ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS which is the western extremity of the same ridge. The site has been under the plough for many years, and the soil is from one to two feet deep on the top of limestone rock. The first skeleton was discovered in November, 1 842, and ex- cavations were carried on in the early part of the following year. Many of the bodies were in pairs, and all were found to lie in graves which may have been marked by small hillocks such as are to be seen in church- yards at the present day. In the excavated space which was about i 50 feet by 100, there were found in all thirty-two human skeletons, all lying nearly in the same direction with the feet to the north-east. Most of them lay about eighteen inches below the surface face upwards, and the graves were in great part filled with the fine mould which is frequently found in such interments. There were discovered twenty-five skeletons without weapons, seven with weapons, one skeleton of a horse, and three or four urns containing burnt human bones. It will be observed on the plan of the cemetery that accompanies the account, that three of the bodies were deposited with the knees doubled up, a circumstance that has been commented on by the Abbe Cochet,' who met with similar cases in Normandy ; while it was the general rule in a cemetery at Sleaford, Lines. ^ A detailed list of the contents of the thirty-seven graves is given by Sir Henry Dryden, whose accuracy has made this find an important addi- tion to archsEology, and furnished a model on which such excavations as these should be conducted and put on permanent record. A glance at plate xxii. accompanying his account will at once prove that the position of the bodies was not accidental, but was dictated by the funeral customs of the group of settlers who used the cemetery. This uniformity not only indicates that the burials belong to a definite period during which the rites of burial were not interfered with to any extent, but also warrants the conclusion that the cemetery ceased to be used before the introduction of Christianity into this part of England had caused the dead to be buried with the head to the west. It was apparently in the middle of the eighth century that burial-grounds within the walls of towns became general in England, and it seems reasonable to refer to the intervening century, from about 650 to 750, the east-and-west burials in the open country which are sometimes found in cemeteries that also contain pagan interments. The funeral rites of the pre-Christian period would not be stamped out at once by the missionaries of the Gospel, and the compromise here indicated seems to have been generally accepted during the first century of Christian England. Though the burials of the Marston cemetery are all in the same direction and generally belong to the same period, there is an instructive combination of elements in the objects recovered from the graves. The contrast of two characteristic groups of ornaments is shown by plates xxiii. and xxiv. illustrating the report, the former for the most part
- Normandie Soulerralne, p. 218 (2nd ed.).
- Archttologia, vol. 50, p. 385.
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