Message #258688

[Truth-hunter]

Council’s Heritage Environment Service to assess any finds.

Dr Andrew Rogerson and Steven Ashley from the HES then asked Dr Geake to join in the excavation, which took place over two cold days in January.

The bowl turned out to be at the foot of a grave with the badly-preserved bones of an adult Anglo-Saxon. As the excavation continued it was clear that this was a female because of the jewellery being discovered. It included a ‘chatelaine’, a long strip with probably silver rings which would have been hung from a girdle.

The pendant is the undoubted star find from the excavation, but there are other items to indicate that this was a noblewoman of wealth and taste. Some of them were made in the Kingdom of the Franks, part of what was to later become France.