A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE the zealous excavators of the mounds. So far this accords with the division already recognized on other grounds between the Teutonic settlers north and south of the Stour valley, for the East Anglian cemeteries generally yield cremated remains in coarse urns of pot- tery, which are very exceptional in Kent and not positively known in Essex. The condition of the remains taken up by the monks may be explained on the supposition that the grave mound, which must in those early days have been a conspicuous object, had probably been rifled before the twelfth century, the bones being disturbed in the process. Perhaps the treasure-seekers, who may have had profitable experiences in Kent, were here disappointed ; and after finding nothing of value with the first burial considered it useless to examine the others. It is from these latter that a deduction as to the date of burial is possible. The chronicle of Roger mentions that all the skeletons were not laid in the same direction, some being apparently at right angles to the rest, as was actually found to be the case at Saffron Walden 1 in Essex, thirty miles from the site in question. In Anglo-Saxon cemeteries the bodies are generally found in one of two positions, either with the head between south and south-west or else due west. Variations between these points may in some cases be due to the time of year when a particular burial took place, as the bear- ings were taken no doubt by sunrise or sunset. 2 A generally accepted view is that the east-and-west burials were due to Christian influences, which gradually, perhaps in a century, reformed the funeral customs of the Anglo-Saxon tribes. It is thus permissible to refer the Redbourn interments to a time when that reform was still in progress ; and pre- suming that the monks would have been scandalized to find St. Amphi- balus buried with any but the Christian orientation, we may infer that the bodies lying crossways were those of earlier inhabitants who had not been thoroughly Christianized. The presumed interments at Redbourn therefore seem to be contem- poraneous with the Wheathampstead burial, all belonging to the middle of the seventh century. At any rate it is unlikely that the ewer was deposited in a grave much later, for Wulfhere, who ascended the throne of Mercia in 659, was shortly afterwards sovereign not only north of the Thames but even in Sussex. Unlike his great predecessor Penda he was a Christian king, and probably took as much interest in his newly- won territories as Offa, who occupied the same throne during the second half of the eighth century and founded the abbey of St. Albans just before his death in 796. Half a century of missionary effort had not abolished the pagan practice of burying ornaments and weapons with the dead ; but the later we place the Wheathampstead burial the more difficult it becomes 1 Essex Archaeological Society, Transactions, new ser. ii. 284.
- An instructive table of compass-bearings is given by the late Gen. Pitt-Rivers in his account of
an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Winkelbury, Wilts (Excavations in Cranborne Chase, ii. 261). 258
