| Abstract: |
Article describing excavations at Street House Farm, near Saltburn, North Yorkshire, which revealed an Anglo-Saxon cemetery as well as the Iron Age settlement which had been the original target of the investigation. The Iron Age settlement was shown to be well preserved, with a total of nine roundhouses and evidence for cultivation of wheat and barley and for craft activities, including the use of jet, as well as for the manufacture of salt by evaporation of seawater. The 109 Anglo-Saxon graves were arranged in an irregular square, with concentrations focused within and around one of the Iron Age roundhouses, and around a low mound of Anglo-Saxon date. One of this last group was identified as a `bed burial' and contained a large assemblage of artefacts including a necklace which held three gold pendants, one containing a gemstone carved into a scallop shell design. Items found in other graves included two silver discs made from re-used Iron Age coins, each pierced so as to hang with the design on the revers appearing as a cross, and a pendant of Anglo-Saxon date containing an Iron Age glass bead of a type found in Kent. A variety of other artefacts were found, including a langseax or single-edged Anglo-Saxon sword, beads, iron knives, buckles, strap ends, girdle hangers, shears, latch lifters, fragments of glass vessels and two gold bracteates. The acid soil conditions meant that no human remains were present. The authors draw attention to the re-use of Iron Age items in some of the highest status burials and the respect for Iron Age features and pagan burial customs, as well as to the links with Kent and East Anglia indicated in the assemblage and the suggestions of a Christian influence. A date for the cemetery of the second half of the seventh century AD is suggested. |
