are occasionally met with, they are usually unaccompanied with spindles. No nails were found, or fragments of decayed wood, in evidence that slabs or coffins had been used. It is worth remarking that the Reading Museum contains part of a similar spindle, which was found in one of the pagan temples at Silchester.

With reference to bone combs, they are not uncommon, particularly in graves in the north of England. They are usually ornamented with incised lines and circles, and were placed in the urns. There is an example in the Reading Museum of an urn containing a long, doubletoothed comb from Brixworth, near Northampton. The portion of comb from interment 12 is merely an ornamental end of a large comb, the middle containing the teeth being gone. That it is as here stated is testified by an example in the British Museum, in which a comb is supported with similar end-pieces.

The interment numbered 13 contains small objects for securing the belt or girdle, and some large iron rings; but the relics of chief interest are the spiral finger-rings. These are of bronze; but they are sometimes constructed of white metal, as in the case of a ring found at Harnham. They have also been discovered at Linton Heath, Fairford, and Little Wilbraham; and several of the "twist-rings" (so called) were removed with the Romano-British remains during the investigations made by General Pitt-Rivers at Woodcuts, near Rushmore,1 from which it would appear that the Saxons in some cases followed the arts of the Romans. The object of their being made spiral was evidently that they might be expanded or contracted to suit the size of the finger.

When we consider the shallowness of these interments, the presence of secular relics, and the absence of orientation, there is little doubt that they are pagan, a.though probably of late date. The contemporaneous practice of cremation and inhumation is of considerable importance in showing when the heathen custom of burning the dead was on the point of change to the Christian mode

1 Excavations in Woodcuts Common, in Cranborne Chase, vol. i, 1887. Privately printed.

3

of sepulture. Prof. Rolleston states that the urns from Frilford and Long Wittenham were the only ones he had seen recorded in Berkshire. To these we have now to add those of Reading; but at Frilford, as at Reading, inhumation was practised at the same time. It appears that there are records of similar finds of urns in about thirteen English counties, viz., Warwickshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, Gloucestershire, Yorkshire, Oxfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and the Isle of Wight;" to which may be added Berkshire, Sussex, and Kent, although the last two appear to have used inhumation at a prior period, showing that paganism was earlier superseded in those counties. As Christianity opposed itself to the practice of cremation, the new discoveries which are continually turning up (and will to a yet greater extent as the country becomes more thoroughly broken up under the exigencies of an increasing population), serve to show, with those already made, how completely England was overrun with pagan Teutons. The dual practice of cremation with inhumation, with relics, and without orientation, observed in many burial-places, particularly in the northern counties, evidences that the one was, so far, as pagan as the other. Authorities have not been wanting who have advocated that the two forms were coexistent in time and place. There is no doubt of their co-existence in place; but if they cannot be correlated in time, inhumation, although accompanied with pagan accessories, would appear to indicate that those who practised it were becoming more in sympathy with the Christian form.

1 Scientific Papers and Addresses, vol. ii, p. 597.

2 Ibid., p. 598.

Life of Julian (Neander), English translation, p. 108; Archeologia, vol. xxxvii, p. 467; Hora Ferales (Kemble), p. 95.

4 Hora Ferales (Kemble), p. 918; Archeologia, vol. xxxvii, p. 456; Saxon Obsequies, p. 11, Neville.

1894

121

TWO PREHISTORIC WEAPONS RECENTLY FOUND IN ESSEX.

BY B. WINSTONE, ESQ., M.D.

(Read 4th April 1894.)

I HAVE placed on the table two prehistoric implements, one from Epping, the other from North Weald, an adjoining parish. They are similar to bronze and stone implements found in other parts of the kingdom, and do not, therefore, claim any description. There are, however, circumstances connected with the district in which they were found, possessing (I venture to believe) archæological interest.

The bronze weapon was found in North Weald. Mr. Francis Hart took it off a heap of old iron gathered on Caines Farm, a large farm in the occupation of his father. Unfortunately there is no procurable information as to when, or on what part of the farm, it was found; but as it had been carelessly thrown on the heap of metal, there is trustworthy circumstantial evidence of its having been turned up during some agricultural operations.

North Weald parish touches Epping Forest, the remains of a forest extending at one time over the whole county. Epping Forest was a royal forest, the kings of England hunted in it, and stringent laws were made for the protection of the deer. It is due, we may assume, to the forest rights possessed by the Crown until quite recent times, that two ancient earthworks of great interest have been preserved. They are known as Ambresbury Bank and Loughton Camp. Each is a British earthwork or oppidum,-places of refuge for the primitive inhabitants.

Ambresbury Bank, although now close to the road, was originally in the heart of the Forest. It encloses 12 acres, and must have been the stronghold of a large tribe, for it would take many warriors to man the ramparts enclosing 12 acres. In the valley of the river Roden, which it dominates, there is abundant pasturage