Antiquities from Essex at the British Museum

Abstract

AN exhibition of exceptional interest of antiquities from Essex is now on view in the Prehistoric Gallery of the British Museum (Bloomsbury). The objects were found on a site between Rainham and Up-minster, about fourteen miles from London Bridge, and are lent by Mr. G. T. Carter with the permission of the Newbury Park Gravel Pit Co., from the excavation works of which they were derived. In part, the great interest of the discovery lies in the fact that all periods of prehistoric and early historic culture in Britain are represented from palaeolithic to Saxon times. The finds include palaeolithic hand-axes, polished neolithic axes of a type common in the Thames area, pottery of the Early Bronze Age, the most noteworthy example being a small beaker, of reddish ware, decorated with bands of lines and dots, and pottery of the Late Bronze Age, the Early Iron Age and the period of Roman occupation. This succession in evidence of occupation on one and the same site on the estuary of the Thames is of peculiar interest to the archaeologist; but the remarkable feature of the discovery is the occurrence of Saxon relics, and more especially of a cemetery, at this point. This is the first instance recorded of a Saxon settlement in the marsh and forest area of south Essex between London and Southend. The absence of cinerary urns and signs of cremation point to a probable date not prior to the sixth century B.C. Nor does there appear to be any ground for connecting this settlement with the East Saxons of the coastal area from Colchester to Ipswich. It is thought to belong to an estuarine Saxon group scarcely differing from that on the north coast of Kent. The finds, of which a selection is shown, include two remarkable curved drinking horns of olive green glass, both broken, but one of which it has been found possible to reconstruct, bronze brooches and rings, wooden buckets with bronze mounts, shield bosses, spearheads, a sword of iron and Roman coins, pierced for use as pendants. The levels of the pit in which the antiquities were found are shown in photographs. The finds will be on view for two months.