Page:VCH Northamptonshire 1.djvu/305

 ANGLO-SAXON REMAINS burial was in all cases earlier than the burial of the entire body ; and the fact that no weapons but only tweezers, combs, beads and other small objects are found with the cremated burials may very well point to differences of race as well as of period. Thus combs associated with urn-burials have been found at Finedon, Pitsford and Northampton ' (see fig. 1 6). These with other cases of cremation occur generally in the central part of the county ; and where the cemeteries contain mixed burials, the bodies are found lying east and west. A plausible inference is that this part of Northamptonshire was occupied not by West-Saxons but by another tribe who before their conversion to Christianity burned their dead, and afterwards adopted the east-and-west position. Sir Henry Dryden's second and fuller paper on the Marston Hill finds was read to the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1882, and it is no slight on his memory to revise the conclusions he drew from what was there brought to light. There is at the present day no necessity to contrast such remains with Celtic, British or pure Roman in order to establish their Saxon origin. Instead of the eighty years which he allowed for interments of the pagan Saxons, it is now permissible to spread them over a period of about two centuries, and to allow another century for a considerable number of burials which show by their orientation the influence of Christian teaching, but at the same time illustrate the pagan custom of burying their ornaments and weapons with the dead. The similarity declared to exist between the burials at Marston Hill and others at Cestersover in Warwickshire, and Breach and Chatham Downs in Kent, must therefore be taken in that general sense, in which most pagan burials of the Saxon period in England may be said to resemble one another. There is however no reason to doubt that the interments at Newnham^ were 'precisely similar' to those at Marston Hill, from which the distance is only about twelve miles. About a mile and a half south of Daventry and the British and Roman site of Borough Hill, Newnham lies just north of the river Nene on the geolo- gical formation which seems to have specially recommended itself to the Teutonic settlers in this neighbourhood. Notice has already been taken of its proximity to the line of the Portway, and it may be described as the counterpart of Marston Hill as regards the objects discovered in the graves. About twenty bodies were found in 1829, and the relics passed into the possession of Sir Henry Dryden, by whom they were transferred to the municipal museum at Northampton. The skeletons lay in the same direction as at Marston, with the faces upwards, and also like them interred in small graves. In spite of defective supervision a few bead necklaces were preserved, and among these were some triplet specimens of glass exactly resembling some from Marston. Two large gilt brooches (figs. 3, 4), now preserved at Northampton, are com- pared with the large one from Marston, but the exact similarity of 1 Society of Antiquaries, Proceedings, vol. xvii. pp. 165, 167. 233
 * Archaologia, vol. xlviii. p. 336.