Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 6.djvu/232

 132 DESCRIPTION OF AN ANCIENT TUMULAR CEMETERY. and, taken in connexion with other circumstances, it seems, I think, to point to the inference that the skeletons from Lamel- hill are really those of the people in question. Amongst these confirming circumstances may perhaps be included the large size of many of the skeletons, agreeing, as this does, with the well-known large stature of the early Anglo- Saxons. The presumed mode of interment, in wooden coffins, fastened with iron nails, cramps, and rivets, of rather clumsy workman- ship, is perhaps to be reconciled with the conclusion of the cemetery in Lamel-hill having belonged either to the Roman- British or to the Saxon period. More or less similar portions of rusty iron, with traces of decayed wood attached to them, have been repeatedly found in the barrows and cemeteries of both periods, though still more frequently perhaps in those of the Saxons.^ The general description, indeed, of the iron remains found in this instance, very much accords with those found in the Kentish tumuli opened by Lord Albert Conyng- ham. The stratum of calcareous matter found below the skeletons is also in favour of this cemetery being referred to the Saxon period ; — this being a circumstance which has before been observed in tumuli and cemeteries which are doubtless Anglo-Saxon.^ The structure and description of the urn found in the centre of the cemetery, though exceptional, are, in the main, such as we are in the habit of ascribing to the Roman-British period.^ There can, I think, be little doubt of its having been made by those who had been instructed in the art of fictile manufacture as practised by the Romans. The Saxons, however, not only seem frequently to have made their sepulchral urns and other pottery on Roman models, but probably often likewise employed vessels which were really of Roman or Roman-British manu- facture. Conjectures can only be offered as to the purpose for which this urn was deposited in the place where it was found, and these need not detain us long. Burning the dead, the teeth are worn clown to a considerable' beloved. Journal of British Archaeologi- extent. cal Association, vol. ii., p. 54. Book ii., ch. 6. Bloxam, Monumental fig. 1, for a representation of this urn, Architecture, pp. .30, .54. Archaeologia, described at page 36. Fig. 2 represents vol. xviii., p. 421 ; vol. xxix., p. 217 ; the analogous urn found in the same vol. XXX., p. 47. neighbourhood outside Walmgate Bar, and fl As in the tumulus near Driffield, also described in the first part of the E. R. Yorkshire, described by Mr. Well- paper, p. ?>7.
 * Compare Stowe's Survey of London, • See the accompanying illusti'ations,