Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/218

 A FEW REMARKS UPON THE ANTIQUITIES OE SILVER EOUND AT CUERDALE. On some of the rings and other silver ornaments found at Cuerdale, there appears a triangular pattern with three or four points (of. figg. 32, 33, 45, &c.) totahy different from the designs on Celtic, Roman, or Saxon remains, and which never seems to occur on any objects found in the interior or southern parts of Europe. To the instances which Mr. Haw- kins has already cited of similar patterns on silver objects found in Denmark and in Finland, I can only add that I have seen precisely similar objects, with the same pattern, in Ireland, Prussia, and Sweden ; and that in the interior of Russia, in tumuli in the neighbourhood of Moscow, the same pattern has been found on rings and other orna- ments, of which drawings are to be seen in Copenhagen. In nearly every instance these ornaments have been found along with oriental or Cufic coins, which, as Mr. Hawkins has shewn, also was the case at Cuerdale. This affords a strong argument in favour of the opinion that they are of eastern origin, and were brought to the north in the same way as the oriental coins. The discovery of so many coins of this class in Russia, from the Caspian and the Black Sea up to the shores of the Baltic, sufficiently proves that from the eighth until the eleventh or twelfth century, there existed a very lively intercom^se by trade between the east and the northern parts of Europe. Leopold von Ledebur has published a map marking most of the places where discoveries of oriental coins and silver ornaments have been made^. Erahn has given an account of the discoveries in Russia, and Ilildebrand lately published an important de- scription of tlic Anglo-Saxon coins in the Royal Swedish Cabhiet of coins, (Stockholm, I84G, 4to.) It contains a resumee of simihir discoveries in Sweden. In the Swedish cabinet there are at present more tlinn 1,000 different species of oriental coins, found in Sweden ; and, besides numerous varieties from about seventy places, mostly situated in the a In liis little book, " Ueber die in den kenen Zcugnisse eines Fiandels-Verkehrs Baltiscben Landern in die Erde gesun- mit dem Orient," &c. Berlin, 1820. 8vo.