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 little bearing on that of the burial. In the sandpit adjoining the mill a skeleton was discovered, provided with spear, knife and shield, while a small pottery vase had been placed at the feet; but the most important discovery was made in the orchard of the vicarage, which had doubtless formed part of the Anglo-Saxon cemetery. This was a saucer-brooch of unusual size (see fig.), now in the British Museum. The material is bronze, originally gilt, and in the centre is a cruciform design, rudely engraved and filled in with bands of straight and curved lines that represent the original animal ornament of early Anglo-Saxon art.

That this type of brooch was unfamiliar sixty years ago, even to antiquaries of such wide experience as John Yonge Akerman, is curiously illustrated by his attribution of it to the Byzantine period, though he was subsequently convinced of its home manufacture and pagan origin. An error that has been more frequently noticed but is more readily excused was made in 1848, when the antiquities of Stowe House were sold by auction. Two very similar saucer-brooches from Ashendon appeared in the catalogue as the pans of a pair of scales, and scales have indeed been found more than once in Anglo-Saxon graves. In the present case however there is no room for doubt, and at the back of the specimen could be detected linen shreds from the grave clothes of the original owner, while the pair found only five miles distant at Ashendon are known to have been associated with a human skeleton discovered in a stone quarry. In all probability therefore they had not been accidentally lost by the living but interred with the body in the grave; and as the custom of burying the dead in full dress was discouraged by the Christian Church, and ceased before the eighth century, it is unlikely that the ornaments in question are any later than the seventh.

Further discoveries have been made in the same neighbourhood. At Eythrop, three miles west of Aylesbury, some iron relics that are easily recognized as part of a warrior's equipment have recently been unearthed, but no further details are forthcoming. A quarter of a mile north of Dinton Church, and on the right of the main road to Thame, there formerly existed a cluster of bell-shaped barrows, which were opened in 197