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Mitford, Aspects o f Anglo-Saxon Archaeology (London, 1974), 23-124, pl. 21). Th e gem is commonplace although thering is splendid.37 Th e Grea t Cameo ofSt Albans, see Henig, op. cit. in note 32,162 an d fig. 3, (almost certainly much too fine to

have come from Verulamium); E. G. Grimme, Der Aachener Domschat; (Dusseldorf, 1972),24-28, no. 22.38 Bruce-Mitford, op. cit. in note I, 113.

EARLY S A X O ~SETTLEMENT FINDS

Mucking is one of a growing number of excavated sites of the early Saxon per iod whichoffer alternative, settlement, data to the long domination of cemetery evidence. Reports ofthese excavations are now appearing in print: Bishopstone," Heybridge.P Old Down Farrn.?Walton," an d Willington? are examples. It would seem that by far the greater number offinds, and that mostly pottery, derives from the fills of sunken huts. Sites represented for themost part by ground-level buildings, such as Chalton," Catholrne.? Cowdery's Down," an dThirlings.? produce few finds.

There is a tendency to publish these new settlement finds as hut groups, followingLeeds 's example with the Sutton Courtenay material. However, Leeds regarded his Saxonsas living in their 'cabins, with bare headroom, amid a filthy litter of broken bones, offood an dshattered pottery' .1 0 With recent changes in attitude to Saxons an d Vikings such h ut s ( an dtheir contents) ar e also du e for a reappraisal, par t icular ly where finds deposition isconcerned. Ye t only two of the sites mentioned make a distinction between uppe r and lowerfills, while another recent report attempts to date a hut on the bas is of 20 sherds 'found eitherin th e fill of the hut or nearby'.

I t might be argued that when small amounts of pottery are in question their presentationis of minor interest. The site value is then the important factor, at times leading to newdistribution maps following Myres 's"! exemplars with 'stehende Bogen', Buckelurnen, facettedcarination, etc. Some recent finds already suggest new maps: of surface treatments such as'Schlickung', combed and rusticated; 12 of shapes such as 'swallows' nest' lugs an d all-overperforated braziers.P All these ca n be rel iably ident if ied f rom the small sherds typical ofset t lement mater ia l. Dist ribution maps are already an integral part of the new Archive ofAnglo-Saxon Pottery Stamps.!"

With large assemblages, however, w he re t he re is a good chance of establishing aninternal sequence, the detailed presentation of finds in their contexts is impor tant. This seemsespecially true of Mucking where the 1965-78 excavations fulfilled several criteria in theSociety's research priorities. I t is no t only the largest excavated settlement, but it is the onlysite where cemeteries an d settlement(s) showing a succession from extensive Romano-Britishsettlement (with four cemeter ies) have been excavated at one time. Evidently it has animportant role as type site an d reference collection.

Th e Mucking settlement finds are from several different types of context. There is anapproximately equal amount from the late fills of earlier (usually Romano-British) featuressuch as ditches and wells, an d from pits an d post-holes, which occasionally form elements ofth e 50 or so ground-level buildings. By far the largest amount comes from th e fills of the 2 I 3sunken huts. (Proportions of pottery are [in D.o.E. boxes with an estimated 300 sherds perbox] 30: 30: 260 - more detailed figures must await computer retrieval.) Associated withthis pottery are:

c. 60 pieces of copper alloy including brooches an d military belt fittingsc. 700 pieces of iron including pins, buckles and knivesRoman and Saxon coins including the only 'mini-hoard' of primary sceattas ye tfound l/ 'glass fragments including cone an d claw beakerswhetstones an d querns and, rarely, jet, shale, amber an d amethyst.

Finds reflecting the economy include animal bone. Thi s had a low survival rate but horse, ox,sheep, pig, deer, dog an d cat ar e identified. Seed impressions on sherds include barley, wheat

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N O T E S AND N E W S

an d oats. Slag (including slag blocks), lead melt an d fragments ofa piece mould for a broochindicate a wide range of metalworking. Cloth production is attested by loomweights (of clayan d lead) an d spindlewhorls; while there survives textile, both actua l , an d replaced in thecorrosion products of metal objects in graves and as accidental impressions of cloth on po tsherds.

Apart from any intrinsic interest these settlement finds may possess, their contexts an dassociations can be very significant. Ditch an d well fills provide vertical stratigraphy to l inkwith Romano-Br i ti sh materi al ; pits provide closed finds groups; comparisons betweenindividual finds from cemeteries an d settlement(s) are frequent. Most dating will need to relyon stratigraphy and comparanda, bu t there is some independent dat ing: the sceattas,regarded by Rigold as datable to the 6gos, an d two radiocarbon dates - a.d. 470 an d a.d. 550uncalibrated.

I t is the writer's contention that any consideration of the finds from hu t fills (that is, themajority) cannot ignore thc mechanism by which they were deposited, a nd t ha t this in turnrelates to whatever structural interpretation is put on the sunken areas. Without going overthe subject once more!" let it be said that the huts at Mucking are not regarded as anythingbut below-ground house floors. This makes their fills an d an y objec ts in them postoccupation accumulations. Th e only finds which ca n then be stratigraphically related to eachhut ar e those which lie on, no t above, these floors. In some instances they are even pressed intothe natural.

However, there were problems of excavation. As with most gravel fills it was frequentlydifficult to see, let alone excavate separately, successive layers. Finds were therefore recordedin 3in. (76mm) levels (and by hu t quarters) except for those huts which cou ld o nl y besalvaged or hastily dug. As with other features such contextual data ar e fed into the computerwith details offinds. With mechanical handling these data ca n be presented in various ways,textual an d graphic. They can for instance be organized hut by hut, or by site totals, ordivided into the two settlement foci either side of Saxon cemetery 2. Different presentationswould facilitate comparisons with other sites, whether English or continental. Demolon-?attempted to arrange the Brebieres huts in sequence through their contained finds to help toestablish the developmen t of this M erovingian village. At Wij ster, 18 however, more em ph asiswas put on a finds chronology based upon 'outside criteria ' rather than the stratigraphicassociations recorded in the finds inventories, in order to achieve a wider view of the history ofthis Dutch settlement with cemetery which came to an end at about the time that SaxonMucking began.

A method of retrieval already used with material from Mucking, employing a digitalplotter, records th e horizontal distribution of finds throughout the 40 acres (16 hal of th eexcavated area, whether found in pits, post-holes, ditches, gullies, graves or sunken huts.I?Such a presentation was used at Feddersen Wierde where it illustrated the development ofthis N. German coastal wurt from a flat settlement. I t is a method which thrives on large databases. One completed Mucking distr ibution shows Romano-Brit ish building tile from 1500contexts concentrated along the field ditches of the pre-Saxon sett lement, with sporadic findsin Saxon huts. Distributions of such finds as late mortaria will c lear ly be invaluable inattempting to assess the Roman/Saxon transition in general, and the reasons whyRomano-British pottery sherds ar e numerous in some huts but no t in others. Th e computerprogram for the Saxon pottery contains some 300 variables an d any of these can be retrievedin this way. Tell ing comparisons might emerge from suspected like distr ibutions such asrusticated and Schlickungsherds; or contrasted traits, say early faceted carinated sherds (withone ent ire bur ia l pot) against late wheel -t hrown (Franki sh ) she rds which also include asingle burial example. Th e distributions of the nineteen different fabrics should provide foodfor thought. Traditional studies of metalwork/pottery assoc iat ions will benef it by th eretrieval of all relevant data, and no t simply a subjective sample.

I t is however with the handling of finds within each hut fill that the unique capacity ofacomputerized data base will make its most significant contribution. Assuming that finds fromthe sunken floors only can produce a reliable estimate of the date ofa hut, the computer can

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N O T E S A ND N EW S 143be used to isolate them to facilitate comparisons with finds from the upper fills. Sueh hutanalyses ca n in turn be compared with intra-site distributions, of which the following seemlikely to be specially significant: 'grass'-tempered, Schlickung an d rusticated sherds, nails an dslags. These ar e finds which occur in their thousands an d could scarcely be handled in thiswa y without a computer.

Work at Mucking Post-Excavation has been aimed at this kind of achievement, whichseems to be a logical outcome of the Frere recommendations, an d it would be a pity iff inancial cuts were to jeopardize this unprecedented and probably unrepeatable opportunityto record and analyse major evidence for the onset of the Migration period in England.

M. U . J ON ES

l\iOTES

1 :\1. Bell, 'Excavations at Bishopstone', Sussex Archaeol. Coll., 115 (1977).2 P. J D ru ry a nd N. P. Wi ck end en , 'An early Saxon s et tl eme nt w it hi n the R om an o- Br it is h smal l town at

Heybridge', Medieual Archaeol., XXV1 (1982), 1-40.3 S. Davies, 'Excavations at O ld D ow n F ar m, Andover. Part 1: Saxon', Proc. HampshireField Club Archaeol. Soc., 36

(198 0),161-80.4 M. Far ley, 'Saxon and Medieval Walton, Aylesbury', Records of Buckinghamshire. xx (1976).

5 H. Wheeler, 'Excavations at Willington, Derbyshire '970-72', Derbyshire Archaeol. Soc., XC1V (1979),58-220.6 P. V. Addyman, 'The Anglo-Saxon village at Chalton, Hampshire', MedievalArchaeol., xv n (1973), 1-25.7 S. Lasco-Bradley, 'The Anglo-Saxon settlement at Catholme', Trent Valley Archaeol. Res. Ctee., 8 (1973), 1-35.8 M. Millett, Excavations at Cowdery's Down (Basingstoke, Basingstoke Planning Dept, 1980).9 R. Miket , Medieval Archaeol., X1X (1975), 226-27.

10E. T. Leeds, Early Anglo-Saxon Art and Archaeology (Oxford, 1936), 26.11 J . ."J. L. Myres, Anglo-Saxon pottery' andthe settlemento f England (Oxford, 1969), maps 3, 4a, 5b.12 M. C. Jones, 'Saxon pot te ry from a hu t at Mucking, Essex ', Berichten van de Rijksdienst voor het Oudheidkundig

Bodemonderroek, 19 (1969),145-56; W. A. van Es, Wijster: a nativevillage beyond theImperialfrontier (Groningen, 1967),273-7513M. U.jones, '?Woolcomb warmers from Mucking, Essex', Antiq.j., L V (1975), 411-13.14T. Briscoe, 'Anglo-Saxon pot stamps', Anglo-Saxonstudiesin Archaeol. andHist. (Oxford, Brit. Archaeol. Reps. Brit.

ser. 92,1981),1-36.15W. T.Jones and S. E. Rigold, 'A group of "primary sccattas" from Mucking, Essex', Antiq.j., r.vn (1977),321-2216 :\1. U. jones, 'Saxon sunken huts: problems of interpretation', Archaeol. j. , 136 (1979), 53-59.17P. Demolon, Le Village Merooingien de Brebieres (Arras, 1972).

18W. A. va n Es, Wijster:a native village beyond theImperialfrontier (Groningen, 1967)'19.J. P. J Catton, :\1. U. j on es , a nd J. C. Moffett, 'The 1965-78 Mucking excavation computer database ', in1. Graham and E. Webb (eds.), Computer applications in archaeology (London, 198 I).

ISLAMIC GLASS VESSEL FRAGMENTS F R O ~THE OL D VICARAGE,REIGATE, SURREY (Figs. 2 and 3; PI. XI , B)Introduction

Five small f ragments of manganese glass 1 were found during excavations by theHolmesdale Archaeological Group on the site of The Old Vicarage, Church Street,Reigate.? These have been identif ied by Mr R. J. Charleston ' as Islamic, from a vessel orvessels manufactured in Syr ia in the 13th century.

The Glass FragmentsThe five fragments were found within a layer of sandy brown soil representing the upper

filling o fa ditch originally cu t in the r zth century or earlier. The ditch lay adjacent to th eear lies t house which was later extended to cover it. There was no evidence for deliberateinfilling or rubbish disposal an d it is likely that the ditch silted naturally. Associated potteryconfirms a general date for the deposition of the glass in th e late 13th or early 14th century,an d thus also for the extension of the house.

Charleston has recently reviewed the evidence for decorated Islamic glass from contextsin Britain an d Europe, both from excavations an d as su rvivals from old collections."