Page:VCH Norfolk 1.djvu/387

 ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS parts of Germany east of the Rhine, west of the upper Elbe and Saale, and north of the Main.* In Liineburg and Verden cremation was uni- versal and exclusive, only two skeletons occurring in three thousand interments. A striking contrast is to be found in Normandy, where the Abbe Cochet in the course of his excavations in the vicinity of Dieppe found only one case of cremation among several hundred graves. This would suggest that paganism had become extinct, but the activity of missionaries in these parts in the middle of the seventh century forbids us to conclude that the abbe came across none but Christian interments. Norfolk however is not an extreme case, for though cremation was evidently the prevailing custom during the pagan period, there are several undoubted instances of extended burial in this part of East Anglia, and these not confined to any one locality, but occurring in various parts of the county and sometimes in connection with urn-burials. Here and there perhaps in East Anglia an intrusive settlement of adventurers had brought with them funeral rites different from those practised by their Anglian neighbours, but here was not the last refuge of Romanized natives who preserved their religion and may be their Christianity in the presence of the pagan stranger. The graves in question contain nothing that is obviously connected with Roman culture and much that is dis- tinctively Teutonic, while they are scattered over the face of the county and no two groups occur in the same neighbourhood. Attention has already been drawn to the unproductive nature of urn- burial from the antiquary's point of view. Rare indeed are the instances in which anything is found with the calcined bones but a shattered comb, a pair of tweezers or a string of beads ; and the discovery of one or more spearheads with an urn at Pensthorpe^ is almost the only exception in Norfolk. The uniformity observed in interments of this kind is a powerful argument in favour of larger and more valuable relics belonging to burials in which the rite of cremation had not been observed. This is a practical certainty where richly ornamented brooches, which must have been attached to the clothing of the dead, and in some cases still reveal the texture of the cloth, have escaped all injury, and remain to show the sumptuous fashions of the time. On these grounds certain of the Norfolk finds can be safely classed, according to Kemble's method, as ' unburnt Teutons of the Iron age.' There is such a distinct break between the post-Roman and the Viking periods that there can be no hesitation in assigning the extended burials in Norfolk to the period between the fifth and the eighth centuries. The character of the ornamentation would be evidence enough, apart from all considerations of burial reform consequent on the acceptance of Christianity in this country. By the middle of the eighth century the use of churchyards for interments had become general, and it is reason- able to suppose that as the common folk abandoned the tombs of their fathers in the open country they were also induced to surrender the ' cf. Lindenschmit, Handbuch der deutschen AUerthumskunde, pp. 77, 106-7. 327
 * Homiich Museum Catakgue (1853), p. 23.