LOT 1106

Anglo-Saxon Ceramic Horse-Warrior's Funerary Urn

5TH-6TH CENTURY AD

8 1/2" (1.1 kg, 22 cm).

A broad ceramic funerary urn, globular with broad sloping shoulder and everted rim; circumferential lines to the neck and shoulder; two bands of horseshoe stamps to the shoulder and sets of three stamps at the base of the neck.

Excavated from an Anglo-Saxon cemetary in Cambridgeshire, UK, in the late 19th century.

Cremation was the preferred burial rite of the Angles and other peoples of eastern England. Once the body had been burnt on a pyre, the remaining bones were recovered and placed in a specially prepared urn, often with small personal items such as a comb, knife or nail-cleaning set. The personality and social identity of the deceased was perpetuated in the form and the decoration of the urn, which formed the only permanent record of the individual.