Page:VCH Norfolk 1.djvu/395

 ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS southern border of the county. In 1870 Mr. Fitch exhibited to the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society a small collection of Anglian objects from Thetford apparently associated with urn-burials, but no details of the discovery are recorded.' Eight or nine Anglian urns were found in removing some small hillocks in a field to the north of Earsham ^ church, near Bungay ; but all were destroyed except one, which may be that figured in Norfolk Archaology, vol. vi. p. 154. At the west end of the church in an adjacent meadow there used to be three or four large mounds, which apparently yielded no relics when removed ; while on the north side of the churchyard, and partly within it, several Roman urns have been found. The site of the Anglian cemetery at Pensthorpe, from which some excellent urns have been recovered, contained a number of mounds distinctly traceable over several fields.' Cultivation has for the most part reduced these nearly to the level of the surrounding land ; but their whole surface had been pierced with holes a few feet deep, in which urns were placed mouth upwards, and then covered over with earth. So numerous are the remains said to have been that the fields were strewed with fragments, and whenever the earth was cleared away for a few feet urns and burnt bones were certain to be exhumed. In one urn full of human bones were found fragments of an iron buckle * ; in another bits of iron and glass, a bone pin, and sixteen roundels * which are not very intelligible, but have been reasonably explained in the paper already re- ferred to on the Castle Acre find, in which they also occurred. A few of the objects in question, unfortunately known as ' pulley-beads' * are preserved with one of the urns in the British Museum, and in their original form were discs of bone or shale, with one side convex and the other flat, the latter having two and sometimes three holes bored near the centre. At the first glance they might easily be taken for buttons, and some antiquaries have been led astray by the well-known buttons of jet which are found so frequently in British barrows of the early Bronze period. But the resemblance is very superficial, for in the prehistoric specimens the holes are drilled through to the other face, or else meet in the centre to form a passage for the thread ; while the later ' buttons ' could never have been fastened on at all. They now vary in size and colour, having been more or less damaged and calcined in the funeral pyre ; but originally they were about seven-tenths of an inch in diameter, with a polished surface that to this day shows traces of the lathe. Now it is obvious from their pottery that the pagan Anglians were not acquainted with the turner's wheel, and the conclusion is that these discs were not home-made. And here the remains of the Roman period in 1 Norfolk Archeology, vol. vii. p. 373. ^ This is misprinted as Evesham in the original account, Proceedings, Society of Antiquaries, new series, vol. i. p. 29. ' cf. Jewitt, Grave-Mounds and their Contents, p. 294, fig. 484. 8 Journal of Archaoloffcal Institute, vol. xi. p. 295. 3^=1
 * Norwich Museum Catalogue (1853), p. 20.
 * Society of Antiquaries, Proceedings, vol. iv. p. 292.