Anglo-Saxon Period--Pottery, general characteristics
of--Cinerary Urns--Saxon Urn with Roman Inscription--Frankish
and other Urns--Cemeteries at King’s Newton, etc.--Mode of
Manufacture--Impressed Ornaments.
The pottery of the Anglo-Saxon period, so far as examples have come
down to us, are almost, if not entirely, confined to sepulchral urns.
We know, from the illuminated MSS. of the period, to which we are
accustomed to turn for information upon almost any point, that other
vessels--pitchers, dishes, etc.--were made and used, but for those
which have come down to us we are indebted to the grave-mounds; and,
in these, sepulchral vessels, almost exclusively, are found to occur.
Cinerary urns are, therefore, almost the only known productions of
the Saxon potteries, and these, like those of the Celtic period, were
doubtless, in most cases, made near the spot where the burial took
place, and were formed of the clays of the neighbourhood. This is
proved, incontestably, in the case of the urns found at King’s Newton,
where the bed of clay still exists, and has very recently been used for
common pottery purposes.
[Illustration: Fig. 326.]
The shapes of the cinerary urns are somewhat peculiar, and partake
largely of the Frankish form. Instead of being wide at the mouth,
like the Celtic urns, they are contracted, and have a kind of neck
instead of the overhanging lip or rim which characterizes so much of
the sepulchral pottery of that period. The urns are formed by hand,
not on the wheel, like so many of the Romano-British period, and
they are, as a rule, perhaps, more firmly fired than the Celtic ones.
They are usually of a dark-coloured clay, sometimes nearly black,
at other times they are dark brown, and occasionally of a slate or
greenish tint, produced by surface colouring. The general form of these
interesting fictile vessels will be best understood by reference to
the engravings which follow. One of these (on fig. 326) will be seen
to have projecting knobs or bosses, which have been formed by simply
pressing out the pliant clay from the inside with the hand. In other
examples these raised bosses take the form of ribs gradually swelling
out from the bottom, till, at the top they expand into semi-egg-shaped
protuberances. The ornamentation on the urns from these cemeteries
usually consists of encircling incised lines in bands or otherwise,
and vertical or zigzag lines arranged in a variety of ways, and not
unfrequently the knobs or protuberances of which I have just spoken.
Sometimes, also, they present evident attempts at imitation of the
Roman egg-and-tongue ornament. The marked features of the pottery
of this period are the frequency of small punctured or impressed
ornaments, which are introduced along with the lines or bands with very
good effect. These ornaments were evidently produced by the end of a
stick cut and notched across in different directions so as to produce
crosses and other patterns. In some districts--especially in the East
Angles--these vessels are ornamented with simple patterns painted upon
their surface in white; but so far as my knowledge goes, no example of
this kind of decoration has been found in the Mercian cemeteries.
Of these urns--the East Anglian, etc.--Mr. Wright (to whom, and to Mr.
Roach Smith, is mainly due the credit of having correctly appropriated
them to the Anglo-Saxon period), thus speaks:--
“The pottery is usually made of a rather dark clay, coloured outside
brown or dark slate colour, which has sometimes a tint of green, and
is sometimes black. These urns appear often to have been made with the
hand, without the employment of the lathe; the texture of the clay is
rather coarse, and they are rarely well baked. The favourite ornaments
are bands of parallel lines encircling the vessel, or vertical and
zigzags, sometimes arranged in small bands, and sometimes on a larger
scale covering half the elevation of the urn; and in this latter case
the spaces are filled up with small circles and crosses, and other
marks, stamped or painted in white. Other ornaments are met with, some
of which are evidently unskilful attempts at imitating the well-known
egg-and-tongue and other ornaments of the Roman Samian ware, which,
from the specimens, and even fragments, found in their graves, appear
to have been much admired and valued by the Anglo-Saxons. But a still
more characteristic peculiarity of the pottery of the Anglo-Saxon
burial urns consists in raised knobs or bosses, arranged symmetrically
round them, and sometimes forming a sort of ribs, while in the ruder
examples they become mere round lumps, or even present only a slight
swelling of the surface of the vessel.
[Illustration: Fig. 327.]
[Illustration: Fig. 328.]
[Illustration: Fig. 329.]
“That these vessels belong to the early Anglo-Saxon period is proved
beyond any doubt by the various objects, such as arms, personal
ornaments, etc., which are found with them, and they present evident
imitations both of Roman forms and of Roman ornamentation. But one of
these urns has been found accompanied with remarkable circumstances,
which not only show its relative date, but illustrate a fact in
the ethnological history of this early period. Among the Faussett
collection of Anglo-Saxon antiquities is an urn which Bryan Faussett
appears to have obtained from North Elmham, in Norfolk, and which
contained the bones of a child. It is represented in the accompanying
engraving (fig. 327), and will be seen at once to be perfectly
identical in character with the East Anglian sepulchral urns. But
Mr. Roach Smith, in examining the various objects in the Faussett
collection, preparatory to his edition of Bryan Faussett’s ‘_Inventorum
Sepulchrale_,’ discovered on one side of this urn a Roman sepulchral
inscription, which is easily read as follows:--
D. M. ‘To the gods of the shades.
LAELIAE To Lælia
RVFINAE Rufina.
VIXIT·A·XIII She lived thirteen years,
M·III·D·VI. three months, and six days.’
To this Roman girl, with a purely Roman name, belonged, no doubt,
the few bones which were found in the Anglo-Saxon burial urn when
Bryan Faussett received it, and this circumstance illustrates several
important as well as interesting questions relating to our early
history. It proves, in the first place, what no judicious historian
now doubts, that the Roman population remained in the island after
the withdrawal of the Roman power, and mixed with the Anglo-Saxon
conquerors; that they continued to retain for some time at least
their old manners and language, and even their Paganism and their
burial ceremonies, for this is the purely Roman form of sepulchral
inscriptions; and that, with their own ceremonies, they buried in the
common cemetery of the new Anglo-Saxon possessors of the land, for this
urn was found in an Anglo-Saxon burial ground. This last circumstance
had already been suspected by antiquaries, for traces of Roman
interment in the well-known Roman leaden coffins had been found in the
Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Ozingell, in the Isle of Thanet; and other
similar discoveries have, I believe, been made elsewhere. The fact of
this Roman inscription on an Anglo-Saxon burial urn, found immediately
in the district of the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, which have produced so
many of these East Anglian urns, proves further that these urns belong
to a period following immediately upon the close of what we call the
Roman period.”
The sepulchral vases found in the district of the middle Angles vary
but slightly in form from the East Anglian burial urns. An example
is given in fig. 328, from Chestersovers, in Warwickshire, where it
was found with an iron sword, a spear-head, and other articles of
Anglo-Saxon character.
“If we had not abundant proofs of the Anglo-Saxon character of this
pottery at home,” continues Mr. Wright, “we should find sufficient
evidences of it among the remains of the kindred tribes on the
Continent, the old Germans, or Alemanni, and the Franks. Some years
ago an early cemetery, belonging to the Germans, or Alemanni, who then
occupied the banks of the Upper Rhine, was discovered near a hamlet
called Selzen, on the northern bank of that river, not far above
Mayence, and the rather numerous objects found in it are, I believe,
preserved in the Mayence Museum. They were communicated to the public
by the brothers Lindenschmit, in a well-illustrated volume published
in 1848, under the title ‘_Das Germanische Todtenlager bei Selzen in
der Provinz Reinhessen_.’ When this book appeared in England, our
antiquaries were astonished to find in the objects discovered in the
Alemannic cemeteries of the country bordering on the Rhine a character
entirely identical with that of their own Anglo-Saxon antiquities,
by which the close affinity of the two races was strikingly
illustrated. More recently, the subject has been further illustrated
in the description by Ludwig Lindenschmit of the collection of the
national antiquities in the Ducal Museum of Hohenzollern, and in
other publications. About the same time with the first labours of the
Lindenschmits, a French antiquary, Dr. Rigollot, was calling attention
in France to similar discoveries in the cemeteries which the Teutonic
invaders of Picardy had left behind them, and in which he recognized
the same character as that displayed by the similar remains of the
Anglo-Saxons in our island. Similar discoveries have been made in
Burgundy and in Switzerland, the ancient country of the Helvetii; and
it is hardly necessary here to do more than mention the great and
valuable researches carried on by the Abbé Cochet among the Frankish
graves in Normandy. It has thus become an established fact that the
varied remains of the tribes, all of Teutonic descent, who settled on
the borders of the Roman empire along the whole extent of the country
from Great Britain to Switzerland, present the same character and bear
a close resemblance.”
A few figures will be sufficient to illustrate this resemblance as far
as regards the pottery, and these are here given, in which figs. 330
and 332 are Alemannic vases from the cemetery of Selzen. It will be
seen that they resemble exactly in form those East Anglian urns we have
given in our plate, and the same ornamentation is also found among our
Anglo-Saxon pottery. These urns are described as being usually made of
the clay of the neighbourhood, in most cases turned on a lathe, but
many of them imperfectly baked. They are found in graves where the body
had not undergone cremation, and were used for containing articles of
a miscellaneous description. In one grave, at the feet of the skeleton
of a gigantic warrior, was found one of these urns, containing two
bronze fibulæ, a comb, a number of beads, a pair of shears, flints and
steel, and a bronze ring. Fig. 334 is an urn procured at Cologne, and
is slate-coloured, with an ornament of circular stamps.
[Illustration: Fig. 330.]
[Illustration: Fig. 331.]
[Illustration: Fig. 332.]
[Illustration: Fig. 333.]
[Illustration: Fig. 334.]
Figs. 331 and 333 are Frankish urns obtained by the Abbé Cochet from
Londinières in Normandy, and show at a glance the identity of the
Frankish pottery with the Germanic as well as with the Anglo-Saxon.
The first of these is surrounded with a row of the well-known bosses,
which are equally characteristic of the three divisions of this
Teutonic pottery, Anglo-Saxon, Frankish, and Alemannic. Above these
bosses is an ornament identical with that of the East Anglian urn with
the sepulchral inscription, given on fig. 327. The urn represented
in fig. 331 has an ornament which is evidently an imitation of the
egg-and-tongue ornament so common on the Roman pottery. The Abbé
Cochet collected in the course of his excavations in Normandy several
hundreds of these Frankish urns, which all present the same general
character.
The next four examples are earthen vessels found in the lacustrine
habitations of Switzerland, of which so much has been written during
the last few years. Figs. 335, 336, and 337, are taken from the plates
illustrative of the communications of Dr. Ferdinand Keller to the
_Transactions_ of the Antiquarian Society of Zurich, and fig. 338,
also from the Zurich _Transactions_, and found in a Pfahlbau, near
Allensbach on the Untersee, on the borders of Switzerland and Germany.
A single glance will show a great similarity of form with those of the
Anglo-Saxons from our own country.
[Illustration: Fig. 339.]
[Illustration: Fig. 340.]
The following engravings will exhibit a striking variety of cinerary
urns of the Anglo-Saxon period, from the Mercian cemetery at King’s
Newton. Fig. 339 is six and a quarter inches in height. It is
ornamented with encircling bands or lines and impressed ornaments.
In the upper band is a series of small circular indentations, with
a dot in the centre of each, and in the lower band are three rows of
dots. Between these bands is a series of indented crosses, which may
be described as in some degree approaching to crosses _patée_ in form.
At the bottom are also small square indentations, with diagonal lines.
Fig. 342 is seven inches in height. It is ornamented with encircling
lines, the central band bearing a double row of dots; the band at the
bottom of the neck a series of small indented quatre-foil flowers; and
the lower one a series of square indentations with diagonal lines.
Fig. 341 is one of the most elaborately ornamented urns which has ever
been discovered.[51] The remainder of the examples vary from these
and from each other, in point both of form and decoration. Some of
these have herring-bone lines, others simple punctures, and others,
again, encircling lines only. The marked features of the pottery of
this period is the frequency of small punctured or impressed ornaments,
which are introduced along with the lines or bands, with very good
effect. These ornaments were evidently produced by the end of a stick,
cut and notched across in different directions, so as to produce
crosses and other patterns, and by twisted slips of metal, etc. In the
annexed woodcut I have endeavoured to show two of the notched stick
“punches,” such as I have reason to believe were used for pressing into
the soft clay, and also two of the impressed patterns produced by it.
[Illustration: Figs. 335 to 338.]
[Illustration: Fig. 341.]
[Illustration: Fig. 342.]
[Illustration: Fig. 343.]
[Illustration: Fig. 344.]
[Illustration: Fig. 345.]
[Illustration: Fig. 346.]
[Illustration: Fig. 347.]
[Illustration: Fig. 348.]
[Illustration: Fig. 349.]
[Illustration: Fig. 350.]
[Illustration: Fig. 351.]
[Illustration: Fig. 352.]
Other varieties of pottery found in the Anglo-Saxon graves are a
species of cup, and upright vessels, one of which is shown on fig. 327.
Fragments of pitchers have also occasionally been found, as also have
portions of coarse dishes. In the Kentish graves, most of the pottery
is of the Roman period, and consists of Samian pateræ and other vessels
of that manufacture; and cups, etc., of the Upchurch and Castor wares,
etc.