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 A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE found in the neighbourhood of Stade, near the mouth of the Elbe. Another with a somewhat longer neck* came from the Stavanger district in the south-west of Norway ; and a third/ of the same shape but about half the size of the others, came to light in the Danish island of Funen. Dr. Rygh states that only six specimens are known, and Dr. Sophus Miiller assigns the Danish example to the earliest years of the post- Roman period, not later than the fifth century. There need be therefore little hesitation in regarding the Addington urn, which was presented to the British Museum by Mr. H. Walters, as one of the earliest Teutonic relics in the country. Besides the urns already mentioned as having been found in the cemetery at Marston Hill where cremation was certainly not the usual practice, there are Anglo-Saxon sites in Northamptonshire where there are no traces of any other manner of disposing of the dead than by cremation. In addition to the comb already referred to, fragments of a vase of green glass were found at Pitsford in 1882, along with fourteen pottery vases of various sizes, some of them containing small and apparently burnt bones. The comb is characteristic of this mode of burial, but other objects are unusual ; and a sketch by Sir Henry Dryden of the glass fragment, which is in the form of a hollow claw, is sufficient to show that the vase belonged to a well-known class frequently met with in Kentish graves of this period and more rarely in some other English counties and on the continent. These delicate vases' are mostly of olive-green or amber coloured glass, and generally contract slightly at the neck and foot ; from the centre project two or three bands of hollow claws pointing downwards, while thin threads are applied above and below in spirals, and sometimes vertically on the claws. The result is an elaborate drinking cup which, to judge by the number preserved, must have been a common object in the pagan period. At Kettering have been found fragments of cinerary urns, and part of a circular brooch of a kind well represented in the remains from Kempston, Long Wittenham, etc., with a thin embossed gilt disc attached to the circular bronze base. In the centre is a hole that was no doubt originally filled with a slab of garnet. Two miles to the south-east, several cinerary and other urns have been found at Barton Seagrave, which with an iron shield-boss orna- mented with a disc (fig. 9) of bronze-gilt, a string of glass beads, three small cruciform brooches (fig. 8) and minor objects are now preserved in the national collection. The circumstances of the discovery are not recorded, but the remains correspond with other finds of the period in this central district of the county, and include a typical series of sepul- chral pottery, illustrating the variety in shape and ornamentation of the 1 This also contained burnt bones, and is figured in Rygh's Norike Oldsager, fig. 357, French edition, p. 60. 2 Sophus Mailer, NorJische Altertiimer, vol. ii. p. 107, fig. 78. 3 Typical specimens are figured in de Baye's Industrial Arts, p. 109, pi. xv., and references given. 244