Sarre Anglo-Saxon Cemetery
- Grave 90
To
Sarre Cemetery Introduction
GRAVE 90 - A woman’s grave, the bones
tolerably perfect.
Finds A bronze buckle on the left;
an iron
ring, apparently the link of a chain;
close under the chin, beads of
amber and porcelain, unusually rude and unartistic,
and with them a
circular gold pendant.
circular gold pendant
A quantity of gold braid round the skull (see
specimens engraved), evidently once woven or laced into either the
hair or the head-dress, and closely resembling that
described under Grave IV.
The pendant, also, is much like those found in that grave and of the
medium size there described. At its edge is a beading, and within it
an ornamented border; the centre bears those strange figures so common
upon these ornaments, and, as Professor Stephens of Copenhagen
informs me, quite familiar to northern antiquaries, and of
frequent occurrence throughout Scandinavia. "The ground
type," he writes to me, "is a writhed worm with gaping jaws,
and headless intertwining snakes, all making, as it were, one
serpent." Numerous examples of these golden bracteates are given
in Thomsen’s ‘Atlas de l’Archéologue du Nord,’ some exactly
resembling these found at Sarr, others differing widely from them. But
these are evidently debased copies of the Scandinavian type,
possibly the spoil of Danish invaders, but more probably the
work of the Jutes themselves or of foreign artists employed by them,
and degenerated from the original designs brought over at their first
immigration.