Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 6.djvu/237

Rh and urn-burial,are practices which appear already to have been on the decline amongst the Teutonic people when Christianity began to be embraced by the Anglo-Saxons; and it is evident that they did not very long survive their conversion. Like other long-established customs, repugnant rather to a Christian sentiment than to Christian doctrine, they would probably continue to be followed by a few of the earlier converts. It is, therefore, not improbable that this urn may have contained the ashes of some Northumbrian Saxon, whose body had been burnt. In this case we must suppose that the urn had been disturbed, and the ashes scattered, in the course of those changes to which the upper part of the mound has been subjected. Some may think it more probable that this urn was deposited empty. In connexion with this view, it may be observed that, in like manner as the Romans, when the body could not be recovered on the field of battle, still held the exequiæ, and built an empty tomb or cenotaph, so there is reason for thinking that the Saxons, as well as the early Britons, under similar circumstances, deposited an empty urn and erected a barrow over it. In the case before us, however, I am rather inclined to the conclusion of the urn having really contained a deposit of burnt bones, which were subsequently disturbed and scattered. This is a conclusion which is perhaps supported by the kind of dead vegetations which were found in the interior of the urn. Whatever view we adopt respecting it, the position of a single urn in the centre of the cemetery, surrounded by so considerable a number of skeletons, is a remarkable circumstance, of which I do not venture to offer any explanation.

As regards the bones of the animals which were found, the most probable conjecture appears to be that they were the remains of animals which had been provided for funeral festivals. The German antiquarian, Keller, in alluding to the fragments of pottery so commonly found in tumuli in Germany, says:—"All the archæologists who have examined these antiquities agree in thinking them relics of the lyke-wake held at the funeral of the deceased person. 'The body of the deceased,' observes Klemm, 'was brought to the place of burial in Rh