and rectangular plates that form
the heads of so many of our Anglo-Saxon fibulae. On the
Bifrons plates the semicircular head is represented by PI. xxxv,
Nos. 1 to 4 and 6 to 8. There are three knobs in Nos. 3, 6, 7
and 8, five in Nos. 1 were only two in No. 2,
and 4, while there
and these are no longer mere knobs but have been turned into
the heads of birds with hooked beaks. Reasons will be given
(p. 526) for regarding this
bird-beak motive as of Gothic
gone so far that the eye is out of its proper place. This piece,
PI. xxxv, 2, is accordingly a degenerate example of a Gothic
and South German type, and it is a stranger in Kent, though
not so strange there as in the Midlands.
The Bifrons fibulae, PI. xxxv, 3, 6, 7, 8, are of the three-
2
knobbed type which as Dr. Salin remarks is on the whole
comparatively rare but is represented sporadically by examples
all over the Teutonic
region. No. 7 is of importance because
of its resemblance to a similar fibula found at Chessell Down
in the Isleof Wight, 3 which is one link of connection between
the Jutes of Kent and the supposed Jutish population of the
1
For South German parallels see Hampel, Alterth'utner in Ungarn, in,
Taf. 56, 58. He ascribes Taf. 56, 8 with a head like the Market Overton
piece to VI ; Taf. 58, 1, where the foot wears the likeness, to VII or VIII.
2 3
Tbierornamentik, p. 24. Hillier, Isle of Wight, p. 26.
256 FORMS OF THE FIBULA
Isle, while a third was found at Harnham Hill, Wilts.
1
The
'
f
radiating or digitated fibulae with five knobs and a straight
thirty examples are known, four at Bifrons and about ten others
in different parts of Kent, one in Essex, a head at Chessell
the Bifrons examples of which are on PI. xxxiv, and for the
moment only the ornate kind Nos. 1 to 5 and 7 need be noticed.
The square head-plate as we have seen already was de-
1
Archaeologia, xxxv, pi. xn, 5. The three are shown Fig. 21 (p. 620).
2
There is one in the Museum at Leeuwarden in Friesland, PI. xxxix, 7,
and a portion of one in the Museum at Kiel is shown PI. xxxix, 6. Dr. Salin
8 4
Coll. Ant., v, 137. Archaeologia, l, 400.
5
Ass., N.S., v, 1899, p. 346.
6
Boulanger, Marchelepot, 57.
THE SQUARE HEADED FIBULA 257
Ill R
258 FORMS OF THE FIBULA
The small round-headed fibula, PL xxxv, 3, shows these heads
very clearly. The morphology of the square headed fibula is
however not so interesting as is its ornamentation, and any
further discussion of it must be deferred till the next chapter.
These small but ornate and well-executed pieces, like PL xxxiv,
1, 2, 5, belong specially to Kent and the Isle of Wight.
given to the head. The formation of the catch for the pin at
the foot of the fibula offers a study in typological development
similar to that presented by the head. In fibulae of which
PL xxxvin, an example, the end of the foot beyond where
1, is
the actual catch was formed is carried further forward and ends
in a kind of decorative flourish that carries it
up to the bow to
which it is attached. This is an arrangement common in the
/, 2, J, 7, are Continental
THE CRUCIFORM FIBULA 259
and in England it was usual for the side knobs still to belong
pieces to the head plate as is the case with all the fibulae on
PI. xli, while in Norway and Sweden they were already cast in
the same piece with the head plate. In VI this casting in one
tradition, but the catch for the pin runs as in early examples
262
*
long, the side knobs have no grooves and merely abut on the
edges of the plate. This is quite exceptional. Furthermore, in
order to give room behind for the coil, the whole plate is bent
into a curve from side to side so that a concavity is formed at
the back. The Corbridge example, No. 4, shows this.
Plates xliii, xliv and xlv are arranged to show the later
2, 3, are Continental
SMALL LONG BROOCHES 265
'
name '
small long brooches may be found suitable, is
specially
full size, 5 T5F in. in length, and is remarkable for its look of
Natural size
XLV
facing p. 269
FLORID CRUCIFORM BROOCHES 269
4^-
in. long, contemporary piece in which the three knobs,
is a
figure of
'
Romashown wearing a square headed fibula
is
reason of course that this cannot always have been the case,
for the design would not admit of it in instances where the
human face, for example, was exhibited. PI. xxxiv, 7, must,
one would think, have been meant to be worn head upwards.
The fact here noticed as to the placing of the brooches has
1
H. Schetelig, Cruciform Brooches, p. 107.
XLVI
facing p. 271
objects both
in the possible positions.
'
This problem of the relations in position of the * head and
'
the '
of the fibulae, when worn on the figure, leads us by
foot
an easy transition to the so-called equal armed fibula, about
which no such question can arise. Some examples of this
were shown PL xxxvn, 5, 6, 7, while two or three continental
ones have been added to PL xlvi as Nos. 7, 8, 9, and of a
the bow instead of in a line with it. This actual piece, from
is a
Kempston, Bedfordshire, comparatively degenerate example
of a limited class of fibulae practically confined to one or two
localities in our own country and in the region about the
fibula, in which the head and foot are set at right angles to the
272 FORMS OF THE FIBULA
bow, differs markedly from those in which all three are in a
line in the fact that while this as we have just seen is very
'
early the others are correspondingly late. The fibule ansee '
is so reckoned
by the French archaeologists, and M. Boulanger
'
goes so far as to say that les fibules ansees sont les dernieres
e
qui figurent dans les tombes a la fin du VIII siecle et au
commencement du IX e .'
1
This is from the point of view of
morphology quite regular. The safety pin type of fibula we
have seen passing through a long series of modifications
period of time invention should grow cold, and both head and
foot losing their special significance should ultimately settle
down into characterless shapes each of which is a copy of the
'
other. In this way the late fibule ansee ', 7, 8, 9, may easily be
explained, but the puzzle is that the same sort of phenomenon
should occur at a date that is comparatively very early, when
invention was in full swing and head and foot were being
treated in a fresh and living fashion. The explanation seems
to be that the wide equal-armed fibula does not find its place
in the normal scheme of development, but is a copy of a
the-way forms of the brooch are possible at any time, for they
'
'
will presently This heading plate fibula,' it will
be directed.
be seen, covers an extremely wide range, for it was in accord-
ance with the rules of the game to make almost anything of
suitable size and shape into a fibula. No morphological laws
seem here to have been in force. At a very early date in the
Teutonic period we see this evidenced in the fibulae from the
1
Marcbe/epot, p. 170.
FIBULAE OF THE PLATE TYPE 273
forms that may come under this heading. The most im-
'
treatment of it in its
larger aspects will be given in Chapter x.
It will be sufficient here to establish the character of the sub-
protects. A
large number of brooches of both kinds came
to light at Kempston and are shown PL xlvii, I.
Both the saucer and applied kinds are represented here,
the former above, the latter in the lower rows. It will be
plate is
separate, as the photograph shows in the lower part.
In the centre of the Kempston group is a saucer brooch of
minute dimensions, of a type represented at Bifrons, PL xxxvi, 1.
Specimens of this type measure about |- in. in diameter, and are
'
'
called commonly button brooches. This variety is interest-
ing both from its distribution and from the kind of ornament
applied to it, and will be further discussed on a subsequent
/, 2, are Continental
USE OF ENAMELLING 279
comes the example shown in its natural colours PI. E, 1 (p. 519),
but there must have been many active centres of fabrication.
There is great variety in their shapes, animal forms being
much in evidence, but theround disc bulks very largely in
every collection of examples, and not uncommonly carries in
the centre a projecting stud. The enamel on these is of the
champleve kind and the bronze out of which the cells are
hollowed is of substantial thickness. The plate brooches or
Scheibenfibeln,' to give them their German name, with which
1
'
The f
bird fibulae with which we are
dealing are very now
ignoble satellites of such a lordly ancestor, but the descent is
none the less probable. Such bird fibulae occur in finds in
Hungary but are especially common in the Merovingian
cemeteries of France. On the question of the significance of
the bird form something will be said later on (p. 526 f.) in
connection with Gothic art generally. Another bird form
which sometimes makes its
appearance is that of the duck, of
which an example from Chessell Down in the Isle of Wight is
to examples. The is
represented, though not exactly, in
type
one of the remarkable appliques from Buttsole, Eastry, Kent,
at Maidstone, PL xxiv, 2 bottom line to the right.
(p. 203),
One or two specimens have been found in this country but
two, one from Chessell Down, and the other from Iffley,
Oxon. This example is
figured PL xlviii, 7. One was found
1
in the cemetery at Sleaford, Lincolnshire.
'
the bird fibulae generally it comes from the Gothic east by way of
Hungary, where prototypes of it occur. The one which most
nearly resembles it was found at Fenek, and Professor Hampel
2
dates it in the second half of VI, so that the Mildenhall piece
need not be placed at a very remote epoch.
The
recent discovery of a very richly furnished South
Saxon burial place at Alfriston in Sussex supplies us with a
'
'
specimen pair of so-called swastika brooches, a form occa-
sionally found before in this country especially in the Midlands.
The piece, PL xlviii, 5, measures 1 in. across and has the pin
attachment behind.
'
*
Another swastika brooch with the device in open-work is
shown PL xlviii, 6. It is from Market Overton, Rutland, and
is now at Tickencote Hall. The triangular plate brooch, No. 4,
is at
Cambridge and was found at Lakenheath Warren, Suffolk.
It would not be difficult to find other abnormal forms of
the fibula to place
by the side of those here shown, but in the
interests of space it will be best to
proceed to the next heading.
1
Archaeologia, l, 388.
2
Alttrtk'umer in Ungarn, 1, 780, and in, Taf. 177, I.
2 82 FORMS OF THE FIBULA
' '
Under the c
ring type the
'
repousse work proper, for the metal is not forced out at the
back where it is indented on the front, as would be the case
were the plate laid on a yielding ground such as the pitch and
plaster composition now in use. A touch of human interest is
added to the piece when we note that an error has been made
in setting out the design and a naive device adopted for con-
a deep notch which allows the point of the hinged pin to pass
1 2
See however the remark made previously (p. 247 note ) about a
possible penannular example, that is
figured and discussed later on under
the rubric 'bracelet' (p. 445 f.).
L
facing p. 285
Some ring brooches are partly flattened out and seem to re-
1
present a transitional stage. This is the case with PL li, 4, 7.
Both penannular and annular brooches are prior to the
migration period and the Teutons took them over from the
Romans and the Celts. A
Romano-British example of the
former kind from Ham Hill, Somerset, in the Museum at
Taunton is shown PL l, i, and beside
2, a pen- it, No. is
between the knobs, though they have been forced into contact
through some accidental pressure that has bent the brooch out
of shape. It comes from the
Watling Street find of about
500 a.d. (p. 774), as does also the quoit brooch PI. li, i.
1
Proc. Soc. Ant., 2 Ser., xxiv, 146 f, and Victoria History Yorkshire,
,
11.
2 '
They accord with the heads of Salin's Style 11,' see Thierornamentik,
p. 245 f. and especially p. 326. Compare also the head in the Taplow
clasp, PI. lxxvii, 2 (p. 361) that dates early in VII.
Ill
CHAPTER VI
by which enrichment is
produced, so that the subject now
before us is
Anglo-Saxon ornamentation of the pagan period
especially as it is illustrated on the fibulae.
The familiar main headings, under which motives are
grouped as linear, floral, zoomorphic, and anthropomorphic,
will serve the present purpose as a convenient division of the
'
recognized that very many patterns used especially among savage races, which
seemed to the eye a mere play of lines, are in reality degenerate representa-
tions of natural objects. For practical purposes the distinction made above
holds good. The word '
linear or geometrical when applied to ornament
' '
'
conveys on the whole a clear idea of a certain class of motives, and this is all
morphic, anthropomorphic.
The chief technical processes involved are the follow-
1
:
ing
'
*
1, engraving, incising or tracing lines in clay, bone or
ivory, wood or metal ; when in a metal plate these
lines being sometimes filled in with a black com-
1
In the Index references will be found to passages in the text in which
1
There is an excellent resume of the discussions on this subject in
Mr. George Coffey's New Grange and other Incised Tumuli in Ireland ; the
Influence of Crete and the Aegean in the extreme West of Europe in early times ;
Dublin, 1912.
294 ANGLO-SAXON ORNAMENT
Interlacing work, which it is natural to connect with the
spiral as the two occur together so often on stones and in
MS. most probably of Roman origin and
illuminations, is
1
See Mr. George Coffey's Guide to the Celtic Antiquities . . . in the
National Museum, Dublin, p. 8 f., and Mr. Romilly Allen's Celtic Art,
f.
p. 242
2
e.g. on a series of bronze buckles specially well represented in northern
France and Belgium but occurring also in our own country, see Pll. lxxiii,
lxxiv (p. 357), and also in animal designs (p. 329 f.).
3
For these objects and their historical position see Chapter x (p. 548 f.).
<
CHIP CARVING' PATTERNS 295
only pursued the beasts of the field but also drew and carved
them in representations of remarkable and accuracy.
spirit
In
the present connection it does not matter whether he did
this
moment, and it is
probable that floral ornament, though
ABSENCE OF FOLIAGE MOTIVES 297
Coins (p. 107), while the acanthus is the most common of all
Roman ornamental motives, and any art growing directly out
of Roman would infallibly by its use of this motive have
betrayed its
origin. We can see the truth of this by a glance
at the monuments of Carolingian art, where in work inspired
by a deliberate return to the antique the acanthus is
every-
where in evidence. This absence of floral ornament from the
enrichment of the objects with which we are. concerned is one
very cogent argument in favour of the view of the inde-
pendence of Germanic art which is here maintained.
The other fact, the Teutonic penchant for zoomorphic
ornament, is
way significant. As the people were
also in its
not hunters by profession but farmers, there is no ground for
grow more lifelike as time went on, as is the case with the
efforts of children educated under the Drawing Society. Now
this is distinctly what we do not find in the animal work on the
stated above it
may be accepted as a direct classical derivation.
2
'Da wir
bisjetzt keine Spur dieses Thierkopfes auf sudgermanischem
Gebiet haben entdecken konnen und da derselbe erst um die Mitte des
4 Jahrhunderts und alsdann sofort in voller Entwicklung zuerst auftritt,
bleibt wohl keine andere Moglichkeir, als dass er eine Neugestaltung ist,
die im Laufe des 4 Jahrhunderts irgendwo auf nordgermanischen Gebiet
sich entwickelt hat.' ibid., p. 188.
TEUTONIC ANIMAL ORNAMENT 301
called commonly
'
button brooches,' and the motive will be
discussed in connection with these. So far as the human
figure is concerned we have of course a reasonably adequate
treatment of it on the sceat coins, just as we have a noble
ating fibulae like PI. xxxv, 1, 4 (p. 245). This pattern filled in
TECHNIQUE OF LINEAR PATTERNS 303
'
cases, and also in the Alfriston piece, the lines are filled in
1
Schedula Diversarum Artium, in, xxviii.
2
Trattato delP Oreficeria, cap. 1.
LIII
facing p. 305
ILLUSTRATIONS OF TECHNIQUE
if the sheet be
very thin and the metal soft, pressure will pro-
duce the required effect without the force of a blow. The
' '
work is best called stamped or punched when the design is
' '
P
<
>
O
p
o
z
<
>
<
z
p
z
<
w
h
<
w
h
u
<
re
O
z
<
Z
o
<
G
p
o
o
z
<
>
z
5
z
<
u
GRANULATED WORK 309
The second row from the bottom, the two detached plates at
the extremities of the next row above, and the left hand end
piece in the lowest row, show the motive of the cross with
all
pousse process.
Round pearls of gold soldered down one beside the other
in a line or disposed ornamentally over a surface, in what is
separate grains each soldered down, but the band at the bottom
of the tiara is moulded wire and that which finishes the piece
below is in the repousse technique. These and other methods
of manipulating gold to decorative purposes were used by the
Etruscans and Romans as well as by the Greeks, and it is
probable that imported examples from Etruria, which were well
enough known on the trade routes through central Europe in
the pre-Christian centuries, taught the Celtic and Germanic
o<
a;
w
o
Q
o
q
z
FILIGREE WORK 311
e.g., PI. viii, 5, (p. 99). Their tails disappear down each
other's throats. A thin twisted cable of gold is twined in
and out between them and carries bunches of berries, the
gold work where the stones or pastes are mounted en cabochon' '
county nearest the Midlands, while there are none noted from
Notts, Stafford, and Derby. East Anglia only furnishes one,
from Icklingham border of Cambridge-
in Suffolk close to the
about 500 a.d. a date which agrees with the general char-
acter of the finds on the site, whereas No. 7, from Fairford,
ringed with the vertical lines, from the recent finds at Alfriston,
Sussex, is shown PI. lix, i. The piece is at Lewes. A similar
brooch from Mitcham, Surrey, is on PL lix, No. 6, and
examples are to be found wherever the brooches occur. What
is the explanation of this motive ?
1
Described in Neville's Saxon Obsequies. The piece in question will be
found figured PI. cliv, 4 (p. 561).
LIX
facing p. 317
SAUCER BROOCHES, ETC., WITH SCROLL PATTERNS
graceful fashion. It has been figured PI. xlix, 2 (p. 281) and
stamped on the band next the outer border, but the chief
ornament is the foliage scroll with the characteristic offshoots.
For floral ornament proper with indication of the shape of
leaves we have to go to one or two quite exceptional pieces
already figured and discussed in connection with similar
motives on the coins, Pll. v, 12 ; ix, 4, 6 (p. 103). The writer
really knows of very little else of the kind found in any of the
presumably pagan cemeteries, and the significance of the absence
of these motives from the tomb furniture has been already
noticed (p. 297).
To return to the spiral scroll, used without indication of
its floral character, as is the case on the saucer fibulae, it forms
dral library that has traces of gilding on it, but it is of the Danish period.
4 Les Francs incrustaient quelquefois, mais le plus souvent ils pla-
f
quaient l'argent, non sur le cuivre ou le bronze, mais sur le fer, et il n'est
pas a ma connaissance qu'on ait jamais trouvd une boucle de bronze incrustee
on damasquinee d'argent dans un cimetiere Franc,' Pilloy, Etudes, \, 277.
LX
facing p. 319
J, 4, J, 8, g, are Continental
ANTHROPOMORPHIC ORNAMENT 319
no doubt that the two eyes in the upper part, just above the
mean
wire, a human face in front view, for such a face clearly
unintelligible.
The origin and history of the motive are interesting to
There is no
trace. question of course that the full face is
ultimately derived from classical art, and there is a good deal
to be said for the suggestion of Dr. Salin that the well-known
good reason to surmise that the full face on the English button
1
Salin gives an engraving of it in his fig. 498.
LXI
facing p. 323
ROMAN AND BARBARIC ORNAMENT
one, was known and used in the South, and full-faced heads
of this type occur, though not very frequently, in southern
German art. A
very quaint example in the Museum at
Regensburg is shown, PI. lx, 9, where the introduction of the
upraised hands on each side of the face is a notable feature.
It was found in a Teutonic grave at Alten Elsing with a sword,
etc., and is not cast but embossed after the fashion of a
bracteate. On the whole it seems most likely that the heads
on the button brooches are of Scandinavian provenance, and
not direct adaptations of classical models. This does not mean
of course that the objects themselves are imported. If
they were of northern make they would have come in by the
Humber and Wash
rather than by the Kentish ports, or
the
time were busy in these seas and lands, they would be found
on the other side of the Sleeve as well as on ours, but as a fact
the French and Belgian collections are almost bare of them,
lated, though in the profile views the four legs are represented
as two. In Anglo-Saxon and in Germanic art generally
animals of the kind occur though rarely, and may be found
the creatures that are the starting point for the successive
headed and the saucer and applied fibulae with which we are
at present
specially concerned. The leopard-like couchant
beast occurs
very commonly on the feet of square headed
fibulae, and the Bifrons piece already shown PI. xxxiv, 7,
been cast in three pieces, the head and the foot being riveted
on to prolongations of the bow. The full-faced head, in
evidence on the round button attached to the bow, is repeated
twice on the sides of the foot and once on the head. The
centralornament of the lozenge in the middle of the foot is
probably conventionalized from the eyes and nose of a human
face,while at the top and at the bottom of the foot occur
heads which remind us distantly of the horse's head of the
cruciform brooches. The crouching leopard occurs four times
on the edges of the foot. He has a pronounced head with
leg that stretches out behind like a tail. In contrast with his
intelligible forms we find on both the head and the foot other
animals that are already broken up and mutilated after the
fashion described in the quotation from Sophus Miiller
i*:ii
Style i
and *
Style n '
into a fetish. As the author himself admits,
these styles pass into each other, and even if the expression be
allowed pass in and out of each other, in a way that makes
period in
represented art by the carved stones and the
It is an enriched sword
relation. pommel in the British
Museum, PI. lxiii, 4, on which are seen two animals which
have sorted out their various members from the confused
heap into which the later Style 1 had cast them and recon-
stituted their
anatomy. renaissance, but also the
It is a
introduction of the new form of creatures biting each other
and plaiting together their legs and tails. The jaws of each
creature embrace the body of its fellow midway between the
of the two limbs, the hinder one of which is
articulations
doubled up under the body, while the foreleg elongated into
a ribbon ascends twining over and under the two bodies
and ends at the top in a regulation claw. Below the pommel
PL lxiii, 4, is an enriched mount from the same sword hilt
which shows an interlacing ribbon with hardly a trace of any
zoomorphic character. For our own country therefore it
would be perhaps preferable to drop the threefold division
and to make two styles of animal ornament, one in which the
1
Tbierornamentik, p. 328.
INTERLACING ANIMALS 331
(p. 353), to the left, and also, PI. lxxvii, 2 (p. 361).
1
See for these, in the case of the Caenby plaque, Akerman's Tagan
Saxondom, pi. xv.
332 MOTIVES OF ORNAMENT
has been necessary to establish the general course of
It
plate and its history after losing the projecting knobs, and
about the chief forms assumed by the foot, with the animals'
heads below the bow. The appearance on the bow of that
North and to England, 1 of a
curious adjunct, confined to the
round disc sometimes ornamented with a human face was
also noticed. Nothing more was there said about the square
headed fibula and the sub-type may accordingly be taken up
here afresh.
Its Europe generally and in our own
distribution in
S.
Germany and occurs often enough in Frankish collections.
In Austria-Hungary, southern Russia, and Italy it is hardly
1 '
Pilloy, Etudes, m, 134, writes le disque qui recouvre la partie ansee
ne se voit nuile part ailleurs que dans le Nord.'
2
Archaeology of the Anglo-Saxon Settlements, p. 98.
SQUARE HEADED AND CRUCIFORM FIBULAE 333
(p. 255). (3) The development of the wings below the bow
in the cruciform fibula gives its foot some resemblance to the
rhomboidal termination customary in the square headed kind.
(4) In the distribution of the two there is the difference that
while both are common in the Midlands the square headed
brooch does not extend so far north as the other, and on the
other hand it is common south of the Thames where the
(p. 563).
It is from Sarre, and celebrated through the fact
is
just noticed,
but they have been claimed as equally early on
the ground of their scheme of ornamentation. One of their
peculiarities, which occurs also on some of these Scandinavian
examples, the addition, at the three lower angles of the
is
show, and it is not exclusively English, for the same thing was
x
observed in certain Gothic buckles from the Crimea some of
which have real incrustations and others the imitation of these
by projecting discs of metal. Now
there is a good deal of
2
force in the contention that such garnet inlays outside Kent,
and especially the imitations of them, were due to Kentish
influence spreading with the extension of the political power
of iEthelberht of Kent in the last part of VI. If this criterion
be a valid one would bring the date of the Kenninghall
it
belong to V
others of the same general character might bring
us to the end of VI. PI. lxiv, 1, 6 in. long, has a very early
appearance, but it comes from Market Overton cemetery that
was dated by the reporter of its exploration in the last half of
VI. 1 A severely treated example is PI. lxv, 4, from Ipswich,
where the cemetery is put down to VI. It has good linear
and conventional ornament of classical type, but the ornament
on each side just below the bow looks like a conventionalized
animal's head of an advanced stage of c Style 1/ The bow
moreover is furnished with a round button disc a feature of
VI rather than V. The well-known Billesdon brooch at
Leicester, PL
lxv, i, 6 in. long, resembles the Kenninghall
2
piece very closely, but is dated in the Victoria History to the
middle of VI. The example, 5^ in. long, from
PI. lxiv, 3,
1
Mr. V. B. Crowther-Beynon, F.S.A., in Archaeologia, lxii, 489.
2
Leicester, 1, 238.
3 This specimen is in the Alnwick Castle Museum and thanks are due
to the Duke of Northumberland for his permission to reproduce it, as well as
two pieces on PI. l, and one each on PI. lii and PI. lxxviii.
LXV
facing p. 336
LXVI
facing p. 337
X
h
S
o
fa,
fa)
a
u
o
o
PC
o
W
<
W
K
w
<
w
H
<
o
LATE FLORID LONG BROOCHES 337
shire, PL lxvi, 1, where between the side knobs and the lower
terminal of the foot are on both sides crouching beasts
nearly
as as the Bifrons ones with the additional
good peculiarity that
the artist has contrived to give the creature two hind
legs
instead of one. There is also a forepaw with as many toes as
1
ttudes, in, 132, 134.
Ill Y
338 MOTIVES OF ORNAMENT
the legs of a centipede, and a head that comes close up under
the side knob. The full-faced heads at the corners of the foot
may be contrasted with the flat discs of the Billesdon and
other examples on PI. lxiv, lxv. On the head plate there is
the curious contrast of a central panel like the Billesdon one sur-
rounded with border of quite debased animal ornament which
a
for the neck, and just to the right of these there are other three
lines that probably should mark the junction of the foreleg
with the body, while the foreleg with its double knee brings
the foot up close under the chin. Horizontal lines further
up seem to indicate the junction of the hind leg that fills up
the corner. The
space in the horizontal part of the panel
between the forms just indicated and the middle of the head
plate shows us, apparently unconnected, an eye with two jaws
1
Leicester, i, 238.
LXVII
facing p. 339
P
P
<
W
<;
D
3"
ORNATE SQUARE-HEADED FIBULAE 339
pointing towards the middle, an eye alone, and a bent leg and
claw. With a little ingenuity the animals on the foot of the
brooch can be more or less made out.
The second point of interest about the piece is a certain
plate, that shows the three a little under the natural size. The
heads on the right hand specimen stand out \ in. from the
considerably foreshortened. It is a
large and handsome fibula
5|-
in.
long, covered with ornament of a kind hard to describe,
but itschief interest for our purpose lies in the shape of the
head plate, that is of a curved outline with projecting corners.
Several of the brooches already illustrated show this feature
which is most
pronounced in the case of PI. lxiv, 3, where
plated silver discs have been added at all four angles. At the
two upper corners of the Warwick brooch and at the bottom
of the foot there are settings of elongated form that were
filled with violet-coloured vitreous pastes intended to imitate
1
These 'ribbons' are really degenerate versions of a form bounded on
each side by contour lines, upon which Dr. Salin's book, p. 242, may be con-
sulted. The middle part of the body between the contour lines has shrunk
to a similar line making a third with the other two.
LXVIII
facing p. 341
LATER ANIMAL ORNAMENT
legs and the eyes, and it is curious to find these features surviv-
the Old Park, Dover, and now in the Museum of that town.
It has on it in repousse work a collection of heterogeneous
forms amongst which a leg or an eye can in most parts be
discerned. The forms do not interlace, for when one triple
ribbon seems to plunge under its
neighbour this is merely delu-
sive and the arrangement is the same as that on PI. lxviii, 8,
u
&
U
o
w
o
DEGRADED ANIMAL ORNAMENT 343
than the first half or perhaps the middle of VII. There was
also found with it part of a silver ornament, shown in the
inset at the bottom of the plate, on which, to the left, is a
bird fairly well designed. No. 2 may belong to the latter half
of VII, as it seems distinctly later than No. 3.
Tocomplete have been brought together
this subject there
The
foregoing analysis may have appeared in parts tediously
minute, but it is needful to examine somewhat narrowly into
details as a very small indication sometimes justifies an im-
as the Bifrons fibula, PI. lxii, or the two silver fibulae just
now in the School Museum, Rugby. The find has been already adduced
(p. 147) as a proof of the late survival in England of the practice of cremation.
DATE OF LATEST EXAMPLES 345
space of time between about 500 and 650 a.d. Some may
belong to the last half ofVand this would apply to saucer or
We now resume
the main subject of this part of the present
LXX
BUCKLES OF SIMPLE FORM 347
measuring like the one on PI. xvn, 1 (p. 175), some 15 in.
by 3^- in., is no doubt enormous, but though the quantitative
change is so
great morphological complications are absent.
The essential parts of the piece, the ring, the pin, and the
the first
plate of his Pagan Saxondom. The bronze specimen
PL lxxii, 1, from Barfriston, Kent, at Liverpool, is of similar
shape but has lost its jewel. PL lxxii, 2, is at Rochester,
Kent, and is of unusual construction. It must have once
had a pin though there is no trace of this. The plate is a
specimen of open work, on which a word may be said. Open
or pierced work in bronze is common in Roman and Late-
1
Celticproductions and
appearance its in Teutonic tomb
furniture might be regarded as symptomatic of early date.
There are however different kinds of open work and some of
1
Professor Bela Posta believes that the Romans adopted this style of
work from the Celtic peoples, Arch'dologische Studien, p. 485.
LXXII
facing p. 351
BUCKLES WITH OPEN-WORK PLATES
4.
is Roman ; J, Celtic
OPEN WORK BUCKLE PLATES 351
passing that one kind of open work buckle plate that often
occurs in Frankish and Burgundian cemeteries of the later
origin may point to the garnet inlays just at the back of the
pin, the stones in which are small and interpenetrate in exactly
'
Abingdon
type in the British Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge, and elsewhere, which are without doubt objects of
Kentish manufacture. For specimens see PI. cxlv (p. S3 3)-
The buckle is of VII date. Other ornate examples from Kent
are shown on the coloured plate B, iv (p. 353).
The distribution of the buckle in
Anglo-Saxon graves has
aroused comment. On a priori grounds we should expect
buckles to be numerous everywhere. The knife is the most
common article of tomb furniture, and though it is only a
hypothesis it is a plausible one, that knives were commonly
carried in a belt and that belts were as a rule fastened by
buckles. As a fact, although buckles are found all over the
II
III IV
1
Le Tombeau de Cbilderic, p. 268.
2
The Industrial Arts of the Anglo-Saxons, p. 90.
3 4
Proc. Soc. Ant., xxiv, 146 f. Vols, x and xm.
5
Le Tombeau de Cbilderic, p. 272.
Ill z
354 TH E BUCKLE
sumably early types. How far, we may ask, does the evidence
from cemeteries in other parts bear out the presumption
thus suggested, that buckles are less common in the earlier
cemeteries than in later ones because the object was in itself in
the migration period of comparatively recent introduction ?
The absence of buckles is certainly in several Midland
cemeteries not a little
surprising. Little Wilbraham, Cambs,
with its wealth of fibulae, 125 in number, only furnished to
1
the careful explorer 13 buckles from 188 skeletons. At
Barrington, Cambridgeshire, with 114 graves, 31 of which
contained no furniture, there were 24 buckles to 55 fibulae,
and while Little Wilbraham in general supplied fairly early
objects those
from the cemetery seem decidedly later.
latter
Again at
Kempston, Beds, where very early things were found,
only one buckle or object suggesting the buckle form is
2
included in the inventory, and at Fairford, Gloucestershire,
Mr. Wylie 3 only notes one, perhaps two, buckles, whereas the
grave, and this would make the absence of the normal belt
fastenings somewhat surprising, but it may be partly accounted
for on the following grounds. While the fibula was normally
of bronze and was in most cases ornamented, the buckle was
1
Neville, Saxon Obsequies, Lond., 1852, graves 26, 28, 35, 46, 73, 151,
160, 168, 169.
2
Associated Societies' Reports, 1864, p. 293.
3 4
Fairford Graves, Oxford, 1852. Archaeologia, xlii, 483.
LXXIII
facing p. 355
BRONZE AND IRON BUCKLES
LAX IN
i, 2, are |-
natural size
J, 4, are Continental
IRON AND BRONZE BUCKLES 355
passed through the buckle ring and drawn up tight, the com-
plementary plate would come close up to the latter. Indeed
as will be seen by reference to the large buckle at Fribourg
PI. xviii, 1 (p. 177), or the Brussels buckle PI. lxxiii, 3, the
tongue of the buckle that projects beyond the ring to fit into
it. It is rather puzzling to see how arrangement would
this
work in practice, as it
precludes any temporary adjustment
of the fastening of the belt with a view to loosening or
i>:4hi
butt end is usually split and the end of the strap is secured
between the two thicknesses of the metal. Another form of
the strap end, of some archaeological importance, will be
noticed later on in another connection (p. 558).
A
final word must be said about an interesting little adjunct
just as is the case with our ordinary leather straps, and the two
thicknesses, instead of being sewn together by the cobbler,
were pierced by the tang underneath the shoe-shaped surface
of the stud through the hole in which a pin was passed to
keep all firm. At Barrington, Cambs, a buckle seems to have
been found with part of a band adhering to it still pierced by
a stud of the kind, 1 which seems to certify the presumed
part of the leathern band that was doubled round the bar at
the back of the ring, and also part of the free end of the strap
1
Cambridge Antiquarian Society's Communications, vol. v, No. 1 1
,
pi. 11, 5. M. Boulanger, Mobilier Funeraire, p. 77, notices two other similar
discoveries.
360 THE CLASP
passed through the ring and fixed by the penetration of it by
the tongue of the buckle. Another view of the same piece has
been given PI. v, 12 (p. 81).
Due notice should be taken of the great diversities in size
among the buckles and their adjuncts that have now been
easilybe seen that what appear on the face as round discs are
merely the ends of the spirally coiled wires beaten out flat in a
manner that betokens good metal and a knowing hammerer.
LXXVII
facing p. 361
CLASPS OF THE LARGER KIND
4, natural size; 2, 5, slightly enlarged ; 3, enlarged to double size; 1, half natural size
LARGE BELT CLASPS 361
clasp has been broken off, and if this be the case it would be
another example, this time of Kentish provenance, of the
'
'
with what was said before (p. 329 f.), that the interlacing motive
<t is
highly developed both on the ring and in the triangular
spaces of the plates. See also (p. 289).
eyebrows that look at first sight like open jaws, eyes, and
muzzles like a bird's beak, and might quite well date the
object about the middle of VI. The Lewes piece, PI. lxxvii, 5,
has the same features not quite so well made out.
These attractive little objects, the small wrist clasps, are
certainly of native origin for the type does not occur on
the
appears to have been the covering of the part slit up where the
sleeve opens to let the hand through. The back view of the
piece on the left proves the continuity of the triangular exten-
sion with the clasp proper. The existence of this complete
arrangement explains the appearance in graves in other ceme-
teries of these ornate triangular pieces apart from the clasp.
The
pin is the last of the appliances for fastening the attire
of which notice needs to be taken.
' '
French agrafe and fermoir are used more vaguely. It is
' *
might be
'
read winding sheet.' As would follow naturally
from the history of the pin, the object when found in Anglo-
Saxon graves exhibits sometimes elements of older date.
There was nothing of which the Hallstatt people were more
enamoured than what the Germans call Klapperschmuck,' c
pin.' There are parallels to the Leagrave pin and these have
1
The Arts in Early England, 11, 246 f.
2
Memoires de la Societe Acad'emique des Sciences, etc., de St. Shientin, me
4
Sdrie, Tom. vi, p. 467.
LXXXI
facing p. 371
SMALL PINS, ETC., AND GERMANIC COSTUME
is a sumptuous example.
Charles^clothed his
1
Mon. Germ. Hist., Script., 11, 455.
374 COSTUME
magnificent frame in linen combinations over which came hose
or trews and a woollen jerkin trimmed with silk. The shoes
which were buckled over the feet had attached to them bands
three ells in
length, that were wound round the leg crossing
at front and at back as far as the knee,where they were as we
know from other evidence fastened with small buckles. To
protect the upper part of the body from the cold Charles wore
a garment that can be traced back as one of the most primitive
articles of vesture.
This was a sort of cape or scapular of fur
that shielded the front and back of the body as far as the
o
Z
o
o
o
H
w
o
>
*.
LXXXIII
facing p. 375
TEUTONIC COSTUME IN SCULPTURE
column a Roman is
fighting a barbarian equipped in the same
fashion.* At a much later date in VI Agathias describes the
1
De Mot: Germ., xvn. This thoroughly classical attire is illustrated
2
Lindenschmit, Tracbt und Bewaffnung des Romischen Heeres, Taf. vn, vm.
3
Figured in Arts and Crafts, etc., plate in.
4
Petersen, etc., Die Marcus-Saule, etc., Miinchen, 1896, pi. 86a.
376 COSTUME
lines above the ankles of the two legs, with tight fitting
hosen (?).
The
lady next him, with her hair drawn up in a knot
on the top of the head, like the second female in the relief
below, wears a sleeveless tunic with very elaborate ornamental
work bordering it, and with a distinctly visible girdle. The
mother nursing her child to the right has a tunic without
sleeves and unadorned, a mantle round the lower limbs and
hair flowing from under a fillet in ample locks on to both
they wore ample robes mostly of linen, as did also the Anglo-
Saxons, bordered with broad stripes of other colours. The last
figure in PI. lxxxiii, 2, and the first and second in No. 1,
illustrate this The Lombard shoes were open
last remark.
over the instep almost as far down as the great toe and were
'
laced up with leathern thongs. The cross gartering on the '
legs with bands three ells long is specially noted by the Monk
of St. Gall in his account of the dress of Charles the Great, 2
and is seen on the figure of Charles the Bald PL lxxxii, 3.
The king is
apparently not wearing shoes for the toes seem to
be visible, but the figure PL lxxxii, i, has what resemble
sagum of Tacitus.
'
A
cloak of voluminous
dimensions enwrapping the whole figure is worn by No. 8.
The female figure, No. io, from the story of the smith Weland,
is also clad in a voluminous mantle drawn up over the head
like a hood, and carries in her hand a bag.
With regard to the coiffure, for men as well as women to
wear the hair long was a common tradition among the Teutonic
tribes, and many Roman tombstones show it, but on the
Antonine column it is
generally represented as short, though
wild and tumbled. When the Alamanni charge the troops of
Julian in the battle by Strassburg their flowing hair bristles
1
with eagerness. At a later date extreme length of locks on
the male head became a speciality of the royal race of the Salian
Franks, the Merwings, but the free Teuton in general did not
abandon his ample locks in favour of the short-clipped hair of
the classical people, and he wore generally also the unclassical
moustache. The Anglo-Saxons wore
the hair long down to
the Conquest as is shown by the fact that some of them
top knot, while the Antonine column and the Franks Casket
supply examples of the mantle drawn over the head like a veil.
2
Lindenschmit brings forward evidence that the loose hair
betokened the virgin while married women had theirs bound
up. It is rather against this that the two women engaged with
children on the Halberstadt reliefs are exactly those that have
the long tresses. Both maidens and matrons however wore
the fillet or diadem, and Lindenschmit quotes numerous
'
'
references to this under the names '
vitta,' corona or '
dia-
1
Am. Marc, xvi, xii, 36.
2
Handbucb, 383 f.
THE TREWS 379
gold.
For the present purpose these notices and illustrations
of dress are only of importance in connection with tomb
furniture. The trews have historical significance. Like
sleeves they are distinctly non-classical and barbaric. The
outland slave maiden who stands by her mistress on the
Athenian tomb reliefs is figured with sleeves, and in Greek
collection, is of wool.
With the tunic and the cloak are closely connected the
garments of definite cut and fit, and for the temporary fastening
of these in any required position the pins of six or seven
inches in length already illustrated would come in handily.
We have seen that there is no reason to relegate these exclu-
sively to the purposes of the coiffure. Where women wore
a sleeved tunic the arrangements for fastening would be
different. The Halberstadt reliefs give us no help here, but
there are women in sleeved tunics on the Antonine column, as
for example the child in PL lxxxiii, 5. Here there is no
382 COSTUME
sign of an opening at the neck in front, but considering that,
as Tacitus tells us about the early Germans and as we know
three there was evidence that the graves were of women, and
this is some proof that the tunics of the women were sleeved.
It is true that the explorer, Mr. Thomas, appeared to regard
them of bracelets which do not necessarily involve
as fastenings
376 a.d. were admired as much for their rich attire as for
their fair presence, while Bishop Aldhelm's tract de
Virginitate
of which there was question earlier in this work, Vol. 1, p. 233,
is
proof that dress among the Anglo-Saxon ladies of VII
might assume a fantastically gorgeous character. Only in the
case of one of these bits of extra finery is there
any connec-
'
tion with tomb furniture, and this is the vitta or ornamental
c
go all across the warp but are intertwined with the warp
threads only in those parts where the metallic filaments are to
show. In consequence of this the gold which is imperishable
has come away
bodily from those portions of the decaying
fabric in which it was used, and it will be seen by reference to
PL lxxxiv, 2, that the gold strips were woven into the stuff
in patches some of rectangular others of triangular shape. In
the case of every strand when the limit of the required patch
of gold was reached the strip was doubled back and returned
forming a parallel strand, the wavy surface of the strip being
caused by the alternate pressures up and down of the woollen
threads over and under which it was passed by the shuttle or
needle. PI. lxxxiv, i, shows an enlargement of one of the
rectangular patches in which it will be seen that a distinct
pattern has been formed of triangles or possibly squares
separated by zigzag lines in which only the woollen ground
appears. This pattern closely resembles certain textile motives
which occur on the woven garments found in the Thorsberg
Moss in Schleswig, and dating from about IV. These are
almost certainly of northern origin as the garments on which
some of the patterns appear are c trews,', a form of vesture
not favoured by classical peoples. The agreement of these
northern patterns with those on the Taplow textiles is an
argument to oppose to those who are too ready to affirm that
anything peculiarly rich and elaborate, like these gold-inwoven
fabrics, must necessarily be Roman.' The elaborate gold
'
'
work of '
barbaric origin, in Scandinavia, PH. liv, lv (p. 309),
1
For these dimensions the writer is indebted to the kindness of his
colleague Professor Harvey Littlejohn, who has ascertained them in his